I’m sure it’s happened to you a time or two. Caught in some
black mood, a stinginess, utter misery, perhaps even despair, you’re unable to
extricate yourself no matter how hard you try. You pull out to a more
spiritually enlightened vantage point for a few seconds or minutes, and
then…boing!…you boomerang right back into the thick of it again.
A few weeks back, I was right there with you. I reoriented
myself many times, and just as often, I ricocheted back into distress. I
realized, almost after the fact, that I’d become hooked once more in duality.
You know, “spiritual, groovy, large~picture me”, versus “miserable, wallowing,
myopic me.” As I find the former a whole lot more pleasant, I’d been trying to
force myself to that shape. And my moaning self was havin’ none of it!
When we’re caught in either/or thinking, how do we choose
something different? First, by remembering that there is something different. It’s only these brains of ours
that collapse life into two possibilities, our egos that identify one as bad,
the other as good and try to force the more pleasant fit.
The way out for me came in realizing I needed to allow my
two selves to exist at the same time. I needed to stop trying to escape to higher ground and turn to face
my misery.
And so, compassionate awareness embraced anguish. My insides
were no longer in opposition, but joined now as one, with this coupling also
positioned within the larger context of my personal growth. I zoomed out even
further, though, seeing this experience as firmly anchoring me within the
larger human condition. My suffering became linked to the suffering of others. And while I couldn’t fully conceive it,
I knew all of us to be held by something larger still.
The image that came to me was of matryoshka dolls, those
Russian nesting dolls in which progressively larger and larger figures envelop
smaller ones. Wiser me held distressed me~~whose discomfort, incidentally, soon began to subside~~within the context of my personal, then our collective, unfolding.
And we were all encompassed within something much, much larger.
These dolls, my painted Russian teachers, have stayed with
me. In today’s meditation, my mind wandered to worries about a particular
individual. I chose not to abandon the thought or this woman in order to return
to open awareness. I brought her there with me. I nested this heartbroken and
soul~weary woman within my larger awareness, trusting that we were both cradled
by still larger arms.
As I now envision us all~~and that means you, too, dear
reader~~nestled within progressively larger Matryoshkas, ever expanding circles of love.
Namaste!
Loanne Marie
