Lying in bed last night, waiting for the blanket of sleep to wrap its comfort around me, I noticed an almost rigid tension engulfing my body. This was a feeling I did not want to carry forward into my future. With each new exhalation, I envisioned my rigid being melting, releasing all holding, surrendering and letting go of all fear. Even now, as I write, I can feel my shoulders drop, my arms lengthen and my heart lift. The next thing I remember is waking up this morning amazed that I was able to fall into the darkness.
In today’s meditation, I recognized a similar holding pattern, a pushing against the tragedy of reality, a desire to pretend that a perfect life is possible, that it just such a life only requires a gallant effort. In her interview with the poet and philosopher, John O’Donohue, Krista Tippett explored the meaning life, of love and beauty. John reflected on times he had sitting at the bedside of they dying and in particular with those who had lived staunch, unrelenting lives. John said that after two or three days he noticed these people literally softened and became visibly more radiant. When Krista asked how he would explain this phenomenon, John said the dying person realized the way he/she had been living could not serve them now – that holding on and pushing away from the darkness only served to separate them from the light.
Annie Dillard describes just such a realization: “In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world’s rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here. This is given. It is not learned.
Today I set an intention to notice when I am holding tension, when I am pushing away from the harshness of reality. I choose to forgive myself and all others and most especially I forgive life for all its incongruences, its injustices, and its inherenttragedies. I surrender into the unified field of love, “the house of belonging” -David Whyte
Writing into the Light 