Broken open way of living
October 1, 2023
“Beyond our ideas of right – doing and wrong – doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
—Rumi
I’m not doing this wholeness experiment purely for science, not really at all. I’m doing it because I believe this radical sense of aliveness and openness and usefulness and potentiality is a dramatically richer way to be living our days on this planet, and frankly why, (at least it seems to me), we are here.
Yet I am keenly aware of the temptation to sink into that numbed out, “too safe” default comfort zone. To tell ourselves that living at our greatest capacity is too much work. This is why we need people in our life and situations and challenges that keep waking us up and breaking us open.
One of my goals which seems to have come about almost unconsciously, is to surround myself with enough vital, warm-hearted and confronting friends to form a sort of ad hoc community of championers, inspirers, and folks who tell it like it is. Most of my “team” have never met each other — but you all hold me in this thickly woven net of love and truth and inspiration!
If you don’t yet have your own ad hoc committee it’s probably a good idea to think about who you can assemble to midwife you into a broken open way of living.
Last weekend I sensed I felt off, and I took to the woods for a rainy hike on my own. Actually, I was supposed to be meeting a friend, yet I didn’t receive her text message about being sick until I was already there, in the rain, with all my gear. The divine intervention was not missed on me. I desperately needed some alone time, in the woods, in the rain, to just let it rip.
When I know that I’m stuck, I sincerely ask God and the universe to allow the hike, or the car ride, or the gardening to break me open and help me understand whatever I’m missing. Or whatever it is I need to release, or whatever it is I need to cry about, to allow the grief process to move through me.
We just don’t get there without the shakedown. We can’t have broken open hearted living without grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression/sadness, acceptance, and meaning.
The stages of grief really do accompany all growth and are hard to skip over if we want to discover the meaning we seek. My cousin, who is also a therapist, once said to me that all growth work is ultimately grief work and I believe this to be true. On some level every real and perceived loss must be grieved and let go of on some level for us to heal.
That doesn’t mean we walk around perpetually crying or grieving. But it does mean we consciously allow a process to move through us so that we can get to the acceptance and meaning part which is generally empowering, purpose-making and uplifting.
Am I grieving an era that needs to come to a close? Is that why I was feeling resistance all around me? After about an hour of walking with myself out of sorts and some weeping and appreciating each plant, tree and birdsong, I started to feel lighter. Like a lot lighter. Like suddenly I was sitting on a bench overlooking this incredible view in the rain feeling filled with curiosity and joy to simply just be there and be alive.
A broken open-hearted way of living requires emotional and spiritual hygiene. Crying (sometimes screaming), letting down, and releasing keeps us soft and fluid. And then it keeps us connected to everyone and everything which is a pretty amazing place to dwell.
Here’s to the delivered place we find on the other side of the stuck place 🌀