An overlooked truth

“Even though I believe in living in the open, parts of me hide. I can’t help it. But what I can help is which part s of me-the open or the hidden- run my life. What I can rely on is this inexplicable knowing that when I am in the open, life nourishes even those parts so sorely hidden.

Just as green stems in spring stay connected to their darker roots, just as the roots grow when the stems do, my compassion sooths my fear where I can’t see. Unknown to me, my love feeds the underside of my confusion. The light I take in keeps the roots of my soul alive.

We become so preoccupied with what we are not able to address, what we are not able to mend, what we are not able to leave behind, that we forget that whatever we are in the light of day is slowly, but surely, healing the rest of us”~ Mark Nepo; The Book of Awakening

Ok so I can be honest here and say I tend to fixate on what is hidden and focus on addressing and healing that part of us. I generally work from the premise that what lies beneath is what “drives the car” Although I am also acutely aware that every body has strengths and this must be acknowledged and valued. This passage is a reminder that our true work is not just about the things we are afraid of and still need to work on but also to value our gifts and strengths that help create balance.

These open parts of us are what feeds us and lead us to our hidden parts. For me, my compassionate side drives me to heal what still is wounded. I know there are parts of me that are damaging to both myself and others. I struggle with the fact that I can cause so much pain in the world and I still have a long way to go.  But I trust my longing for deeper love will eventually bring me to the areas in myself I cannot yet identify. This is my commitment to myself and to God.

A long time ago a few friends circled me and told me that my anger hurt them. I didn’t know what they were talking about. I didn’t know I was angry let alone acting in anger. But as they spoke to me I heard the pain in their voice and felt the sickness in my gut as they shared their experience of me when I am in that space. At first I was angry at my friends and wanted to lash out to hurt them to protect myself, but then I realized that this is exactly what they were talking about. Then memories flooded from childhood of what I felt like growing up with an angry and aggressive mother. I felt the pain that I used to feel as a child; small and helpless, powerless and insignificant. Then I looked at my friends and realized I was responsible for causing the same pain in someone else as was dumped on me. My love for them as well as my self made me sit and listen with little defensiveness after the initial shock. Later,  I realized this was why there was so much pain in the world, because we are all taking our hidden pain and unleashing it on others in an attempt to protect ourselves and sooth our wounds by making others feel less then we do. I have always said hurt people hurt people and that includes me.

Because they had the courage to confront me, I had a new awareness. In the end I didn’t want to be responsible for bringing such pain and destruction to another human being. I wanted this to heal. My love allowed me to hear them and identify this darkness in me that I previously did not see. This experience made me aware that there must be more that I couldn’t see. It was an impetus for me to try to be open to whatever is brought to me and to pay attention to my negative reactions to others behaviors that may be reflecting my darkness.

So here is the kicker. We are all of it. We are both light and dark. We all have love and fear in us. We can’t deny one over the other because one leads us to the other, which leads us to our healing.

And there is more ……

The art of Seeing

I once heard an ancient Sufi story about a man who was out in his yard looking for his house keys. His neighbor saw him and asked him what he was doing. He told the neighbor he was looking for keys he had lost. His neighbor offered to help him look. After a long while of looking to no avail, the neighbor asked the man  “where exactly did you loose the keys?”  The man said “in the house” the neighbor replied “why then are we looking out in the yard for them if you lost them in the house?” The man said “because the light is better out here”.

I love this story. I feel it illustrates how many of us approach our emotional/spiritual healing process. We often look outside ourselves for the answers to heal our pain or discomfort. We seek parental figures, teachers, gurus therapists, doctors and advisors to tell us what to do. If we are lucky, someone will guide us and ask questions that lead us more inward. But more often then not, most will give us answers….tell us what to do. They will give us how to’s and tasks to help fill our time “looking for the keys in our yard” so we trick ourselves in believing we are doing the work but in reality nothing is changing. The reason we have painful patterns that we cant seem to change is because we never really identify the core issue and all the beliefs we attach to it along the way.

We would have to go inward to identify the causes and the unresolved issues tied to them. We cannot do what some one else tells us to do because they are not us. We cannot live another’s vision of us. We cannot manifest some one else’s expectations of us or our lives.

I had the kind of teachers that told me what to do “for my own good” and sometimes it was for my own good, especially when I was a small child I needed external direction. Many people tried to tell me how to fix my problems based on their life experiences. But that never really solved anything.  The teachers that stand out as the most impactful, who helped me go to new levels in my development, were the ones who witnessed my challenges and helped me navigate thru my journey within to identify my hopes and fears and more importantly my true strengths and purpose. They did not weaken me by giving me the answers or telling me what to do, they challenged me to figure things out thru my experience and emotional honesty. They offered me clues and tools but with the understanding that the experience was mine and that every decision was my responsibility. Therefore every success was mine but so was every failure. They loved me and encouraged me along the way even if I failed. Sometimes I was even celebrated for my failures because the real success was just in trying regardless of the outcome. By doing this, with out saying the words, they told me that they believed in me.

I realized that I wasn’t stupid or weak and I could go on this exploration even though I was scared. Here is where I learned that there is no courage if there is no fear present so fear in itself did not mean weakness. Not moving forward despite the fear was the weakness.

This was how I began to know who I was. Not by some one telling me who I was and what to do, but, by my experiencing myself, my internal world, the good the bad the ugly and the beautiful…. where the truth waited for me.

We do not require the light to see. We do require courage, patience and compassion. 

And there’s moreJ