Insanely Gifted by Jamie Catto

Author:Jamie Catto
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canongate Books

If you feel like a bit of fun, either alone or with your pals, come up with a superhero name for your inner survivor.

This reframing and allowing the idea of Life’s genius being benevolent is a cornerstone of harvesting the unexpected and often challenging episodes we are all living through. Yes, we can go to fortune tellers and healers, pull tarot cards, journey with shamans or even have some reiki, but all the most potent information is to be sourced directly from ourselves, by giving ourselves enough space and stillness to listen and not always farm out the work we need done to others. It is good to get support, but not instead of trusting our own abilities to know what is real and essential for us. No matter how sensitive someone else is, they will always get a second-hand version of what’s inside you.

‘It takes immense discipline to be a free spirit.’

I love this line by Gabrielle Roth . . . because it is the easiest thing in the world to gravitate towards the suffering and victim-centred version of events. It is what everyone around us has been doing for their whole lives. It takes a conscious choice not to succumb to that low, disempowered road.

This doesn’t mean we focus on the gifts instead of feeling the soreness of what is going on. Far from it. Many people have tried to use these practices of reframing as a way out of feeling the human pain and chaos of these challenges. In spiritual circles it is called running upstairs or spiritual bypassing. As a way to try and avoid feeling the human waves of discomfort, there are some who would like to use the more accepting and optimistic witness’s version as an escape. This often comes with proclamations that ‘It’s all meant to be!’ But this practice is not to escape but to go deeper, and to keep the full, visceral human experience while also giving it the context and added harvest of the gifts it brings. It is a way of experiencing both at once, the human going Ouch that fucking hurts, while the witness is compassionately collecting the bounty. Once again, this is how we become powerful in our lives, not the victim of suffering nor the disembodied, self-abandoning pain-avoider looking only on the bright side. An illuminating human life is experienced with a foot in each camp, living both upstairs and downstairs at the same time, both on the stage and in the audience, resisting the drama and enjoying the show.

When we consider that the unexpected and often abrupt scene changes of our lives might be benevolent, we join the lineage of intrepid discoverers who have preceded us. Big band leader Glenn Miller was searching for his musical ‘sound’ for years, trying out different arrangements, never quite finding the ‘thing’ he was searching for, until one day a bunch of his musicians were unable to get to the concert they were playing that night and he had to, as an emergency measure, give all the melodies to the bass brass instruments.

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