Sitting in the sand one Saturday at Mesa Lane Beach, looking out over the ocean, I reflected on my work at hospice. I thought about how some things—the heartbreaks, the losses, our deepest wounds—can’t always be faced or felt directly. Sometimes we need to get at them sideways through the cracks in our surface lives. But we need to access them one way or another in order to heal and grow. Otherwise, our unfelt pain traps our life energy, our ability to experience joy as well as sorrow. We can end up merely existing rather than truly living. Feeling and healing our deep wounds—the grief, anger, sadness we all carry to one degree or another under the surface—isn’t as difficult as the mind imagines when we surrender our resistance. If we just allow our hearts to be broken, we realize it won’t kill us to feel what’s there. When grief overpowers us, this surrender can happen automatically.
Hospice, where I worked for several years, was a zone of heartbreak. But over and over, I saw that sorrow gave birth to deep healing and transformation. We encouraged our clients, who were facing unspeakable loss, to gradually dip their toes into their pain. They began to realize they could tolerate more than they imagined, and for many, their losses were the beginning of a profound awakening to a greater wholeness. When we wall off the pain, we close ourselves off to our vitality. When we don’t have access to the full range of emotions, we are only half alive. The present is the only place we are fully alive. The now contains all—joy, grief, pain, bliss.
I recently worked with a client who had been depressed and anxious for several months and didn’t know why. Her life seemed to be going well but there was an unexplainable, pervasive sense of unhappiness and fear. After a few sessions, she realized she had been afraid to face how she was really feeling about some important aspects of her life. She had blocked off a huge part of herself with stories about how she thought her life should be. When she allowed herself to be present, to experience the depth of feeling, she was suddenly clear about the steps she needed to take to move forward. This required releasing those things, including relationships, that were no longer serving her highest good. The anxiety and confusion that had been holding her back dissolved and she began to experience a new sense of freedom and aliveness. The transformation was remarkable as she seemed to step into a fuller expression of herself.
It takes energy to hide our true feelings from ourselves. Feeling is healing because feelings can only be experienced here and now. When we open to all that the moment contains, we touch our true nature which, the spiritual masters tell us, is expansive, limitless. Underneath our fears is an inner, motionless silence that is truly who we are. We exist on many levels at the same time. We are influenced by the subtle dimensions that lie beneath the surface of awareness. As the nervous system becomes quieter, the more aware we are of these subtle influences and the more we live here and now. We begin to gain access to realms that lie beyond our ordinary consciousness. This requires opening up to more of ourselves that we may have walled off from our awareness. When my hospice clients allowed themselves to feel what was there–when they surrendered and acknowledged the feelings, allowing them to express freely–the healing process–the journey toward wholeness–began. Often this surrender happens when the emotions overwhelm the gating system.
I looked up from my place in the sand to see an unending line of pelicans gliding by single file, skimming just above the waves. I wondered where they were headed and considered how everything is always on the move—the turbulent ocean, the sea life under its surface, the people on the beach, our minds. What is not moving? The witness of all of it. The observer is always still and silent, always present. The purpose of the spiritual path is to reveal to ourselves this deeper aspect of our being. This is where true healing takes place.
Consider This: Are you concealing parts of yourself from your own awareness? Contact the motionless, silent presence within that encompasses all—the sorrow and the joy, the pain and the happiness, the mundane and the sacred. Become acquainted with the silence that you are.
