The work of reverence:
to solve our darkness by blossoming and to solve our loneliness by loving everything.
~Â Mark Nepo, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen
I’ve been in a bit of a writing slump. When my mind goes crazy on itself, trying to figure out the unfigureoutable, I find I drift away from writing, caught up in some illusional world about solving and understanding.
When I write regularly, I tend to not get into this thinking cyclone. Today, though, the pain of too many thoughts hit my body like an overdose of chocolate sundae. Did you know that, from the Chinese medicine perspective, thoughts have to be digested, just like food? Yes. That is so. And, when I overindulge on thinking, I begin to feel way too full.
One method I’ve found to help digest the thoughts is a really good intense cardio workout. I’m not sure this is technically true from anyone’s expert perspective, but it is certainly true from my experience. When I have to breath really hard, breathing all the way down into my pelvis, I begin to feel settled and clear as the tonage of thoughts falls away from my head, my shoulders, my chest and my stomach. It’s as if all the weight I’ve been carrying around my brain falls off of me as the oxygen brings me back into my body.
Sometime a long time ago, I learned that I could handle the stress of living in a stressful childhood by trying to figure everything out. There were many dark times, scary times for a little one, and thought I could keep the darkness at bay by figuring ‘something’ out.
Just today, as my mind began to race once again, I was present enough to see where I was headed. Hooray for the mind. Truly hooray. It was as if the mind, seeing itself caught in the circular wasteland, realized to itself that there was no way out. It literally could see there was no way out. It could see it was checkmated.
And, the beautiful thing was that it could feel the silence all around and through. It felt held. It could feel its relationship with life, knowing on some level that it’s functionality was no match for the intelligence of life.
And in this moment, it stopped.
And, I just sat here breathing as the tears flowed.
The mind got that it cannot do it. It cannot figure out life. And it is so damn tired of trying.
And so, this darkness I learned to try to solve, this unknown I needed to somehow manage, cannot be solved nor managed. I only thought life was dark. Instead, what I thought was dark was the unknown. In some ways, it can feel that way. And this is where I came to the work of reverence, the work of blossoming and loving.
I could sense a bit of reverence in my awareness as my mind stopped in the realization that it was fruitless to keep going, because I could sense everything was holding the mind, holding the thoughts that were circling into over-thinking gluttony. Perhaps we don’t solve our darkness by blossoming. For me, it feels like blossoming requires trusting in something else, the urge to blossom.
I cannot think my way into blossoming. All I can do is blossom, and that requires feeling, and trusting. Feeling the urge to blossom means feeling that urge which moves up through me, up from the sacrum (or the holy bone).
It’s so funny, because when I coach, my mind is quiet and I listen into the deepest levels of the darkness of possibility. I am there completely for my client. I hold them. I know what that feels like so clearly. Yet, it has been certain places in my personal life that have triggered the over-indulgent appetite of mind. places that take me so quickly back to those early years.
The mind just wants to be held, and in this vast universe of love it is held. In every single moment, it is held.
So, I decided to share this beautiful meditation with you. The meditation grew from my own experience of being with the pain of the over-indulgent mind. I recently shared it with my newsletter subscribers as a gift. Today, I want to share it with you. I know it has been a beautiful meditation for me, and on some level know that it helped guide me to today, to this moment of the mind letting go.
Download The Holding Meditation
Please share it with your friends and family, people you think might benefit from it. I hope it helps ease minds and helps you know you are held, deeply held.
With love,
Julie
