Every challenge takes you a little deeper and awakens you again and again.Without the challenges you would probably go back to sleep. The challenges keep you awake.
Eckhart Tolle (https://www.azquotes.com/author/14703-Eckhart_Tolle/tag/challenges)
Yesterday's Post
Hmmm! I posted yesterday's entry on death being the unifying motivation for all life after I wrote it. But throughout the day, as I was recovering from a weakened state, I pulled it down. I had this thought that people wouldn't get it. It was too "negative", too "dark", and too "whiney" . It had sopped up and seemed to be dripping with some stored anger and frustration I released as I wrote it. It also brought up some things I had supressed, represed and denied over the last seven months so I could get by...triggering some deeply rooted fear and suffering. Having what seems like a truck load of stuff to deal with already ..I wasn't sure if I could deal with that too. So...I pulled it down.
Serendipity
Then today...serendipity once again reached out to me...with...guess what? ...another video from Eckhart Tolle. (This is truly bizarre...and I don't care if google anyltics is involved in some form of site tracking or not...this is beyond bizarre...how these perfectly synced and timely videos show up for me to watch as soon as I turn on Youtube....is amazing to me.)
Talking to Me
Anyway , it was like he was talking to me and what I wrote about. It ws like he was noticing that I have so much on my plate, a sudden influx of challenges on a personal level, reminding me that I was actually being blessed with all "this stuff". I know that. I see how much I have evolved. I am evolving a quickened rate becasue of it. I am realizing my essence identity and that I am here , as all of us are, not to be comfortable but to evolve to a higher level of understanding, so we can light up the world in the darkest places. I am waking up and I don't want to go back to sleep. If I need these challenges to keep me awake...I welcome them.
Meditating with Self Compassion
To further the expereince, as I was meditating today, I decided to add that light in the form of self compassion to my practice. I began to feel compassionate towards myself for the "perceived" suffering I am and have been enduring. I saw myself in several of the challenging life situations I have encountered. I mentally reached in and pulled myself from each situation I was randomly recalling . Then I put this changing image I had of me at the times I was struggling with changing outward events, in my heart.... without the circumstance, just with the pain.
And I rocked and soothed that image with loving kindness, the same way I rocked and soothed all my children when they were little and hurting. The tears started coming, one by one, and I focused on each tear following it from my eye, down my cheek with every exhale. The mindfulness was soft and gentle and healing. It was free of my own judgement and self criticism...For so long I beat myself up for my pain. I thought if it wasn't validated by others, it wasn't real and if it wasn't real I had no right to feel it, let alone express it. I stuffed it all inside. That is why I took that entry down yesterday. I believed I hate no right to my honesty.
Today I allowed myself to feel it. It was with compassion and kindness that I embraced my pain without the suffering that other opinion, drama, and story add to it. I can assure you it wasn't self pity or a desire for melodrama that moved me...It was just me accepting my pain with kindness, compassion and Love.
Why I Share
Now I share this because I know I am not the only person in the world who suffers and I am not the only person who adds what Tara Brach refers to as "the third arrow" to suffering by beating ourselves up for it, by denying our own pain until others validate our right to it, by stuffing the truth of our experiences.
If we are going to be the lights of this world(which we are all here to be), we need to first shine the light on ourselves. If we are going to fill this world with compassion and kindness, especially in places where it seems to be deficient, we need to start by being kind and compassionate with ourselves. We also need to speak our truth, not in a reactive ego way...with the intention to hurt, to make guilty or to attack but simply to make known the need for change, the need for all of us to wake up a bit in order to make the well being of each other, all beings, the world the priority.
Hmmm! Well that is what I came to see this morning. And I am no expert. Sigh...I don't know much. I just know that if challenges of any kind, be they physical, mental or circumstantial, lead us towards a bit of loving kindness for self or others...for all beings on this planet....it can't be all that bad, can it?
All is well!
Tara Brach ( 2004) Radical Acceptance. Random House
Eckhart Tolle ( September 27, 2020) Challenges as a Pathway to Conscious Evolution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fEuGGbOv3o
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