It feels like a while I've been living with this sense of waiting.
My favorite soul sista asked, "what am I waiting for" - something I occasionally/regularly ask myself too. Yet, I haven't fully had an answer. Yet, being asked by someone outside myself seems to have pulled back the veil on more of those parts. It's rather multidimensional.
The most apparent answer of the surface of conscious awareness: finances. Damn, this is an old one.
Going back a couple decades, it was waiting for wealth before xyz. Waiting for some arbitrary bank balance or income figure until going travelling, moving to Bali, or really throw myself fully into making music. (So much for the goal of achieving Kanye-level success by 25, when I successfully procrastinated even starting to learn Ableton at 28. Ha.) Then, it was crypto.
From zero to a portfolio worth a couple million in 18 months... and watching 97% vanish in the next six, having been waiting for "more." And still, waiting - for enough to pay off my credit cards/line, to travel, to buy a condo/home, to upgrade from the Civic... though ultimately, all the physical stuff acting as a placeholder, while the real issue probably comes down to a matter of waiting to really start living.
Yes, there's (been) merit to delayed gratification & patience, taking time nurturing the golden geese that may sustain a reasonable amount of financial freedom rather than sacrificing some prematurely to fund excesses not needed. Yet, that rationale has also no doubt been a great justification for remaining in a scarcity mindset and keeping overly contracted - not just financially, but socially, emotionally, creatively. All with some lingering sense/expectation that things will change once "crypto finally pops off." Meanwhile, 8-9 years have passed, and waiting has become such an engrained habit, it's doubtful that an influx of moonshot Lambo profits would even really make that big of a difference to this hesitation towards living I've gotten (un)comfortably complacent in/with.
Granted, there wisdom in the waiting, also. In the attunement to larger cycles, restriction during the phases it's called for, hermitude during 'winter months' where rest & integration need take priority over expansion & expenditure.
It's nearly 7 years - a full deconditioning cycle - since I got into Human Design. And while there are many different insights coming through it whose impact can't even be put into words, one of the biggest for me was undoubtedly the guidance of/for Emotional Authority: "waiting for clarity."
Yet, it's been a persistent question - and perhaps even a common occurrence for many in/on their HD journeys: to what degree has this "waiting for clarity" concept to an extreme? (Quite possibly, with my Mars & Mercury in Gate 15 of Extremes.)
For all the deconditioning over these 7 years, how much new conditioning slipped in - such as this concept/idea of "waiting for clarity...?". Pair with the mind's ideas that "clarity" ought to be some idealized grandiose "ah ha" or of forms undeniable in their 'profoundness'... and how much time have I spent "waiting for clarity" - potentially because clarity spoke so subtly, I didn't recognize it? (And/or maybe sometimes ignored it, focus stubbornly aligned elsewhere... still waiting for something "bigger" off in the future, to the neglect of the "smaller" things here & now.)
One other aspect that came newly into my awareness through our conversation:
The impact of my Manifesting Generator rushing - perhaps paired with ADHD compulsivity. The addictive tendencies towards pursuing peak highs. (And possibly the mental framing of "clarity" entangled up in the lens of 'peak highs.')
Perhaps I got accustomed to narrating my life story emphasizing the big turning points - the moves, the cinematic clarity with which I framed their inspiration. And while ego may not like admitting it, I've surely been influenced/conditioned over the last decade via social media culture's patterns of performative positioning - highlight reels, encapsulating the embodiment of life's peak highs, and years of engagement with them subconsciously entraining the primitive brain into a dopamine addict, associating "clarity" with those views & chemical concoctions had at the peaks. And when operating from that frame, well, everything in between those highs kinda just ends up feeling like waiting for the next one(s).
I built my narrative on the climactic transition points of heroic relocations to the mountains, west coast, Thailand, Bali, mountains - from venture to venture full of 'big prospects,' project to project full of fresh, abundant inspiration. So perhaps naturally, the daily routines of grounded, simple human stuff seems a bit boring in comparison to the Neptunian idealizations ego got hooked on... and subconsciously, I've been waiting for that next grandiose transition that'll live up to where the bar's been set.
Or same even on the daily scale, with the 2-4 hours of intense, peak hyperfocus waves I fucking love & thrive in - be it mixing music or snowboarding. Godly. And contrastively, the rest of days seem rather bland, almost painfully slow. Thus, waiting again, for that next cycle of peak highs.
Granted, there's some wisdom at work there again in the waiting: finally attuning to my body's energy & creative cycles, learning to harmonize with them... versus all the years I tried to brute force my way through, resulting in perpetual crash-and-burns.
As much as the mind & ego conditioned by hustle-culture think grinding 14 hour days ought to be the norm, a surfer paddles out ONLY when the good swells come. I've been through enough goddamned trial-and-error to know the futility of attempting to push, manipulative & control the process rather than surrender to it - and the wisdom of patiently waiting on the shore until the timing is correct to paddle out.
Yet, the mind is still a tricky beast. Knowing the wisdom of patience doesn't always equate to living it. There's a difference between waiting patiently & correctly, attending conscientiously to other aspects of life in the interim, and impatiently waiting just for the next high as though they're the entire reason for living life itself. (I'll confess to mastery with the latter.)
