One day during Elul, I sat in meditation and asked the question, “What is my Tshuvah? What is the opportunity of this moment to return to truth, God, my authentic self, my connection to the Cosmos?”
Immediately I saw that though I am filled with so much unconditional love for God and for my world … I saw very clearly that that unconditional love was not extended to my own aging body. My unlovingness felt like a turning away. For years these complicated feelings about the changes, aches, pains, scars, debilities of my body have been complicated further by denial and by hardening myself, by NOT feeling.
Recently I came across a teaching by Sharon Salzberg, who said,
“When we open our hearts to pain and suffering, we begin to heal, not because suffering is redemptive but because opening our heart is.”
After that moment of clear seeing, I cried for a long time – most all the day. My beloved Rachmiel held me, knowing that something deep within me was being released. All the feelings that I had been pushing away now flooded me and became my tears. My heart opened.
At first, I was filled with remorse. I am so dedicated to walking the Path of Love, and then, I am hit with the realization that these unfelt feelings about the changes in my body were blocking the fullness and flow of that love.
After a while, as my heart expanded in self-compassion, I started to feel some new inspiration about how to take care of myself. Each place of constriction in my body suddenly was given a voice, and I am showing up to listen with loving attention.
It became so very clear to me that I don’t need to be fixed. I am not broken. My body is not wrong. As I let go of my desire for security, affection and control, I embrace this moment in my life just as it is. I relax into the knowing that my body is a Mishkan, filled with Divine Presence, and that it is a vehicle for the heartfelt expression of my deepest love. Just as it is.
Christian Sundberg says,
“Your true power does not lie in your ability to mold your circumstances to how you would prefer them to be. Your true power lies in your ability to choose how you will meet your circumstances.”
I choose to meet these circumstances of my changing, aging body with wide perspective, compassion, humor and the kind of self-care that is rooted in love and not fear. A pathway is opening for me as I transform the “problem” of aging and even death, into Mystery. I become curious and creative. I feel empowered.
As this shift has begun happening in me, I wondered, “How can I apply these lessons to our relationship to the body of our people, our country, our world?”
How have I been looking away out of hopelessness for our broken world? Would it be possible to turn towards the world in love? Not to fix it, but to express and deepen this love with the confidence that somehow LOVE heals by unveiling the hidden wholeness of our world.
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