~The Human Experience~ 

These past weeks, I have had the opportunity to undergo deep journeys with sadness, longing, anger, fear, and the like.  What fierce grace it has been!

Two major events I can see as causes.  I began to say goodbye to my workplace and home of the past 5 months.  And second I had to let go of a being that had gone deep into my heart in a short and intense period of time.

I am writing, not to relate these stories or simply express my feelings, but to share with you the insights that arose from meeting head-on these painful energies.

~

One thing that was strongly noticed, was how pre-disposed my mind was to seeing these feelings as 'bad'.  Looking at this tendency, I found it interesting to question what my mind meant by bad.  Bad meant, 'I don't want it'.  And, to my chagrin, when asking the mind, 'why don't I want it', the response was, 'because its bad'.  Ahh, we need such humor on this path.

Sadness was inherently bad, so said my mind.  Yet when I really was able to be with the sadness, with the pain and gnawing in my gut, and the sense of low, dark energy, I found that, yes, there too was the abundant heart of awareness.  Even in the midst of something the mind found completely unbearable, the spiritual heart continued to pulse away on its love and light and joy.

The continual re-lessoning of letting go was also present.  It became so clear that, whenever and however I grasped hold, I would bring suffering into the equation- suffering for self and other.  So the question and challenge became, 'how do I give space and expression to such a deep and intense love, while remaining open and uncontrolling in this extreme vulnerability?'  I'm still working on that one...but I'll let you know if I get anywhere.

Many times I had conversations with my fear.  It was a fear of losing something so good, so powerful.  It was the mind spinning out into its worries of whether something like this could ever happen again.  And of course, there is no way to know.  There is no way to know even the next sensation we will experience, let alone something as complex as the meeting of two beings.  And when I really investigated, I saw that so much goodness had come into my life because I had made room for it, because I had trusted and opened up, and let myself fall fully into my experience here-and-now.  And now, this fear said, 'don't be so vulnerable, don't trust the path unfolding, because I need to know and control.'  It is so small and narrow, this fear, and I cannot believe it.  Not with so much of my experience saying otherwise.

So for me, a fundamental lesson coming out of this experience is trust.  Simply trust; trust the unfolding, even when we have no sense of where it is going.  The inconceivable intelligence moving through life is taking care of all this.  Just trust.

The other fundamental lesson is that each movement, each energy, has its compliment.  To feel such elation, such upliftment, such pleasure, a balance must eventually be found in the coming down.  And this coming down is not to be avoided.  It is a part of the complete dance, that is all.

Kahlil Gibran brings beautiful words to this truth in The Prophet:

Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.

And he answered:

'Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.'

Ahh, Gibran was truly human.

in love,

eka joti