The true self is the Divine Indwelling, the Holy Spirit within us.
The true self is precisely the divine part of us that is great enough,
deep enough, gracious enough to fully accept the human part of us.
~Richard Rohr
when the tears come…
inquiry for today~ take your fears and ritualize them into love…
There comes a time on the path when we may have to grieve what we thought the path was going to give us. Maybe we imagined that after enough years of meditation, therapy, prayer, and healing, we would become less vulnerable to the world.
That certain wounds would finally close, that loneliness would lose some of its power, that we would know how to meet loss without being so thoroughly undone by it.
And then life finds us again. Someone leaves, the body changes, a dream collapses, the practice that once opened the heavens becomes quiet. We find ourselves frightened, heartbroken, wanting things we thought we had outgrown.
There can be a strange tenderness and disappointment here: After everything I have done, how can I still be here?
Somewhere along the way we confused awakening with invulnerability. We thought the path would make us less touchable, but love does not seem especially interested in making us untouchable.
Eventually even the one who has been “healing” begins to loosen. The old bargain starts to fall apart: if I become conscious enough, spiritual enough, regulated enough, life will no longer be able to break my heart.
Not every heartbreak is a teaching. Not every loss has been arranged for our growth. Sometimes something terrible has simply happened, and it hurts.
But there are times when disappointment strips the altar bare, and what remains is a spirituality with considerably less protection in it- a life that can still touch us, a love that can still undo us, a heart that has not awakened beyond its breaking.
~Matt Licata
