Withdrawing to Advance

Treya had always been a high achiever, from her school days onwards. Though she had many professional successes to her name, none seemed enough. She longed to find what she called her "daemon": her higher self, the god within, her inner deity or guiding spirit. Her illness added urgency to this quest.

In time she discerned that this very urgency was itself a barrier. As she put it, "Sometimes I think I just have to stop chasing my daemon long enough to let some space in my life for it to begin to show itself and grow. I want a full-blown plant right away and have been too impatient to nourish the small shoots enough to see which one I choose or chooses me."

So Treya started to nourish the small shoots. Having always valued doing, creating, achieving, she had to learn how to be - how to embrace the present instead of change it, how to let go and accept rather than struggle and judge. This lesson is hard to learn at the best of times, but she had to do so at the worst of times. While full of hope that she would triumph over her illness, she could always, like Andrew Marvell, "hear Time's winged chariot drawing near."

In the end, she learned that she didn't need to choose between doing and being. Both had their place. She wrote in her journal:

I am feeling an opening in my being.

Feeling an opening between my head and my heart, my father and mother, my mind and my body,

My male and female, my scientist and my artist.

One the feature writer, the other the poet.

One the responsible eldest child...;

The other the playful explorer, adventurer, mystic.

Treya's tale is an inspiring one. It reminds us that to find our calling, we need to open out, expand our sense of self. This takes patience as well as perseverance. There is a time to plant, but there is also a time to let the soil lie fallow.