What would happen if you removed the word ‘anxious’ and just paid attention to these flickering sensations in the belly?

What would happen if you took away the concept ‘lonely’ and simply became fascinated with this heavy feeling in the heart area?

What would happen if you deleted the image ‘sick’ or ‘broken’ or ‘bad’ and just got curious about the tightness in the throat, the pressure in the head, the ache in the shoulders?

What would happen if you stopped looking for solutions and checked to see if there was actually a problem here?

Come out of the exhausting storyline, friend. It’s not true. It was never true. Commit sacred awareness to a single living moment. Come closer to yourself, Now.

Bring warmth to the tender places inside. Infuse sensation with the light of attention. It’s never as bad as you think.

May you awaken to the mystery of being here and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.

May you have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.

May you receive great encouragement when new frontiers beckon.

May you respond to the call of your gift and find the courage to follow its path.

May the flame of anger free you from falsity.

May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame and may anxiety never linger about you.

May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.

May you take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention.

May you be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.

May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.

Today

I gave up

On healing my trauma

I gave up

On practicing the skills

To become whole

Today I gave up

On evolving

Into that ever elusive

Better version of myself

Today I submitted

To the wound of love

I stopped pointing at it

Looking at it

Soothing it

Tweaking it

Fixing it

Finessing it

Hiding it

Polishing it

I stopped this game of separation

I crawled inside the wound

And spread it open

I decided to wear it like a gown

I accepted my total and utter

Failure

To be anything else

But me

Do not force the healing, my love.

Healing is always unforced.

It happens when the conditions are right.

When there is just enough love, attention, presence, slowness, trust.

When you aren't trying to heal.

When you aren't trying to awaken.

When you aren't "trying" at all.

When you open your arms wide to the Now.

Fall to the ground.

Let yourself feel the rage, the grief, the loneliness.

Let yourself break. Let yourself feel worse, if you need to feel worse.

Speak your raw truth. Upset some people. Bring others closer.

But don't force yourself, my love.

You have to let go of the result, the agenda, the goal.

And infuse your 'unhealed' experience with love.

Drench your pain, your sorrow, your longing with warm awareness.

Saturate the moment with yourself.

You have to create the conditions for healing,

but you cannot do it.

The ego will rebel at this news.

Your heart will rejoice.

Mysterious forces, ancient and unspeakable, do the healing.

You only have to get out of the way.

Rest, now.

Let the weight you run from every day

now draw you down.

Later there will be time to tend

to everything left undone.

Now, rest.

Fall

into your own bones

lying horizontal on this bed.

Come

into your dark corners.

Come into this

original nakedness

under all the layers.

Come where all your losses

split

you

open.

Don’t rise,

yet --

Rest.

Be drawn deeper down

into the salt tide of tears.

Let grief wash you,

then drown you

beyond the name

you first were given,

when you reached to touch your own mother’s face for the very first time,

and she smiled her light down into you.

Now reach those same fingers

for the face of infinity --

so that, opening your eyes

you will know

the one dreaming you

is pleased with you,

that everything seen

is your self,

and that now is the time

to rise wholehearted into the work

aching to be animated

by precisely you.

She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go.

She let go of the fear. She let go of the judgements. She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head. She let go of the committee of indecision within her.

She let go of all the ‘right’ reasons. Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go.

She didn’t ask anyone for advice. She didn’t read a book on how to let go. She didn’t search the scriptures. She just let go.

She let go of all of the memories that held her back. She let go of all of the anxiety that kept her from moving forward. She let go of the planning and all of the calculations about how to do it just right.

No one was around when it happened. There was no applause or congratulations. No one thanked her or praised her. No one noticed a thing. Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go.

In the space of letting go, she let it all be. A small smile came over her face. A light breeze blew through her. And the sun and the moon shone forevermore.

No one escapes suffering in this life. None of us is exempt from loss, pain, illness, and death. How is it that we have so little understanding of these essential experiences? How is it that we have attempted to keep grief separated from our lives and only begrudgingly acknowledge its presence at the most obvious of times, such as a funeral?

“If sequestered pain made a sound,” Stephen Levine says, “the atmosphere would be humming all the time.”

It is the accumulated losses of a lifetime that slowly weigh us down—the times of rejection, the moments of isolation when we felt cut off from the sustaining touch of comfort and love. It is an ache that resides in the heart, the faint echo calling us back to the times of loss. We are called back, not so much to make things right, but to acknowledge what happened to us.

Grief asks that we honor the loss and, in doing so, deepen our capacity for compassion.

When grief remains unexpressed, however, it hardens, becomes as solid as a stone. We, in turn, become rigid and stop moving in rhythm with the soul. . . . When our grief stagnates, we become fixed in place, unable to move and dance with the flow of life. Grief is part of the dance.

As we begin to pay attention, we notice that grief is never far from our awareness. We become aware of the many ways it arrives in our daily lives. It is the blue mood that greets us upon waking. It is the melancholy that shades the day in muted tones. It is the recognition of time’s passing, the slow emptying of our days. It is the searing pain that erupts when someone close to us dies— a parent, a partner, a child, a beloved pet. It is the confounding grief when our life circumstances are shattered by the unexpected—the phone rings with news of a biopsy; we find ourselves suddenly without work, uncertain as to how we will support our family; our partner decides one day that the marriage is over. We tumble and fall as the ground beneath us opens, shaken by violent rumblings. Grief enfolds our lives, drops us close to the earth, reminding us of our inevitable return to the dark soil. . . .

It is essential for us to welcome our grief, whatever form it takes. When we do, we open ourselves to our shared experiences in life. Grief is our common bond. Opening to our sorrow connects us with everyone, everywhere. There is no gesture of kindness that is wasted, no offering of compassion that is useless. We can be generous to every sorrow we see. It is sacred work.