I’m the kind of human that has done best when I’ve been clear in my gut. That’s what my mom encouraged me to do when I was a boy. Others too. “What do you feel in your gut?” They were helping me to one, feel, and two, to learn to trust an inner knowing.
I’m the kind of human that is impacted by people’s energy. Another friend told me “empathic.” I didn’t know what to do with that description at first. I’ve come to embrace it. I’m impacted by people’s presence, whether of calm benevolence or frantic assertion of whatever stuff may be working them. I think I learned as a kid, at some level, my survival depended on reading people. At least it felt like that.
Recently, some of that learning, turned to poem. For the clarity seeker in all of us, particularly those of us oriented to the gut.
Paramount
It interests me
that the need
to clear myself
from too much of another
person’s energetic presence,
is ongoing.
I don’t like the way
it lingers
and distracts
and makes noise
and often
stands in the way
of the light.
This clearing
is maintenance,
like brushing and flossing
teeth.
It interests me
that the clear note
from within,
of simple inner authority,
is paramount.
Always appreciate your contemplations, Tenneson.
One thing that’s been in my awareness is a caution flag: how much what I feel in my gut comes from conditioning as a white person in a white supremacist society (both responding to as well as perpetuating). It needs inquiry beyond noticing what I feel in my gut.
This stirs a desire for me to dip back into the book “My Grandmother’s Hands” to connect with some practices and greater understanding around ‘white body supremacy’.
Yes to inner authority, along with inquiry. Perhaps this is the part of the maintenance that you write in the poem!