Losing and Finding Our Way

Years ago- in the final years of my marriage- spiraling down into physical illness and despair, I went to a healer and described my symptoms. But it took me a long time to admit to the biggest symptom. It stuck in my throat and constricted my chest. Finally, barely able to breathe, it came out in a wail of anguish: "I cannot pray!"

Just saying the words crushed me. I had survived a brutal childhood held in the arms of the divine, in the sense of a loving presence bigger than it all. And now. . . . I could barely reach out, and when I did. . . . I could not feel that Presence, that Love. I was bereft.

To marry this man, I had abandoned myself, and in abandoning myself, in cutting myself off from that which was real and whole (which would have had me leaving that relationship long before the marriage,) I could not make myself available to that which sustained me. God/the Mystery/that Love which had always held me may have still been there- but I could not experience it, could not feel that Presence..

When we abandon ourselves (and in this as in so many things, that which creates us in every moment gives us free will) we separate ourselves from the deepest truth of our experience.

All of this- the darkness, the desperation, and the homecoming- flashed through me today as I read this piece from poet Leonard Cohen:

"I lost my way. I forgot to call on your name. The raw heart beat against the world, and the tears were for my lost victory. But you are here. You have always been here. The world is all forgetting, and the heart is a rage of directions, but your name unifies the heart, and the world is lifted into its place. Blessed is the one who waits in the traveller's heart for his turning."

In some ways, it is such a small turning, this coming home to our deepest selves, to our own heart, to this moment. . . .this breath. . . . to the Love that sustains us.But in other ways, it is a shift in worlds.

I am filled with gratitude for this day- with all of its beauty and its challenges, for the Presence of Love that creates and holds me, and - if I let it-  teaches and encourages me to never abandon myself or our shared humanness.

~Oriah "Mountain Dreamer" House (c) 2017

Deep gratitude to Karen Davis at Open Door Dreaming for this spectacular image of the light that comes at dawn.

How To Live with the Uncontrollable

Sometimes, things happen TO us. That's a hard truth to face. We all do the best we can to deal with what arises. Sometimes our best - the way in which we cope with hard things that happen- causes suffering for ourselves or others. If we are able- if we have the insight and courage to see the need and the means to find assistance- we get help.

Telling someone who is ill or injured, someone who has been raped or beaten, someone who has lost a child or encountered real cruelty, that they must have "chosen" this, isn't about empowering them. It's about trying to reassure ourselves that what happened to them could never happen to us, because we would never "choose" it.

Telling people who have borne great injury that they are "playing the victim," is about blaming them for things beyond their control, or telling them that their wound "should" have been healed by now. Sometimes we don't have the resources to listen. Let's own that- acknowledge our own human limitations- instead of making it about the other.

We control very little. Which does not mean that we don't have choices- although a real choice is one we can see and one we can make because we have the inner and outer resources to act upon it.

I can't tell from the outside what your inner resources are, so I cannot know what real choices you have. We can support each other. We can share our stories of finding and developing new resources with which to expand our choices- but we cannot give ourselves or others "control" over life.

The Grandmothers of the dreamtime told me years ago, "Trying to get control is always driven by fear." Sometimes, when we see ourselves desperately trying to get ourselves or others under control, we can recognize that we are afraid and invite the fear to show itself, can hold that fear with some tenderness.

And sometimes we can't. Sometime unconscious dread has us by the throat and terror has us paralyzed or frantically on the run.

This is not an argument for giving up. It's an appeal for kindness toward ourselves and others. It's a plea for compassion.

Courage is getting out of bed each day just as we are, knowing the vastness of what we cannot know or control, and finding a way- our way, which will look a little different for each of us- to fall in love with what is over and over again.

~Oriah "Mountain Dreamer" House (c) 2017

Using Life To Practice Being Here

Oooo, don't you love it when life sends us ways to deepen our practice. Ha! My landlord is planning a loud, and somewhat chaotic summer- replacement of all windows; new balcony resurfacing and removal/replacement of railings; new apartment to be constructed right below me (in what was a storage room so much smashing of concrete to create windows and framing of whole new apartment). . . . new finish on exterior walls, lobby and roof.

What a challenge NOT to anticipate beyond that which is needed to ensure places to sleep or do my client calls if and when it all happens.

Sometimes I catch myself starting to worry, mull, obsess about the options, the work, the timing, the cost, the impact on my health. . . .  I can feel my body tense with a long silent, "Nooooooo!" in anticipation of what might need to be done. 

Eventually (although not always as quickly as I would like) I ask myself: Is there anything happening right now that requires or offers an opportunity for action? If there is- I do it. (I did speak with someone about tenant rights.) If there isn't anything to be done, I ground myself and lay aside my anticipation of what may or may not happen. I say a prayer for help in being with what is. 

The challenge is in the practice of - Being. Here. Now. Weirdly- truly almost unbelievably- I find myself grateful for the chance to see how quickly I can unconsciously be pulled off centre and, on a good day, how I can firmly but tenderly pull my attention back to my breath and the present moment.. 

And in that moment, I am grateful to be practicing, grateful for the sounds of wind moving the trees and the birds singing outside my window, grateful to be here, now. ~Oriah

Grateful for the photos like this one from Karen Davis at Open Door Dreaming. Beauty always brings me into the present moment if I let it.