Another layer to the "what are you waiting for" answer, uncomfortable to admit: "rug pull."
What's been perplexing in this whole ordeal: I used to flow so much more gracefully with life. There was a trust in life, even if unconscious. Nowhere near the same kind of overthinking and attempting to plan & control in the face of uncertainty, just more presence. No worries of where to go next, just an excitement for the new chapters as they presented themselves. That changed. Big time.
As much as I may dislike the overuse of "trauma" talk - perhaps partly conditioning from my father's emotionally-devoid "life/shit happens, move on" stance, part discernment towards the recently trending excess of therapy-speak - I can't pretend to be immune to trauma. I used to. Which was maybe why life needed to humble my ass and provide some direct experience of what I denied & judged. So, an imploded marriage it was... followed by excommunication from society for opting out of being a gene therapy guinea pig - which especially hit home as denied access to snowboarding. Each of those on their own... whatever. But somehow, their combination, over time... it left an impact.
Throw in some conditioning from guys like Nomad Capitalist & Wealthy Expat - appealing to my nomadic side drawn to adventure abroad and the sovereign aware of moral & energetic misalignment between Canada's taxation system & governmental agendas, while simultaneously fuelling fears & distrust. Plus compounded with distorted narratives found in "truther" and "conspiracy theory" communities online - which were provided plenty of evidence for confirmation bias of the world heading towards shit in recent years. I'd always been "awake" to the fact there was alot of corruption in the world, but it didn't strike personally until the CONVID crunches. Survivable. But that all hit different, topping the dissolution of the one relationship that mattered most.
I thought I "accepted" it and adapted. But my subconscious felt otherwise as challenged with the reality that there is far less within our ability to control than we'd like.
100% put into a life with the love of your life... nuclear implosion. Rebounding into a dream setup on the doorstep of Canada's best snowboarding... almost seemed worth the sacrifice. But then... access denied. Sorry, society's doing a collective psychosis now and won't allow non-conformist granny-killers on the gondola cuz "trust the science," bro. Years loving & flowing with life's adventures... and off come the rose-colored glasses. And it's looking alot like New World Order prison planet crystalizing in real time. "Wtf just happened...??"
And yeah, those are all just some of many angles to look at things through, each their own product of sets of cognitive biases which can be logically analyzed and deconstructed.
But that whole logical approach doesn't immediately rewire the nervous system back into a sense of safety, after the switch has been flipped to conclude: life isn't safe. The relationships you thought you could rely on, you can't. What you love can be taken from you. There's nothing you can do about it.
Upon my arrival in Bali 2012, my youthful naivety & head-in-clouds still had me feeling invincible. Maybe it was the Chiron-DC of my Human Design body/unconscious there that initiated a lengthy Chiron journey with a whack of surfboard to head - cracking me open to mortality and setting forth the course of events that'd swing to the opposite extreme of vincibility years later. (In combo with Neptune, who thought it'd be a hoot to set me on course towards the unexpected marriage via ayahuasca - red flags, undetectable amidst the Neptunian haze with rose-colored glasses.) Chiron is no joke, alright. But, t'is an archetype we all gotta make our journeys with over the course of this human curriculum.
Whether looking through the lens of "healing," "deconditioning/deprogramming," "shadow work," or whatever, progress has been made since, yes. I hesitate expressing all this, so as to not dwell in it, "play the victim," or dare test the "what you focus on expands" rhetoric. Yet, denial/avoidance/repression/bypassing doesn't work either. It's part of the journey. It's part of the dynamics in transmutation/evolution, and requires conscious attendance to during certain cycles.
And so, amongst the many layers of "what are you waiting for" answers, it has been one: the "rug pull." Which could be diminished with a dismissive label of "trauma response" and/or all sorts of logical arguments given in attempts to "solve/fix" it. Though perhaps admitting/accepting/embracing what is is an essential step in the process.
It takes time to learn how to trust life - and self - again.
And just as some part of my psyche braces for 'the next rug pull,' there also other parts waiting for something to go right again. Maybe not some grandiose "miracle," but some evidence that life does have my back. For something that confirms "things are all working out in our favor" - a new-agism the cynic in me almost despises and judges as delusion, yet wants that to be proven wrong.
There's part of me that *would love to have a woman enter my life and it becomes clear, "so that is why the marriage imploded. That is why I had to endure the years of solitude & questioning. That is why it was all worth it," like people say happens. There's part of me that wants to see all the crazy corruption and accelerating power grabs catalyze a mass awakening and tip the scales from a dystopian future to maybe not even an utopian one or some "new earth" where everything is all rainbows & unicorns, but at the least properly decent. So, some part of me waits for that too - not reliant upon or attached to any of it, with other parts still doubtful and doing my best to make peace with what is, regardless of outcomes.
Surely, that ties into the part where I've been waiting on crypto, too.
