Week 8 - Safe Haven

If you choose to be present, then gradually the hidden treasures will be revealed. ~Leonard Jacobson


Sometimes the winds of change take us places we don't expect. Turmoil instead of safety, chaos instead of stillness. Someplace bad when we were hoping for someplace good. For all intents and purposes, I would say I had a bad morning. Yet I still abide by the belief that life is just life. Good and bad are opposite ends of a spectrum of judgment that on a spiritual plane don't hold much weight. They're easy labels, certainly, and useful in the way that we all have an idea of what they mean, how they feel. They are a common language we all can speak with one another. But what if we suspend use of those judgments? Especially in the heat of the moment when we want to strike out or close down or let our ego soothe us in our misery by recounting for us all of the ways in which we were wronged?

I'll be honest, I don't do conflict well. Really, who does? But the longer I walk this path the more I find I'm willing to step up and the less I'm willing to brush things under the rug. If something needs to be handled, I handle it. This has worked well in some cases, not so well in others, and either way is not a road without its bumps and bruises. Yet in the end, what is, is. And in my belief that life is just life, what we need to experience arrives and we either step in willingly, or turn and run the other direction only to encounter it in some other guise at some other time. Neither good nor bad.

As I stepped into my situation this morning, as the emotions flooded in threatening to hijack me completely, I sought space...the space I settle into in my meditations. The buffer between the impulse and the reaction. I admit that looking for the space wasn't my first response -- on some level I had to move beyond the intensity of the interaction and choose it. My ego kept vying for my attention, poking at my sore spots and trying to get a rise out of me, to get me to defend its honor. How could someone say I was wrong? Made a poor choice, handled something badly? I kept choosing the space. To my surprise, it helped. And the ego's diatribe simply faded into background chatter instead of being the most important thing in the world.

Yes, the tears were flowing but somehow that was the beauty of what was revealing itself: this space of meditation that we tap into doesn't make the hurt go away -- riding the full wave of Experience does that -- but provides a safe container to hold it in. A safe place in which to sit with it, honor it, feel it and not figure it out, but let it be. My inner voice kept telling me to stop, to breathe into my anger and frustration and to not fix it, to surrender it, to leave it alone. Let me tell you, I'm a fixer to the nth degree so this felt like going against my very nature. But when I listened and heeded the call, when I honored the wisdom of my heart, I found peace. I may still have felt rotten and beat up -- this is sometimes just the way of things -- but the peace was like stepping into a warm embrace. That place that imbues us with the uncomplicated knowing that this too shall pass. Even if we don't fix it. Even if we let it go.

Meditation isn't meant to fix anything, but allows us access to a safe haven to be with our hurts, lick our wounds, learn our lessons and move on without accumulating the baggage that the ego means for us to attach to and carry with us indefinitely. Who knew? Not me. Not really. But now I know.

The ego can have its grudges and revenge. It can have its drama. I'll take the haven where it's safe to listen to my heart.//