Somewhere along the way, we begin to imagine the person all this work will make of us. Someone less frightened by love, less shaken by loss. Someone who can meet whatever comes without falling apart. We can become quite devoted to this person, though they have never lived.
Then life arrives without consulting the image. Someone we love leaves, or the body changes in ways we hadn’t anticipated. An old ache returns, one we thought we’d finally made our peace with. All the years of prayer, therapy, meditation, and attention have not made us untouchable. We find ourselves back on the ground, with the smell of wet earth rising around us.
There is a grief here that rarely finds its way into the stories we tell about awakening. We may have to mourn what has happened, but also the one we believed we would become if we did everything right. The calm one. The free one. The one who would no longer need so much.
But it would appear that the Beloved has very little interest in our fantasies of invulnerability.
This mourning can feel humiliating. The old spiritual garments no longer fit. The words that once made us feel safe grow thin. There is the body, still tender, still wanting to be held. Mud on the knees. A stone cold in the palm. The moss growing along the fallen branches.
We may have to remain here for a while, close to the ground, with the life we actually have. There is no need to turn this into another initiation, another achievement, another story about becoming.
The earth has room for this person too.
~Matt Licata
how to be deeply humbled…
inquiry for today~ ok, let’s see what will unfold today…
Your daily life is your temple and your religion.
Whenever you enter into it take with you your all.
~Kahil Gibran
