This concept of opening the heart and feeling all things keeps popping up lately - the idea of opening to the desired and the unwanted, the beautiful and the repulsive, the happy and the sad. I keep seeing it in books that I read, articles, newsletters, videos, conversations. It is everywhere and not surprisingly, it is something I am really working on lately. This idea is that by opening to it all, by welcoming it all and feeling it - really deeply feeling it - we become more present and awake in all of life. We feel joy because we have known sorrow. We appreciate health because we have experienced sickness. We cherish each moment because we know one day we will die. And then in the really big hearted acceptance of it all, we cease to define any of it as good or bad but simply know it as human experience, the moment, what is.
So I'm working on this. When things freak me out, when horrifying stories of human suffering make me want to shut down my heart so that I can avoid the pain of feeling it. When fear grips me or when anger separates me from others. I am working on opening to it. Not resisting it or hiding from it or looking the other way - instead I am trying to make myself look at it, soak it up, feel it as it is. And in the midst of it, open my heart.
Not easy. I fail daily more times than I can count. Some days feel like a continuous string of failing at it. And I'm probably closed more often than I am open at this point. But I'm trying. I want to feel love and life from a really awake place and I believe, at this time, that the only way I can do that is if I open to it all.
A Ted Talk I watched recently spoke of this and has stayed with me. Eve Ensler: Suddenly, My Body is a poetic and emotional sharing of becoming present through feeling deeply the experience of humanity, the earth, and life.
It is a interesting thing we've done here. This...being human.
