Several years ago the cats and I were reading in bed one night. They suddenly became very interested in something on the floor. When I realized they were watching a centipede scuttle along the floorboard, I panicked.
I jumped out of bed as gracefully as possible with two cats in my way and went into attack mode. By the time I turned on the overhead light and reached for a shoe, the bug had a head start. With all those legs, it was moving fast. I swatted at it ineffectually a couple of times and only succeeded in chasing it under the bed.
My bedroom is very small. I have chosen to have my office upstairs in what for most people would be the more desired location. The second story is spacious with a huge closet and lovely energy. Best of all, the windows look out onto two beautiful towering trees who protect the house. When I’m in my office I feel like I’m in a tree house, and it gives the sense of being in a writer’s retreat.
Because I live alone with two cats, I use the smaller room on the main level as my bedroom. I have a queen-size mattress which butts up against the wall on two sides. There is quite a bit of space at the foot of the bed, but on the other side of the bed, there’s only about two feet of clearance. This is the same two feet of space where the centipede was.
So when it disappeared under the bed, there was no easy solution. I tried. I laid down beside the bed and shone a flashlight. By then, it was against the far wall where there was no way to get to it short of tearing apart my bedroom. And then it somehow wedged itself and all of its legs into a tiny crack between the wall and the floorboard. Game over, man!
I reluctantly went back to bed, leaving a light on for protection. My fear response was still engaged, and I was convinced that the centipede would emerge from the floorboard, crawl up the wall, and pounce on me in the middle of the night. I hardly slept at all waiting for it to attack.
The next morning, after only a couple of hours of fitful sleep, I was bleary-eyed and tired. Later that day when my system was no longer in fight and flight mode, I recovered my center enough to realize that I had lost my seniority.
The concept of seniority says that we are meant to be the center of our lives. Nothing else is meant to get larger or more important than we are.
I had given my power away to a bug – not just for five minutes but for a whole night. During those eight or so hours, that small bug was way larger than I was. It affected my feeling of safety, it affected my sleep, and it affected the cats who because of my reaction were now also afraid of centipedes.
I first learned about seniority from Julie Tallard Johnson in her yearlong wheel of initiation circle. It has guided me many times since then.
Striving to be senior in our life is a way to be in our power. Staying connected to our higher self helps us stay in our center and be much less fearful, much more grounded, much more likely to make healthy choices. The higher self in its seniority is similar to a wise, loving grandparent caring for a child.
Being aware of this concept helps us recognize when an aspect of our lives gets bigger than we are. Some common examples are relationships, emotions, health issues, body image, unhappy situations, and our stories.
When we lose our seniority, it creates an opening for heavy energy to enter. In my case with the bug, I got very fearful.
One of the best ways to track where we’re not in seniority is to notice where we are doing drama in our lives. The evening with the bug was filled with drama and upset. (And to be honest, it’s still easy to tap into that feeling years later as I relate the story about the bug.) Drama cues us to notice that something else is becoming larger and more important than maintaining our connection to our wise higher self.
Other signs of stepping out of our seniority:
* feeling strong, overwhelming emotion
* playing out old stories over and over
* feeling small or powerless
* reacting out of wounds
* exploding from emotions like fear or anger
* allowing others to make decisions for us that are ours to make
* feeling drained, tired or ill
* feeling like someone else has all the answers and giving that person our power
Once we’re aware of the benefit of being senior in our lives, we can use a simple technique called recapitulation to recover our center. To practice recapitulation, we enter into a meditative state, connect with our being, then bring our awareness to the situation that feels overwhelming. We allow our attention to be drawn to where and how we’ve lost our power.
Then we begin calling our power back to us. We might choose to breathe it in, we might imagine one of our helping spirits gathering it up and bringing it back, or we might use our hands to gently draw it back. We remain connected to our body and feel our power reentering – possibly into the heart, crown, or power center in the belly.
Once we’ve called all our energy back from the situation, we end by giving gratitude and then being present with our body and acknowledging our reconnection to our power.
Recapitulation is an especially helpful practice to do at night lying in bed. If we do it each evening, we can call back any power that’s been lost that day. It’s like hitting a reset button and regaining vitality for the next morning.
We are meant to be in our power, and we are meant to be centered. Life flows more easily when we are.
In the years since this rather extreme example of losing my seniority, I’ve had other encounters with centipedes. None of my reactions have been this pronounced because I remembered that it didn’t feel good to be so afraid that I lost a night of sleep. A small centipede recently ran across my kitchen counter, and I barely reacted.
This work is real, and it matters.
November 2, 2021