When I find myself looping through self-attack, disconnected from my body, and spinning in shame, then blame, and victimized complaining, I remember more frequently now to use these experiences as opportunities to slow down and reflect. I take my attention to my feet on the earth. I breathe deep into my lower belly. I intend to return to my senses in the here and now . . . and without effort or trying, the thoughts and the story to which I am reacting, begin to recede. OH, the story is seductive, sticky and compelling. It can hijack my attention and pull me away from any awareness of the vulnerability that is surging in my system. I have to go slowly, disciple myself to the assumed-to-be boring lack of entertainment that comes with patience, focus and stillness. Pulling in the reins on the momentum of self-abandonment, I drop into my core, and I tune into the slower rhythm of curiosity and spaciousness. Sometimes tenderness and empathy enter that space. The temptation is to turn away from the shaky or ragged sensations. But I understand now that it is an act of faith to step my awareness into the pain or heartache. My body is perpetually communicating the sacred whispers of guidance needed to navigate the way ahead, like a compass, a sextant, a laser-guided depth-finder . . . this body is both the knowing field, the ocean of awareness and wisdom as well as the vessel sailing through this life.
As I receive and accept the wealth of this opportunity to be in human form, it becomes easier to hear and respond to whispering breezes that move along my nerves and through my veins: The intellect can collaborate and ask: What is it that I need right now? What is most needing to be met and held? What have I ignored, denied or abandoned in myself? What is being given, what is asking to be received, right here and right now? Can I breathe with what has come, not as an enemy I intend to transcend or overcome, but in a state of surrendered faith to the intended goodness of what is emerging?
As I slow down and turn in, seeds of empathy grow in my nervous system, watered and fertilized in my digestive track. New, creative forms of self-care become evident as compassion pathways are grooved and brought alive in my cardio-vascular system. Suddenly there is so much space. Breath where none was to be found. I am already held by something vast. I AM the vastness.
I am inspired to aspire, to long evermore deeply for that union in which the purity of what I can see is ALL that I can see. I am grounded and embodied in the human experience . . . in the perception of the warrior, a warrior of Love. I have come into this state to heal myself, to unite the seen and the unseen in-body, and in so doing, become a vessel of presence and transmutation for all beings.
May it be so . . . Amen.
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