Right here with you

This past week has been intense.  I was in a gathering the other night where we all checked in and as I sat in silence, I wondered how to name what was happening for me.  An image came right away.  When I was in labor with my first child, it became clear he had flipped upside down and was stuck that way.  From the moment we discovered his position, my midwives told me not to push.  Sometimes that physical urge is described as similar to the urge to throw up or sneeze, but with exponential intensity.  Try stoping that when your body is insisting on it’s imperative.  It was impossible.

One of my midwives came over and looked me right in the eye as a contraction would come.  With her eye contact and her hands in mine, I was able to breathe through the contraction without joining it.  When she looked away, there was no way to do it.  With her right there with me, I had more presence, more capacity and more confidence.

And that is what it has felt like this week.  The other day I was talking with someone and they asked how my day was.  “It was terrible”, I said.  Then I thought about it and decided that wasn’t the most accurate way to describe it and certainly not the most life giving way to describe it.  By dinner I had changed my story and said, “Today was a powerful day.  Today I had really big important experiences and my friends met me right where I was, saw me and heard me at my most intense and most vulnerable.  Today I was met right where I was and it was glorious”.

I’m grateful that I had enough perspective to flip my story and focus, not on the upset that my day got de-railed, but on the really precious gift of healing I had been given.  I have heard many spiritual teachers talk about being grateful and excited for pain, upset and disruption in their lives because it means they have the chance to explore and heal more deeply.  This week I totally get it.  This week I anchored deep into my wholeness and invited my closest allies to witness me there, which they did.  It was healing and powerful.  It was like looking right into the eyes of the Universe and meeting her gaze right in the midst of the messiness of life.

Part of what makes this such a gift is the contrast to other times of disruption when I haven’t felt seen or heard.  I have a friend who makes art cards and one of my favorite says, “Damn!  I mean, thank you“.  Most of the time this is my attitude to those spiritual growth opportunities that feel inconvenient or hard.  At these times, the way I have found to access wholeness is to move as deeply as possible into self compassion; to be right here with me as I stay with sensation and emotion.  In these times, I try to be right here, be present to all that is- the resistance and the love and see what might happen next.

Friends, where are you seen, held and loved just as you are no matter the circumstance?  Who is holding you in their loving and life giving gaze as you celebrate with ecstasy or when you rage and cry…or when those things are happening all at once?  In what ways do you access your own wholeness, power and capacity?

Things happen.  They don’t ever stop happening.  Whether things just happen, or happen to us or for us is largely experienced in relation to our wholeness.  A deep abiding in our authentic being helps us be soft in the face of life’s movement, helps us decipher how it might be invitational or healing.  A soft heart held by life gives us the tools to soften our own hearts, to hold ourselves and to allow ourselves to be held.

Come explore Relaxing into wholeness.  Week two is all about things that happen and how we inhabit or return to our wholeness in the face of all that comes our way.  More details on my website.

Also, if you want a place to feel held in the way I described, if you want that experience of presence and a fierce kind of love, perhaps one on one work would be valuable to you.  Be in touch.