No, Not This!
Dear Blessed One,
Life has a way of occasionally bringing us things we’d prefer not to have. That’s just the way it is.
It helps to remember that Resistance = Suffering.
Yes, preferences are perfectly fine (and so is suffering for that matter – it can be a catalyst for greater awareness). My preference is to get through the difficult times with as much grace and ease as possible. When I resist what’s happening in life, internal pressure gets created by pushing against what’s present, which contributes to and feeds the discomfort.
As I’ve heard said many times, pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. Personal experience confirms this is true.
I went through a 5-month depression in the late 90’s when I got sober that I didn’t think I would survive. I kept thinking ‘if it lasts one more day I’m going on drugs.’ My friend kept saying to me, “You’ve been anesthetized with drugs and alcohol your whole life, of course it’s going to take some time to feel and heal all those emotions that didn’t get felt!”
She encouraged me to curl up in the fetal position with the covers over my head and cry if that’s what I felt like doing. It seemed crazy to me to give in to it. I kept thinking there must be something I could do to fix it, or that there was something very wrong with my brain.
Her advice helped when I could follow it. A good cry, or just laying down and feeling the void of life-force-energy, creativity, motivation, desire, or hope was the DOING that needed to be done. When I could allow myself to feel what “depression” felt like IN my body instead of following the many disastrous stories that I had about depression and what depression meant, it created movement in my system.
Even feeling what resistance to depression feels like in the body, rather than saying, ‘no, not this!’ is bringing awareness to one’s reality.
Funny how soon we forget though…
I guess as a happy, healthy vegan with the title of “Healer”, I thought I was smarter than the body. Five years later I went into another deeeeep depression that lasted for two and a half years. I went to every alternative healer, nutritional guide, energy-worker I could think of, spending thousands of dollars.
Walking home from a meeting one night I was complaining to a friend that I’d still not found the right magic to heal the depression and she whispered, “Have you considered just feeling it?” That was like a brick to the head. I did feel it and the depression dissolved very quickly. What a teacher it has been.
You may be asking what the heck this has to do with waking up, and the answer is everything. The missing key to awakening for me was being in my body, feeling how life moves in me – now, and now, and now…
Transcendence is the natural outcome of integration. Integration happens when we shine the light of awareness on our experience, share it with a trusted other when we can, and feel it, all the way in, in, in the body. I would guess the thud was audible when I landed.
What a gift to be here.
Much Love and Blessings to You,
shellee
“The body is shaped, disciplined, honored, and in time, trusted.”
~Martha Graham