Mary O’Malley – I woke up this morning with my mind really stirred up. Walking with my son through cancer is superfood for my struggling self. I call her Lynn because that is my middle name, and the name I went by until I was 30 (during the time my struggling self was being built, fed and maintained).
So, when I sat down to meditate, I invited Lynn to rest right here, right now. For the longest time, she was having nothing to do with that. Lynn was filled with stories of deep fear, but I did not get upset with her or demand that she quiet down. Rather, I kept on saying to her, “I know what is going on in your life right now is really hard, and it’s okay to just rest here for now.” Each time I spoke to her, she would rest a little longer, and then off she would go again like a startled flock of birds. When I said, “Just come home, sweetie, just come home,” she fully let go and I was able to rest in the deep, spacious peace of my morning meditation.
When there is something that your mind doesn’t want to experience, it runs away from your immediate experience. It holds on, plans, judges, resists, spaces out, totally lost in thoughts, or what I call Storyland. Why? Because when you were young, this whole system of your conditioned, struggling self actually survived by not letting go. It survived by holding on for dear life and trying to be what it thought it should be. As you get deeper into awakening, you finally come across the depth of that almost wordless fear, and it feels that if it opens up again and you let go, you will die. In the past, you turned to your compulsions – like eating, drinking, drugging, shopping, or whatever it was – to make the feelings go away. But no matter how difficult or painful your challenges are, you can discover that you will not die if you are willing to be with yourself rather than leaving yourself when you most need yourself.
As Ramana Maharshi once said, “All you need for this journey is the willingness.” Why did he say that? Because we are not in charge. Life is in charge of life. You just need the openness and willingness to let Life unfold, no matter what it brings. Life will bring joy, love, beauty, kindness, spaciousness, and delight. It will also bring pain, fear, grief, sadness and so much more. No matter what it looks like, tell yourself, “I am not this pain in my body. I am not this wave of fear. I am not this grief. I am not this no-way-out place. I am that which can see these states.” In that seeing, you can then allow them to move through you as you become the awareness that can see Life unfolding rather than believing all the stories in your head. You are not the stories. You are that which can be with the stories and recognize that they are only stories. They are not who you truly are.
So, I invite you to thank the great challenges of your life. Your greatest challenges are cracking you wide open. Most of your life, you have not been willing to let yourself experience what you are experiencing when challenged by Life. So you have done whatever you could to distract yourself by whatever means, so you could get as far away from the discomfort as possible. But if you are honest, you would recognize this has never brought you the healing you long for. Freedom comes when you can show up for what is showing up, no matter what is going on in your life.
Related Posts
- 5 Ways To Expand Your Consciousness When Feeling Depressed
- Awaken
- Actions Speak Louder Than Words
- Space And Time Travel
- Don’t Let Your Bruised Ego Keep You Down When You Fall
Mary O’Malley is a Contributing Writer for Shift Frequency
SF Source Awakening July 2015
[widget id="text-44"]