As open, sensitive human beings, we may never be able to
avoid the experience of emotional pain. This fact is not evidence that there is
something wrong with us, but that we are alive.
Welcome. You are alive. Thank god you have a body and a
heart and a mind which allow you to feel, and to make meaning of your feelings,
and use them skillfully as a bridge to connect with others. Let us end the
pathologizing of emotion once and for all, instead proclaiming together the
holiness of feeling.
Sometimes it is as if our hearts are on the outside of our
skin, rather than safely protected by the rib cage, hidden away in some fantasy
of invincibility. Even the wind blowing, as it makes contact with the raw,
tender, exposed flesh is enough to take us to the ground.
As we somehow take the risk of opening more, we might see
that emotional vulnerability is in fact the only response that makes any sort
of sense in a world that has gone a bit mad. In this way, we can
re-contextualize and re-enchant our emotional experience, breathe new life into
it and behold its sacredness. It is magic to be an emotional being, and we need
no longer apologize for this.
Emotional pain has been pathologized in our world, along
with vulnerability, heartbreak, grief, and any sort of state of feeling a bit
down. We doubt ourselves and question our very being, afraid to trust in the
purity and integrity of our experience exactly as it is.
But emotional pain is not pathology. Grief is not a
condition to be diagnosed and treated. Feeling down and blue and a bit hopeless
is not a disease which need be cured by consumption, whether that consumption
is of material goods or new inner states. A broken heart is pure and is
complete on its own, filled with intelligence, life, and seeds of creativity
and expression. It need not be mended or transformed into something else. It is
the vehicle by which the poetry of your life may flow and your unique
individuality may come alive here.
To stay embodied with waves of grief, confusion, rage,
fear, despondency, exhaustion, hopelessness, and doubt … to provide sanctuary
and safe passage for the pieces of a broken world … to dissolve once and for
all the trance of self-abandonment … this invitation is one that is radical and
nonconventional by its nature, appearing now for your consideration.
To infuse the entire spectrum with breath, with life, with
awareness, and with holding will liberate an eruption of skillful energy, and
help us to make meaning, to bear the unbearable, and truly be there for others
when they are suffering. And to be warriors in the world at those times we are
needed most.
