I have a very dear friend who is a Unitarian Minister and with whom I have recently reconnected. Over the past few months I have heard her talk about being broken open and I really thought I understood what she was talking about - having a moment of spiritual awakening which opens up something that has previously been closed. In my mind's eye I would see a rock split in two with a little flower growing out of the middle of the split and I really thought I got it. Breaking open allows for new growth, new opportunities for insight and healing. It all sounded so nice like you could be emotionally shut down and be broken open by a beautiful sunset or a particularly sweet birdsong. I would sigh and think about the beauty of the Universe and our capacity to connect with that lovingkindess through the process of breaking open.
In this concept of breaking open the process might cause you to shed a few tears, hold a moment of regret or sadness to be quickly followed by a moment of grace, healing that bit of pain and allowing you to move forward with a renewed sense of purpose and well being. Then I had a conversation last night with another dear friend and I got a whole different experience of breaking open. There was no glorious sunset, there was no gentle sense of love or purpose, oh no. In this process breaking open meant being shaken to my very center by the cognitive dissonance I have been holding for so many years. It meant sitting in extremely uncomfortable emotional pain hoping he would say something that would take all the pain away. He didn't take it away, he did something much more powerful than that he made me sit with it and he said nothing.
Until that moment I didn't realize how much we rescue each other from our pain. When we find someone we can really sit and talk with on a deep emotional level they listen to our pain and then they help us rationalize it. They explain why we shouldn't feel bad, why what we did makes perfect sense and that we can't beat ourselves up for it, life's too short. Well let me turn that idea around. When we have done something that we know is wrong, that is out of alignment with our true nature life is too short to not acknowledge it and do something about it. But instead we ignore it, we defend it and we find people to help defend it for us. We think of all the reasons that we did what we did and we allow that to exonerate us for the wrongdoing, we don't understand it we just make ourselves feel better with it. We move on with our lives feeling free from the static that acknowledging the wrongdoing brings. But it doesn't go away. It's not like we've discharged the action and everything is alright now. We can't go back in time and make it okay, we can't. Our actions stay with us.
The last of Buddha's Five Remembrances states My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand. You know what that means? When we realize that our actions have caused pain to others, that our actions were wrong and are contrary to who we really are or who we want to be then we have to sit in that pain because our actions are all we've got. It doesn't feel good either, it hurts. It hurt so much that all I wanted to do was escape the pain, I wanted it gone. But there was nowhere for that pain to go until I could sit long enough to stop resisting the pain and embrace it and that my friends is breaking open...that is embracing the shadow.
So I sat with it, and sat with it and I felt that dissonance and God I didn't want to let it go because in finally being able to acknowledge it I felt I had earned that pain. I had earned that cognitive dissonance and I wasn't about to let go of it. My friend the UU minister once said that anything she had ever let go of had nail gouges all the way down it because she fought so hard to hold on to it. I was fighting last night...I wasn't going to let it go. But in sitting silently last night my friend didn't take it away or try to make it better, he was a witness to the pain and the struggle and finally, somehow, eventually a little crack in my psyche appeared and I was broken open.
It was almost a relief...almost. The pain didn't go away. The sense of wrongdoing didn't disappear. I didn't suddenly feel a flood of loving energy that wiped away that discomfort. All that happened is that it eased a bit. It wasn't as sharp. It didn't cut as deep. The sense of the wrongdoing was still there and it still hurt...but in breaking open I created the space to begin the healing process. All I did last night was create the space. I don't even think I planted the seed...I just created the space. The actual healing will take longer. But now instead of being closed up tight against the pain and the dissonance there is a place that when the seed is planted the light will be able to touch it. And out of all this pain I think, one day, a flower will grow.
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