Not for a fulfillment of grandiose Lambo fantasies, but to really experience over time where life still can be trusted, after having been so shaken. To see the fruition of having stuck to intuition amidst the fears of rug pulls as confirmation I actually knew what I was doing and not just clinging to some far-fetched dream. To see that all the delayed gratification actually amounts to something worthwhile and there was indeed a worthwhile reward for my commitment.
Yes, for redemption, in other words. For the "light at the end of tunnel." For proof life isn't just some tragic comedy, and that the fool's/hero's journey does pull around. For a restoration of faith in life, God, the universe that all the breakdowns & tower moments actually do serve some "higher purpose" of birthing something newer & "better" on the other side of the destruction.
(And maybe, there's also some waiting for full acceptance of my human vulnerability in actually wanting that, while some part has still been judging self for it..)
Likely, these processes have been somewhat disorienting to the mind, as undergoing the deconditioning process...
I used to buy into all the motivational "go out and make shit happen" stuff. And it's humbling to discover that no matter the "there are no limits" platitudes, there most certainly are limitations in the human journey. Lots of them. As it turns out, there's alot that's not within our capacity to push, force, control, and "make happen."
Back in the days of feeling immortal, as though there was all the time in the world, everything was an adventure. Time blindness was a gift affording freedom to throw myself into every curiosity without concern of consequences. Post-Chiron-initiation, costs really start hitting home. Falls don't just hurt anymore; they can cripple. And the faster time flies, the blunter the reality-checks of how little there actually is. The youthful me was oblivious to the passage of time, ready to go full-throttle with every "hell yes." But crashing into walls at 200km/h repeatedly... there's a limit on how many times a human being can handle that and walk away. And consequentially, the "hell yeses" have become far fewer.
It's been challenging, attempting to find the middle ground between the emerging acceptance of limitations - time-related, energy-related, and just what is & isn't aligned in life's blueprints, no matter how much egoic will would try assert otherwise - and what still is within our realm of control. Having gone from totally time-blind to shocked with reality-checks on the nature of time - and equally, inextricably, more conscious of the energy required to sustainably build & create over the course of time - there's an emerging wisdom pertaining to the value of waiting. Of not speeding to make things happen yesterday, but honor their natural cycles and the waiting required while engaged in processes. Though, it's also been a double-edged sword as surely justifying waiting on such logical grounds at the cost of action that may actually be due.
With age, opportunity cost increases. Pursuing every "hell yes" had a lower cost when there was more time available - and when it was all learning experience. Perhaps the "hell yes" response sometimes serves as a mechanism to draw us in where lessons are needed... and when we've been through the curriculum...? The cost of time & energy becomes too great to repeat lessons. Go through enough lessons, and complex pattern recognition capabilities upgrade. Of all the opportunities that could be pursued, many that used to be "hell yes" turn to "hell no" as you can see their course.
Thus, another (likely huge) part of what I've felt to be waiting for: more "hell yes."
What forms that may take, I dunno. That magic-type shit isn't stuff you see in advance, can't just convert cash into or "manifest" on demand.
While there may lingering self-doubt about "sitting on the sidelines of life," there's also the knowing that I'm okay laying low until the timing aligns to evoke a response that activates the fuck outta me.
And, there's probably some deeper aspect of soul waiting for me to catch up and realize that in the midst of all this 'waiting,' I still am living what was once a dream.
Perhaps I've submitted to the temptation to measure "living" up against the peak highs of my past, wanting every "hell yes" to be accompanied by fireworks and symphonic masterpieces with DMT elves on parade, so as to make the "guidance" clear as fucking day. And yeah, it'd be amazing were there many more of the deeply meaningful magical moments of connection with awesome people such as those which stand out strongest in my past. But human life ain't a Disney movie or all-positive-all-the-time glitzy production like social media influencers and motivational charlatans selling overpriced "secrets of manifestation" seminars would have us believe. Much of day-to-day life isn't the peak highs. But making music and snowboarding every day is something I once aspired to... so what the fuck am I waiting for, now that I'm actually doing it...?
Undoubtedly, life will bring more opportunities for expansion. It might seem like it's been a long time since the last clear "hell yes" - and perhaps even has been. So what. Quality over quantity. What's there to prove by accumulating the most highest highs in a short amount of time. One single potent portal can change life far more than days full of cheap, quick dopamine ever can. So what if you gotta wait years for those portals... while keeping busy with what you love in the meantime.
Blah, blah, blah.
What's left to be said that hasn't been already...? (Probably yet more layers to the onion that are still unconscious. Ha.)
Maybe it's simply time to stop waiting, and start doing... even if that looks like "doing nothing" sometimes. All while embracing the complex humanness of the journey that includes Jung's notorious "tension of opposites" - the wisdom in/of waiting as harmoniously attuned to cycles, along with the humbleness to question & admit where 'waiting' becomes procrastination. The balance of active participation with passive reception. The flux of pushes & pulls of inward & outward forces demanding both engagement & release, letting go of much we can't control with the patience to wait to respond correctly where we can make a difference. Etc, etc.
I don't fucking know. (Or maybe I do, but just overthink myself out of it daily.)
And a good amount of people who'd act/talk like they do probably don't either.
Or maybe they do, and I'm the fool that's slow to grok the obvious. 🤷♂️🙊