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
8 comments:
What a wonderful image, Loanne ~ the Matryoshka of Consciousness!
In my own recent grieving, I was able to finally let go to crying on one of my ferry commutes from Peaks Island to the mainland of Portland.
Riding on the top deck, I was opened to sea and sky, water and air, tears and breath. As I sobbed, releasing to a deep despair, I real-eyesed that it was helplessness that I was feeling, which was intensified by my natural caretaking tendencies. I wanted to relieve my daughter and her family of their grief (the death of two people close to them) and their angst (loss of a job, lack of money, medical issues) ~ to take it all away, to make everything better.
It was then that I expanded to the Nesting Doll of Awareness, who gently reassured me that I was making it better and being of help through my thoughts, prayers, words and actions. In this awareness, I, too, was helped, expanding further to the Nesting Doll of Connectedness. I felt the richness of the moment, the preciousness of my family, the joypain of Life, the presents of Presence.
As I look back on the past few weeks, I am so very grateful for the time spent with my daughter and her family, experiencing the Matryoshka of Consciousness over and over again.
Thank you, Claire, for such a heart~felt example of how this idea translates to a real, lived life. Love streaming out to your daughter and her family.
I don't want to be sarcastic, but welcome to the real world. One of pain and misery. I'm glad you found a way out. I'll remember your example and try to follow it.
Sarcasm is simply another expression of the human experience~~and welcomed here, too!
Unfortunately, one of the totally unintended consequences of writing a blog such as this is that it can seem to minimize the pain of living. That certainly is not my intent~~in part because the pain is necessary for the growth, but mostly because it leaves folks feeling like they're missing some secret for unending happiness that everyone else knows. The last thing I'd want to do is increase a sense of isolation and self~denigration. I apologize if this has happened.
Along with sarcasm, humor is another expression of what it means to be human. So...how many New Agers does it take to change a lightbulb? Two. One to change the bulb, the other to redefine the darkness as temporary illusion.
Thank you for reading and for writing. Don't know if it will help at all, but I do hope you try imagining us all holding you. Blessings surrounding you!
I wanted to comment about the light bulb. Dr. Wayne Dyer talks about how thoughts and emotions are pure energy; some higher and faster than others. When higher energies occupy the same field as lower energies, the lower energies convert to higher energies. A simple example is a darkened room has lower energy than a room bathed in light. Since light moves faster than non-light, when a candle is brought into a dark room, the darkness not only dissolves and disappears, but it seems magically converted into light. The same is true of love, which is a higher/faster energy than the energy of hate.
I love that metaphor! No matter how thick the darkness, a little light goes a long way. And ya get a lotta candles in that darkness, their individual lights joining together, and things start to look a whole lot brighter!
Thank you so much for this, ZVP! Shine on!!!
I feel warm and cozy inside those dolls.
And I'm sure they like havin' ya there!
Smiles!
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