The Pain of Staying Present

 

Many yoga poses focus on opening your heart and bearing your heart to the sky.  I bend, I sweat, I open my heart chakra and let it flow, and I cry.  I grieve.  I come to the mat, the meditation cushion, a book, my blog, and have to consciously open my heart again. 

 Katrina Messenger gave me space, gave me an ear, the opportunity to be heard, and my heart opened and flowed.  The grief flowed, and the pain washed through me and was cleansed from me.  No tears were needed, just someone to witness, without judging, acknowledge, without trying to fix or change where I was in that moment.

With each drop of freely flowing sweat, I am cleansed.  Each tear purifies my heart.  In joy and in pain, I move through the flow, and at the same time, am still, coming back in each second to awareness, reminding myself to be present. 

Being willing to stay open and aware and not lose ourselves, our values, or our passions is hard.  T. Thorn Coyle speaks on this today as well.  Sometimes it hurts, and we experience, pain, anger, indignation.

The Morrigan told me I had to be more blood thirsty.  I had to thirst for life force, and more intense engagement of the act and process of living.  Even in menstruation, there is pain, and there is flow, the more we fight the movement of the flow, the more pain we find ourselves in.  It is an interesting paradox in the balance between the stillness of the now and the observation of constant movement and change.

 

I read an amazing article yesterday on Elephant Journal about how pain is our teacher.  It perfectly describes the process I have been engaged in this year. 

In class yesterday we talked about staying as the caterpillar in the chrysalis.  In the goopy formlessness of potential, and the utter, unrecognizable transformation of metamorphosis and change, we find comfort at our center, protected by silk.  Years from now you will not recognize yourself.  You are not who you used to be.  Your memories of what you were as a caterpillar will be like dreams for your new life as a butterfly.  For now, if you dare to let go of what was, what may be, then you can be free.  And in your freedom, your spirit will fly.