Yesterday morning, I awoke to my mind scrambling through a devastating routine. Like most weekday mornings, I got out of bed and went to sit in the cozy sofa chair in our living room to meditate. I cherish those silent moments before I wake up the kids when no one but me (and the dog and the cat and the sun) is stirring in the house. This is when I rejuvenate my love for being alive at this very moment.
Anyway, I became aware of a very acute sense of suffering in my mind. As usual when I awaken, it was struggling to plan out the course of my day, but its determination seemed darker and more powerful than I had experienced of late. I could feel its despair as it catalogued one "duty" after another that I had to accomplish that day all while it screamed - through my shaking nerves - that there was too much to be done, that it hated knowing what had to be done, and it hated having to be there to help me know what needed to be done.
The fact is, I had faced this same anxiety and despair and resistance to the day each morning of the past week during my little meditation time. Each morning, I was able to look upon the pain and surround it with the sacred silence within me. I smiled at it, and I loved it, and I calmed its struggle. However, when I arose from my meditation and began the tasks of getting ready for work and getting my daughter ready for school, I would notice, first through the body then through the thoughts that were running me to and fro, that my silence was blotted out by the identity I experienced through this suffering. God, I did not want to submit to these negative energies another day!
Yesterday, I was determined not to be broken from pillar to post by these same anxieties and worries over what the day had in store. Yet, I believe now that it was my very determination that actually made these shadows loom larger within me. During meditation, I could feel myself - really for the first time during the week's worth of meditation times - actually fighting against the nervous energy of hurt over what "must be done." I wanted to push it down and obliterate it, and with each push, with each force of repression I directed at it, it became more imposing, more sinister, more energized, and more sickly alive. I was more afraid now because I was failing - my determination to overcome the harsh confinements of my fears and resistances was not strong enough! I broke out of meditation several times to discover all the muscles in my body were contracted and trembling from the clinched shaking of nerves, all of which made my stomach feel quite ill. I was weak, I heard a voice not unlike my own say. I gathered what little will to break this pattern I had left, and I went back in, but the battle was lost before it even begun as my Silent Ally was no where to be found within the noise of my doubts.
Eventually, I arose from the chair disheartened and afraid of being torn to pieces by the negativity that I just knew would plunder me throughout the day. I brushed my teeth, and I kept trying to remain present to what I was doing. But all I saw there was the futile world of conflicting emotions rushing me to do what my thoughts did not feel like doing because, in their view, the doing was bigger than they were - bigger than I am - which made me hate having to do anything - even move to brush my teeth, even lift my leg to step into the shower - because each thing I was doing in the morning at home only led me closer to the duties of the rest of the day that I could never accomplish.
Oh, there was a weeping of my soul and there was a gnashing of my teeth as I rushed blankly to wash my hair in the shower. I was pitiful and the pathetic, suffering me was disgusting even to itself.
Is anyone reading this a fan of Lord of the Ring movies? Well, in the final (and I thought best) movie, Return of the King, Frodo and his faithful and loving friend Sam, have just watched Smiegel/Gollum (spelling?) dissolve into the same lava that swallowed the ring whose charms and powers had cast such a dark spell over both him and Frodo. The cataclysmic rending of the earth caused by this final epic battle between good and evil caused the molten lava within to flood forth, and all Sam and Frodo could do after such an exhausting journey was lay on the jagged rock that had yet to be covered by the lava, completely surrendered to the fact of their impending death. Then, beautiful, soulful, sorrowful music is cued as we see, but do not hear, a peaceful bird (I can't remember what kind) glide gracefully down through the dark clouds of burning rock and rescue our two Hobbit heroes from the throes of extinction. It's a very powerful scene in a movie filled with such moments.
Yes. Yesterday, I too was gently lifted from the clawing clutches of my suffering. I'm sure to the reader it hardly seems as dramatic as the movie scene above, but I assure you, for me it was. A simple question created a space for itself in my head: Would Love ever require me to suffer? This inquiry seemed to have a bright energy of its own that lovingly held in suspended position all the painful thoughts and emotions running through my mind and body. It then gave birth to another question: Am I being Love when I harm myself in this way? Then another: What would Love do with this pain? And each question asked by this calm presence was actually the answer at the same time. All of my inner-writhing was released instantly in that moment. I was not determined to do anything about the hurt anymore. The questioner within me accepted the pain, and the pain was no more.
I drove to work yesterday morning with more peace and more joy and more wonder at the world around me - the birds on the wires, the dancing trees, the sleeping human beings in their cars who have no idea the experiences of liberation that await them - than I have ever experienced on the same such drives before. It was like it was the first time I ever drove to work. It was the first time I ever saw the streets and the neighborhoods and the houses and buildings that I had driven by and upon at least a thousand times before. My sight was new because the seer was new. Little old me was no longer there. I was everything I saw, and I knew I had always been. Freedom held me close and Love carressed me with these true visions of the nature of the inseparable world around me that was me. There was nothing to do anymore because I could see it had all already been done. Perfection was vibrant in everything I saw, and it was good.
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