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Every single person on Earth hurts; it's when we have shame about our failings that hurt turns into suffering.
I'm reminded of Byron Katie here ... "it's not what happens to me that hurts me - it's what I think about what happens to me that hurts me." (loose paraphrase of a quote I've internalized)
Shame ... it's that insidious lie that tells us that we're not inherently good enough. That we're flawed at our core ... that something is just *wrong* with our being. It's bogus. Big. Fat. Lie.
We hurt. We all hurt. It comes with the territory of being human. We chose this -- it's why we're here (there are other options, y'know, whether we remember them or not). It's how we learn -- by experiencing life ... we learn what we do want, by experiencing what we don't want. Contrast. Doncha just *loooove* contrast...?!?
[Quote from a formerly-numbed-out man...] "I am so glad to finally feel something. Even if I have to cry every day for a couple of years, it's better than having a frozen heart."
This woman possessed a frozen heart for 21 years ... with very brief forays into emotion, from which I quickly retreated. I have known pain. As we all have. I can say, even in the midst of current (though lessening) pain ... I would rather cry daily (& yes, I have at times doubled over, unable to breathe), than to live in a state of frozen numbness. In fact, the more I dive INto the pain, the more I honor it with my attention, the more deeply I allow myself to express it -- the quicker it passes. It's that suppressed pain, that denied pain, that stoically-managed pain, that morphs into long-term (and oh-so-unnecessary!) suffering ...
I know what Albert Einstein meant when he said that the most appropriate response to life is "Sacred Awe."
The more I read about Albert, the more I wish I'd known him. Or ... maybe I do..! ;)
I have read more spiritual texts and self-help books than is probably legal.
Ha! Did I write that, or quote that ..?!? Sheesh, when I glance at my overflowing shelves ... it's like a timeline of my spiritual journey ... what-I-believed-when ... right there in chronological order ... I was once so very sure of what I thought I believed ... and now ... well, the more I know, the less I know that I know. My absolutes done shrunk. I still love to read ... for I love to be reminded of who I am, and what I've forgotten ... I love it when my inner-Self jumps up and down in joy, singing, "YES!"
I do so love those moments...!
Life as a human being here on Earth can not be sanitized, rationalized, or tranquilized into a rigid vision of the way it's "supposed to be." Life will always be quirky, dynamic, changing and messy. The way of the heart -- that inner instinct that draws us creatively into the chaos of life -- is, ironically, also the way out of confusion, anxiety and suffering.
Life is not tidy, comprehensible, or numb. There are no objective standards to attain. There's a sublime beauty to the creative chaos of human life.
I have grown up in a culture and a family that valued thinking and doing over feeling and loving. But here was Chogyam Trungpa, this brilliant thinker, this advanced scholar, and this brave warrior, whispering like a spiritual cupid into my ear: "Follow the tender girl who longs for love. She knows the way. Don't be afraid."
Why, I wonder, would the "longing for love" be so dismissed, so denigrated, so denied, within our culture? Why do we see that longing as less-than, compared with ... success, and wealth, and status, and power, and reputation, and achievement ...? We are love. We are here to learn that ... to express that ... to experience that.
And yet ... it's ridiculed as being "unnecessary" ... perhaps it explains the hollow sense of futility so many of us can feel, when we accumulate all manner of success, wealth, status, power, reputation and achievement ... and then ask, "is this all there is???"
I think I shall follow that tender girl who longs for love ... I think I shall stop being afraid.
Shalom & Namaste ~
Dena
6 comments:
Dena, I say this from my heart. You are going into a beautiful place with the pain, tears, questioning, etc. It's the birth pangs of a new way of being for you, and neither you nor or I nor anyone else can have any idea what will be in that 'new world'. One thing that's sure is that it'll not look anything like what's been. Also, you will like it lots:)
Thank you Harry ... no, it cannot look anything like what's been ... and I'm really-REALLY ready to like something *LOTS*...!
Birth pangs suck.
I am qualified to say so.
(but I notice I'm still here, still breathing, still moving fowared)
And sheesh, interesting ad I attracted this time ... MTV?!?
MTV... now what does that say about what you're writing, Dena? The mind boggles:)
My experience, and many will echo this, is that you go through the gut-wrenching stuff for a while, then enter a plateau, and that repeats with each episode getting a bit less severe. Then there comes a point where you sense the 'reality surgery' is over, and that fabled clarity just appears in your very centre. The time scale differs for everyone, of course, but if you just hang on in there when nothing makes much sense things do eventually work out. We have an internal urge to wholeness:)
I'm going to quote that last line, Harry ...!
And it's that 'internal urge' which first has to push all the junk to the surface, making things seem a thousand times worse. But then, if you stick with it, the junk starts to evaporate, and the Essence that is you is distilled.
Life Wins:)
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