Beautiful strong wise heart medicine
for our journeys. — Molly
Quotes from 'Broken Open: How Difficult
Times Can Help Us Grow' and other
work by Elizabeth Lesser
Every
day we're given a choice: We can relax and float in the direction that
the water flows, or we can swim hard against it. If we go with the
river, the energy of a thousand mountain streams will be with us . . .
if we resist the river, we will feel rankled and tired as we tread
water, stuck in the same place.
May you listen to the voice within the beat even when you are tired. When you feel yourself breaking down, may you break open instead. May every experience in life be a door that opens your heart, expands your understanding, and leads you to freedom. If you are weary, may you be aroused by passion and purpose. If you are blameful and bitter, may you be sweetened by hope and humor. If you are frightened, may you be emboldened by a big consciousness far wiser than your fear. If you are lonely, may you find love, may you find friendship. If you are lost, may you understand that we are all lost, and still we are guided—by Strange Angels and Sleeping Giants, by our better and kinder natures, by the vibrant voice within the beat. May you follow that voice, for This is the way—the hero’s journey, the life worth living, the reason we are here.
Over and over, we are broken on the shore of life. Our stubborn egos are knocked around, and our frightened hearts are broken open—not once, and not in predictable patterns, but in surprising ways and for as long as we live.
Grief is the proof of our love, a demonstration of how deeply we have allowed another to touch us.
How quickly I judge, and therefore diminish their humanity.
How strange that the nature of life is change, yet the nature of human beings is to resist change. And how ironic that the difficult times we fear might ruin us are the very ones that can break us open and help us blossom into who we were meant to be.
Things do fall apart. It is in their nature to do so. When we try to protect ourselves from the inevitability of change, we are not listening to the soul. We are listening to our fear of life and death, our lack of faith, our smaller ego's will to prevail. To listen to the soul is to stop fighting with life-to stop fighting when things fall apart, when they don't go our way, when we get sick, when we are betrayed or mistreated or misunderstood. To listen to the soul is to slow down, to feel deeply, to see ourselves clearly, to surrender to discomfort and uncertainty, and to wait.
Patience is a hard discipline. It is not just waiting until something happens over which we have no control: the arrival of the bus, the end of the rain, the return of a friend, the resolution of a conflict. Patience is not waiting passively until someone else does something. Patience asks us to live the moment to the fullest, to be completely present to the moment, to taste the here and now, to be where we are. When we are impatient, we try to get away from where we are. We behave as if the real thing will happen tomorrow, later, and somewhere else. Let’s be patient and trust that the treasure we look for is hidden in the ground on which we stand.
There
are three major hurdles to overcome in crisis: dealing with pain;
working with your attitude; and using the crisis as a wake-up and a
cleanup call.
If we do not suffer a loss all the way to the end, it will wait for us. It won’t just dissipate and disappear. Rather, it will fester, and we will experience its sorrow later, in stranger forms.
* * * * *
It's
not always about survival, this life we are given; it's usually so much
easier than that. It's about trusting the eternal life force that is
flowing within us-letting that force lead the way through all of the
inevitable changes we will face across the span of our time here on
Earth.
There is an art to grieving. To grieve well the loss of anyone or anything—a parent, a love, a child, an era, a home, a job—is a creative act. It takes attention and patience and courage. But many of us do not know how to grieve. We were never taught, and we don't see examples of full-bodied grieving around us. Our culture favors the fast-food model of mourning—get over it quick and get back to work; affix the bandage of "closure" and move on.
So much of what we do each day is a diversion from what our lives are really about. A traumatic event is like a knife slicing through our diversionary tactics and exposing the vein of truth—the truth of what we really want, of how we really feel, of the wrongs we have visited upon each other, of the love we crave from each other.
To banish the Hideous Damsel's darkness is to sterilize one's chance at the evolution she brings.
I am not suggesting that everything bad that happens to us is sent directly by a knowing hand—cooked up specially for our personal development. Nor do I mean that by using the stuff of life as grist for the mill you will learn what you need to learn and move on into a problem-free world. And I also don’t recommend courting drama and disaster so that you can be broken open to the truth. A catastrophe is not a sign that God has singled you out for greatness. What I do mean is that you can use anything—everything—as a wake-up call; you can find a treasure trove of information about yourself and the world in the big trials and the little annoyances of daily life. If you turn around and face yourself in times of loss and pain, you will be given the key to a more truthful—and therefore a more joyful—life.
Rumi says: "Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing There is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
Only people who claim their own voice can hear the true song of another.
