Last week I had an eye examination, first one in over two years.  Good news: my eyesight is almost the same as it was the last time I checked. The bad news: I’m ‘an incomplete blinker’. 

Now you might think that that malady sounds a little inconsequential, given the state of the economy, gut-wrenching oil-slicks that won't go away, and all.  But there’s a tie in, just hang with me.  We’re going zen here.

What the wonderful eye healer said was that due to unknown causes, I don’t blink completely.  Since she was in a good position to tell this I believed her.  Some of the outcomes of incomplete blinking are dry, irritated eyes. The syndrome has a name!  Oh my.  So I immediately got to thinking, even while my chin was resting on that little cup thing and there’s a bright light like a hyperactive star of Bethlehem that I’m trying to follow, ‘first I was an incomplete breather…’  A breathing coach I once worked with told me this gem.  She didn’t use those exact words, but something similar, like, ‘Beth, you breathe in quite well, but you leak air out after holding it for 5 minutes.’ 

So now I’m an incomplete blinker AND breather.  I’m not necessarily a ignoramus.  There must be a link.  So, chin in cup, I started exploring it.  A few days later I processed it some at a fire circle and opened to the idea that both ‘incompletes’ are due to living an anxious, incomplete life.

And then yesterday I completed a job that I’ve held lovingly for almost five years as an operations director (a COO) for KIDS Center, a child abuse intervention and advocacy center.  The amazing news is that during working in the field of helping children heal from abuse, I have been healed of a life-long malady of anxiety over not giving enough, not being enough.  I now know what a complete blink is.   The connection is not linear but rather sequential and is cutting through a lifetime of layers, and deep ancestral roots, of not honoring myself and especially not honoring the wisdom of my body.

Blinking and breathing completely means being aware of primarily autonomous body functions.  For me, running pretty hard on regular octane,  who has time for what it takes to be that kind of conscious?  Maybe in my meditation milli-seconds.  But not regularly and not for very long. 

Time to breathe, blink, think, walk, create, nap, sleep long, plant, water and nurture my soul…these have been missing in my life in large measure.  A large portion of my life energy has been invested in a role, meaningful though the work is.  And lately it has felt like an uneven exchange of energy, through no one’s fault.  What I’m now being called to is a re-invention of myself, taking those discarded parts which have been growing happily in the compost pile, and bringing them back into my fertile soul-soil.   I’m being called to an extended Shabbos.

Will I need to find new sources of income? (Note the ‘s’ on this word, as I’m not sure that  one singular job is what I want for my future…but rather multiple interesting projects.) Of course.  I am making the intention to have this next phase of my life be marked by an open exchange of energy for energy, love for love. 

My real work is to stay connected to the time and space that it takes to completely blink.  And breathe.  If I can do that, then any work I find myself doing will be bodacious--as in full of body-wisdom and juice.

Here’s the zen part: in staying conscious, I will quite possibly do more for the world than I’ve done in all my years of non-profit work.  And I honor the path that it has taken to get me here.   Since it’s not a race to enlightenment, I’ll just blink slowly and watch the world through some new, less anxious and more moist eyes.

And maybe, just maybe, I’ve decided on some core level to put the glasses from my long-ago dream, back on.

When you give a color a name, it is the beginning of blindness. – Zen wisdom

  
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