Awake and aware

This past weekend, she attended the wedding of the first of her friend group to get married. She was part of the "bride squad." She shines, this one. She's a bright light, resilient, but she's tender-hearted, too. The world wounds her sometimes. There is a situation in our extended family that is so painful right now, and there seems to be no good way forward. I wish I could shield her, but I can't.

My friend Scott wrote something on Instagram this morning that spoke to me hard. I'm putting it here, so I can always find it, and remind myself that sometimes we just need to sit with what is. To not feel as if we have to fix it. To accept sometimes that perhaps we cannot fix what is broken, and we might have to just let it play itself out, let it be.

From Scott, aka Tearful Dishwasher:

I spend a lot of time in the mindset of practice and in actual practice. Most of what I do is some form of action oriented to my path. I can fall prey to a kind of knee-jerk stance that when things in the outer and inner worlds of my experience are good, then practice is good, and that when those things arise in ways that are challenging or unpleasant then there's something lacking in my approach, in my practice, and I need to fix it. I need to do more. This is a klesha. It's aggression and grasping and aversion gathered together. It's not that I shouldn't do more practice, though. It's how to do it, it's what to do and what to stop doing. Practice should turn us towards the world. We should never use it to turn away from the world. Tenderness and appreciation for ourselves and our experience has to be our ground for any practice. I was up most of the night awash in a storm of worry and anxiety. I watched my mind spin itself into a state that took my body and my sleep and my joy and equanimity with it. It took all night, but near daybreak I was able to truly relate to my anxiety and to see the wisdom it was trying to show me. I saw how my lifetime pattern of running and hiding and numbing and repressing my anxiety was so unskillful and unwise. And my heart opened up to that part of myself that has always just been trying to help me. It's been trying to tell me something I refused to admit or acknowledge. And I hated it for what it was doing instead of just hearing it out. I'm still feeling anxious right now, but also joyful. Joyful because I am befriending and being befriended by myself. I'm listening to my own wisdom. I have a deep, hard pattern here. It's entrenched and powerful. But I see now. I see myself. I'm right here. And I am in the real world! Everything is possible here. Everything is workable. It doesn't mean that something terrible won't happen. It's not that I'm safe now in any way. But I am not going anywhere. I'm standing firm, on this Earth, awake and aware. So this is my reminder to myself. May it be of benefit to you. Namaste y'all!