The Floating Head
from dark to light and the space in between
Today while in therapy, I noticed a trend. A duality within me. I noticed a push and pull. A black and white. A dark and light. Something that unexplainably makes my decisions, habits, choices, and even results, split in two.
One – A warrior - the one who fights for everything. He has been programmed, very early, to protect himself. Armor up and shield against everything, keeping it all inside. The mask? A smile. While fighting with a smile, he also spends his time wondering how soon everything he has protected will disappear. He bites his nails. He does not allow identity number two to have its way. The warrior is my wounded inner child.
Two- a gentle dreamer – the one who wants to float and caress the world. He is the inner child who is intact. The one I see glowing, whole and if I had to define in a color, aqua would be it. This gentle dreamer wants to create a new world out of abundance. He was programmed even earlier to do so. He creates stories, he jumps for joy. He writes and he dances. He plays characters and makes funny voices. He paints his nails. He becomes unfiltered when surrounded by people who support his state of flow. While he also fights his other half, the warrior, to allow him to have a little stage to shine.
These two parts of my inner world also seem to make a reflex into my outer body. How so, you may ask?
I’m receiving acupuncture weekly. Each week we do one side of my body to heal different areas. I noticed that I have very different reactions from the needles in my back and the needles in the front of my body. The ones in the front create a sort of alignment that gives me the ability to meditate deeply. I caught myself in a trance, I was as present as I had ever been. Not in my floating head but grounded in my body, my home. With my eyes closed I kept seeing splashes of color. Navy blue, red, and the mixture of the two. They kept moving as if some update was being downloaded into my software through my hardware.
On the other side, my back seemed to be made of steel, as the doctor herself stated at some point. At many spots she’d place the needle, and my body would contract, not accepting the “intrusion”.
Much to my surprise, my warrior lives in the back and my gentle dreamer lives in the front – facing the world. The doctor was able to access my back a bit more after she decided to place one needle in my left ear and, this is what got me even more, she placed a needle at the very top of my skull where the division of both worlds collide.
It was almost like she had pulled a plug or maybe uncrossed a wire. My back sunk in. My shoulders dropped. Although I still was tense and not fully able to surrender, as I was while facing up, I achieved some quite peaceful moments.
The darkness and the light. The warrior and the gentle dreamer. This slow integration comes with my awareness of their existence; my frequent decision to breathe before allowing my automatic behaviors to take over.
And I, the one in between these two identities, unsure which one to pick – decided to hug them both. Bringing them together to accept that each has their place and time in the ocean of me.
Now here we are, the three of us, holding hands and learning how to coordinate each step in this dance we call life.