Pulse
“Your pulse is how you can feel your heart rate” or feel the number of times in which your heart beats per minute.
Check it the next time you may feel internally numb; the steady rhythm reminds you, you are not dead. We have 7 lifelines geographically located on our body:
Temporal (felt in the head)
Carotid (felt in the neck)
Branchial (felt in the elbow)
Femoral (felt at the groin)
Radial (felt on the wrist)
Popliteal (felt on the knee)
Dorsalis pedis (felt on the foot)
Under Water; turning human existence into one solid, strong beat directly at the heart center. A rippling reminder from head to toe as the mysterious magic evaporates the ego’s attachment. I am simply a pulse, a rate lost in the belly of Earth.
So, I can summarize in my head that… I am alive because I am pulsing.
How will this affect me? Reflections can go as deep as you are willing to dive.
At this point in my life I have been somewhat uncomfortable enough where I recognize that I might as well get comfortable with that reality. Practices include but are not limited to: hard conversations, ice showers, 3AM wake up, routine, sobriety, and extreme ownership. Totally not perfected but everyday I shine a little more, synonymous with grind.
In getting comfortable with discomfort I begin to examine my impulses.
Impulse
An impulse is, “a sudden strong and unreflective urge or desire to act.”
The urge or desire to act… to behave… WITHOUT REFLECTION.
It is sudden. It is strong and I love them.
I love my impulses so much that, I need to step away from them in order to re-examine their power over me.
How strong would I really be if I could not get out of bed because of my constant desire to have sex, feel a buzz, beat the shit out of non-living (abiotic) things, jump from planes, touch the dark rocky bottoms, chew orbit after orbit, run mile after mile and on and on.
Are you willing to dive deeper? If not, please, please… slowly ascend, get your recovery breaths (hook breaths) in and come back when you are ready.
If you are still holding on… here we go.
When I step away from an impulse or passion and I find myself screaming because I want it so badly…this becomes the “canary-sign” that I have developed a codependent relationship with that drive.
Codependency is, “an emotional or behavioral condition that affects an individual’s ability to have a healthy, mutually satisfying relationship.”
Through research, this is also known as “relationship addiction because people with codependency often form or maintain relationships that are one-sided, emotionally destructive and/or abusive.”
In the depths of this dive, I found a light.
In the depths of this dive, I found the Elders.
One rested on her belly, no urge to breathe.
The other rested on his back, no urge to speak.
They didn’t need to; I found some pretty epic impulse roots that were growing tired and getting ready to sink the nervous amphibian.
Let’s begin our ascent.
Impulses keep us alive. It literally is what causes the heart to pulse; no irony.*
So here we are… witnesses of the addiction roots and rising out of the depths. If I continue to resist these roots from below - they will inevitably grow. “What you resist, persists.” -Carl Jung
We are almost to the surface.
So do our impulses control us? Does this mean that I should never have sex again, chew gum, throw punches…. be in a romantic relationship?
Absolutely not; but I have to be willing to dive. I have to be willing to face these urges. I have to be willing to practice what healthy gum chewing looks like ;)
So, how can I grow independently from each before letting one reverberate back to me in a way that I will still be able to stand on my own two feet when the pulse returns?
*“The impulse starts in a small bundle of specialized cells located in the right atrium, called the SA (sinoatrial) node.”
Definitions from google y'all.
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