“No, I’m not going to do that any longer. Even though it takes everything in me and feels so shaky and uncertain, I am going to embrace my vulnerability and care for it, slowly, and choose a new way. I will be a friend to myself now and am no longer willing to be an enemy. Even though I will not be perfect at it and will likely fail at times, I will remain steadfast in my commitment to not turn away, to no longer abandon myself in a moment of activation."
This is where the work shifts more to that of the heart, where we aren’t as focused on clear insight and pure awareness, safe as a witness on the sidelines, but rather begin to explore what it would actually mean to open our hearts to our pain, confusion, and grief. For just a moment setting aside the need to understand it, determine its cause, or even how to transmute it into something else. A new moment, a different kind of moment. Just this once. And see.
To hold it like a mother or father surrounding and enveloping their little baby. To make contact with the lost visitors of soma and psyche and provide sanctuary where they can be tended to. This can be pretty radical and truly goes against the grain. We start to bring kindness to the feelings, to the parts of ourselves we had to disown at an earlier time, untangling and enlivening them with the warmth of our own presence, which in these moments we need more than ever.
Photographer unknown via public domain/ Pixabay
My most recent book – The Path Is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – is now available
The next book, A Friend of the Breath, will be published by Sounds True in early 2020, details to come
The next event is The Healing Shame Retreat: Spiritual Awakening and Transforming the Core Wound of Unworthiness, April 24-29, 2019 at Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, Colorado, with co-facilitator Jeff Foster
