Choosing into experiences that make us human and guide us forward
What experiences in life are you longing for?
To fall deeply in love? To raise little ones? To feel that you’ve realized your potential at work?
What is underneath? To know the ecstasy of being seen? To guide and advocate for another? To struggle and win?
Is life our opportunity to feel every human feeling and burn with it?
I talked to a new mother recently. She was so lovely, blond curls falling around her cherubic face, full of too-long-unfelt but unforgotten joy. She talked about her partner and her child, her longing for independence and freedom. It’s so hard to be a new mom. Especially the first time, when you lose yourself to the care of another so utterly and completely that you can’t find your separate self. I felt a surge of empathy for her struggle. What stood out though, was that she was burning with feeling, not desperately seeking a way out. It felt brave.
We are so quick to fix, but to burn with the feelings allows us to know ourselves and sets us on a less predictable, but possibly more truthful path. Like a lightning bolt, a clear concentration of light that can also wreak havoc, clear feeling often reveals structures that must come undone for us to move into the next phases of our lives.
Even scarier when it affects those we love.
Should we walk away from the storm to protect them? Or stand as tall and strong as a tree and take the bolt, come what may?
People talk a lot in yoga, meditation, and healing work, about letting go. Let go or be dragged is a common saying meant to teach us to let go of what no longer works. And just as there is freedom in letting go, there is freedom that comes as a result of discipline. To sit in an uncomfortable shape and allow the aches and pain to soften into awareness. To hold a yoga pose while your muscles shake and beckon you to the floor. To work the limbs into long reaches past previous physical limits and demand growth.
When do you let go? When do you hold? What if when we burn with feeling they become one and the same?
