I was reading passages from Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Letting Everything Become Your Teacher: 100 Lessons in Mindfulness. I found it on a bookshelf accidentally a few days ago and brought it out where I could pick it up and read at random. You probably play that game, too—just letting yourself be led by the Unseen Hand.
One of the first times I opened the little book, I found myself reading Kabat-Zinn’s counsel on pain. So many of my dear ones are going through patches of pain right now that it seemed particularly relevant. We’re on rough ground here, all of us. Pain isn’t an abstract for anyone.
So the lesson I was reading, by happenstance, was about pain. He says not to expect pain to disappear, but to watch it go through its changes. It’s that “learning to surf” idea wrapped in different words. He tells you that the whole of it is the process of “watching and letting go, breath by breath, moment by moment.”
The world becomes such a kaleidoscopic place when you let yourself do that. You’re up to your eyeballs in it, just watching it float by, every moment full of everything, and oh! what music!
But to bring it back down to earth, there’s a lot of pain in our world right now, a lot of slings and arrows flying, and so many carrying their wounds. Be kind. Especially be kind to yourself and to the pain that you, personally and intimately, are carrying. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Remember, everybody’s hauling around his very own bundle of pain. Everybody.
And everybody carries around an enormous capacity for joy as well. Joy! Really! Right there next to the pain, and every bit as real. (Life is such a bittersweet thing, isnt it?)
I think that when we’re making our way through rough patches it’s easy to forget about the reality and presence of joy. We get so focused on our pains that joy entirely escapes our awareness.
In fact, sometimes it’s been so long since we let ourselves feel any joy that we don’t even know if it’s possible. It is, though. Fact of life. It’s always there. It just takes a little while to see it sometimes. It’s sort of like when you walk from a very dark room into a brightly lit one. You might have to ease into it slowly. To feel the impact of joy, you might want to remember what gratitude feels like, or comfort, or even wonder and awe. Think of things that make you feel all soft and cozy. Slide from there into amazement and laughter and grins. Then just settle. Watch it and let it go. Watch it and let it go. Moment by moment. Breath by breath.
Peace, my friends.
Peace.
Warmly,
Susan