Friday, June 15, 2012

Be with what is

This is a  peace quote I just received from www.Livingcompassion.org. They come to my in-box every day and are quite inspirational. This quote is by Anne Frank, the thirteen year old girl who chronicled hiding from the Natzi's in her diary.
"In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisiting of confusion, misery and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness. I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us, too. I can feel the suffering of millions- and yet, if I look to the heavens, I think it will come out all right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again."
This quote was so moving for me. Anne Frank was a young woman who had seen the foundation of her world crumble around her and had faced the probability of her own death. Yet she is able to focus on the vast ocean of peace and tranquility that holds us all.  That vastness exists beyond  and includes all of the suffering of the world. I have been asking for help from the universe or god or the sense of my own divine to be able to experience that place. Sometimes suffering seems so great that there is no room to remember we are held in Love with all of it.
Another entertaining e-mail  arrived this week as if written by God. In it god was saying that she wants to be able to do her job of handling everything to the best possible outcome and have us do our parts of asking for help and letting go of all of the worrying. "Jeez," she said,  "Does that sound like too much?" I have been practicing this week asking for help.
 A lot of my adult life has been spent focusing on being a mom. It has been so important to me to give my daughter a sense of being loved for all of who she is. I was raised in an intemittently loving and abusive environment. I didn't know which Mom I would get as my mother switched from being caring and available to slapping me and being mean and critical. I wanted my daughter to know I was there for her and would show up for her. My role as a mother has been so much of my identity. My daughter has recently moved away.
I am in an uncomfortable and unfamiliar place. It's almost as if I don't know who I am. To be real, It isn't almost as if I don't know who I am. I don't know who I am. I'm not sure what I am doing here and my life seems to lack purpose and meaning . I can be tearful and feel flat. My energy has been low and I often feel like nothing feels right. Sometimes I can feel a giant empty hole in my belly that feels like it could swallow me up. I am very afraid and when I let myself feel the fear and breathe into it and shake and cry there is a sense of freedom that comes from embracing the emptiness. I have been a perky person most of my life. It has been important to me to appear happy to others and I have been blessed with a lot of joy. Lately though I haven't felt like I have the energy to be perky. This morning doing my breathwork I felt a sense of joy coming from deep inside of me that wasn't attached to any outside circumstance. It was spread out into my body and was more pervasive and less intense than what I have experienced. Several weeks ago I wouldn't have recognized this as joy because it didn't feel like what I thought joy was. I am redefining my world right now. Sometimes I am kicking and screaming and other times I can invite it in.
I had an experience several weeks ago with the little girl inside me which, as I look back, was the beginning of this transition. I woke up in a hotel room on the day I was to fly back after driving with my daughter to her new job. It was kind of hitting me that I was flying back alone and I was missing my daughter already. I realized how much I was enjoying the trip and I heard from the little girl inside me thast she was really having fun. I was surprised because I hadn't consciously tuned into her the whole trip. Often in the past she has been very mad at me for not paying attention to her. I vow to show up for her on a regular basis and consciously tune into her for a few days and then forget again. This time she said that I was very present during the trip and that my presense is all she has ever wanted. I took it in and cried because it was all so simple and I hadn't known it. I felt so much gratefulness that my showing up was all she ever wanted. I couldn't do it wrong as long as I was willing to be present. Then that wise little girl inside me who is really my own inner divinity said, "Be with what is. " It was loud and clear. So that is what I have been doing. I have been slowing down and resting and being with what is.  Sometimes I do a breathing practice which is I say be with to myself on my in breath and what is to myself on my out breath. It is a powerful reminder that be with what is is all there is to do.