The armoring falling away exposing the luminescent whirl of the heart center, our shimmering nature discovered just beyond our pain.” — Kaira Jewel Lingo, grief meditation 1/31/21

There is a part of me that pushes away this internal controller and the more energy spent on pushing away and resisting, the more hardened the controller seems to become.

Today there was room for her to be seen and known.

This is her nature: she is love. all this time. she is love.

Gentle, soft, vulnerable, light blue, pristene, powerful, alive, fluid.

She reports, when it is safe, that she wants me to have a beautiful life. She is trying to protect me from old painful experiences, experiences registered and carried in this nervous system. She doesn’t want me to have to feel any of it. She works hard at that. The collateral damage of this work is a feeling of being cut off from heart and body. It keeps me working hard, all my life, to avoid abuse, shaming, any and everything that is “out there” and, in here.

The vision of her true nature came as a gift today. An opening or uncovering, a courage to show up, to allow herself to be seen.

I love her with all my heart.

___________________

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

— Jelaluddin Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks

Sometimes it feels like I am at peace, flowing with the pulse of the universe. Then, below conscious awareness comes a random irritant. It’s like a pointed object or a pipette causes an alertness inside the envelope, the membrane that holds my body. It feels like I am a cell and something comes in and puts the entire contents of the cell on alert. It’s not good, it’s not bad, it’s not out to get me…it’s simply a pipette. It is happening all day…from emails bringing news of the world, to texts seeming to need responding, to a door opening or other unexpected, though harmless, sounds.

This is a place of healing.

I recognize there is activation.

And I remember that…it’s okay how it is. I let some part of me say, “It’s okay that it’s like this.”

And all of a sudden, there is space. I sense muscles releasing: shoulders, neck, upper back, buttocks, thighs…the muscles of fight, flight, freeze, the muscles that get activated again and again, without release, as I navigate life in this society.

And I remember that this young being simply wants to be held; to be held by her mother, by generations of mothers and fathers and villages, by the waves of the ocean. She wants to flow with the pulse of the universe.

The pathway to that is to let how it is just be. An act of love.

This is the place where I am hanging out. Here is where I am building resilience: recognizing the irritant for what it is (just that. nothing more. a physical activation of a nervous system); allowing it to be just as it is (as opposed to the quick, subtle and unconscious habit of hating it, pushing it away with my learned judgment of it); and feeling the love that is always there.

Always connected. Never alone.