What will matter is the good we did, not the good we expected others to do.
"People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive… so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive." — Joseph Campbell
We are in search of our most authentic, vital, generous, and wise self.
* * * * *
There is meaning hidden in the small changes of everyday life, and wisdom to be found in the shards of your most broken moments.
I do not wish upon anyone a descent into hell. But if your life has to be turned inside out in order for you to know yourself—if the shadow of a shaman crosses your path and you turn and follow it down—I pray that you use its force wisely. I hope that you take the ultimate responsibility for your actions and that you consecrate any destruction to the rebuilding of your higher self and a more radiant life.
“For the warrior,” says Trungpa, “the experience of sad and tender heart is what gives birth to fearlessness.”
While Once-Born people avoid or deny or bitterly accept the unpredictable changes of real life, Twice-Born people use adversity for awakening.
Twice-Born people use the difficult changes in their outer lives to make the harder changes within.
Some people realize that what must burn in the fire is their fear—fear of their own power, fear of change, fear of loss, fear of others. Some people name an inability to feel, a crippling cynicism, a sense of shame, a stance of anger.
Every catastrophe can hand us exactly what we need to awaken into who we really are.
When we descend all the way down to the bottom of loss, and dwell patiently, with an open heart, in the darkness and pain, we can bring back up with us the sweetness of life and the exhilaration of inner growth. When there is nothing left to lose, we find the true self — the self that is whole, the self that is enough, the self that no longer looks to others for definition, or completion, or anything but companionship on the journey.
Marion Woodman—the great Jungian analyst and author—says that we come to the mythic Crossroads during “moments in our lives where the unconscious crosses consciousness; where the eternal crosses the transitory; where a higher will demands the surrender of our egos."
Discovering fearlessness comes from working with the softness of the human heart.
If
you're interested in opening the doors to the heavens, start with the
door to your own secret self. See what happens when you offer to another
a glimpse of who you truly are. When your heart is undefended, you make
it safe for whomever you meet to put down his burden of hiding, and
then you both can walk through the open door.
Grief is an expression that you loved well.
Look for a way to lift someone up. If that's all you do, it's enough.
* * * * *
I pray that each one of us stays awake as we fall. I pray that we choose to go into the abyss willingly and that our fall is cushioned by faith—faith that at the bottom we will be caught and taught and turned toward the light. I pray that we don't waste precious energy feeling ashamed of our mistakes, or embarrassed by our flaws. After years of teaching, I know only a few things for sure. One of them is this: We are chunks of dense matter that need to be cracked open. Our errors and failings are chinks in the heart's armor through which our true colors can shine.
If
spirituality is not religion or cynicism or sentimentality or
narcissism, then what is it?... we can confidently say... that
spirituality is fearlessness. It is a way of looking boldly at this life
we have been given, here, now, on earth, as this human being.
When you approach spirituality as an adventure of being alive, you start as you would any adventure—with a sense of mystery and not-knowing. Instead of searching for answers that make you feel safe, you set out into the vastness of life and death, with a willingness to continually grow. You open up to the possibility that your ordinary life is an extraordinary adventure, and that your joys and sorrows have meaning. Spiritual practice becomes your rudder, offering direction and insight and discretion as you venture into the unknown.
If there is one thing that has made a difference in my life, it is the courage to turn and face what wants to change within me.
It is our birthright to uncover the soul—to remove the layers of fear or shame or apathy or cynicism that conceal it.
The great loneliness — like the loneliness a caterpillar endures when she wraps herself in a silky shroud and begins the long transformation from chrysalis to butterfly. It seems we too must go through such a time, when life as we have known it is over — when being a caterpillar feels somehow false and yet we don’t know who we are supposed to become. All we know is that something bigger is calling us to change. And though we must make the journey alone, and even if suffering is our only companion, soon enough we will become a butterfly, soon enough we will taste the rapture of being alive.
When you feel yourself breaking down, may you break open instead.
I accept that life is uncertain—that the goal is not to become more certain about anything but to relax more into the mystery of not knowing what will come next. And then, miracle of miracles, out there in the deep and uncertain water, I come into a peaceful knowing—a faithful wisdom that surpasses control and certainty.
Your path is your own, but you must walk side by side with others, with compassion and generosity as your beacons. If anything is required it is this: fearlessness in your examination of life and death; Willingness to continually grow; and openness to the possibility that the ordinary is extraordinary, and that your joys and your sorrows have meaning and mystery.
No one has the answer; only you know the way home.
* * * * *
Please go here for Elizabeth Lesser's website:
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