After
a long illness and a troubled life, my mother
passed away. Despite her best efforts to create a beautiful home for us
and her appreciation of art and literature, she never seemed to feel at
home in this world. She never felt comfortable in her own skin. Hopefully, death has brought her some peace. My
mother's passing stirred up many unresolved feelings and disappointments. It agitated much grief.
At first,
I wanted to avoid this grief, to distract myself from this mess of
emotions. I wanted to turn away from my fears of mortality, the seeming
futility of living and block out the mystery of death.
In the
middle of the night, however, I quieted down enough to experience my feelings. Below the
meanings and stories of my mind,
flowed vast tides of hope and fear, pleasure and pain, wisdom and
uncertainty, and an ocean of emotion that could not be contained by
words. In this sea of grieving, something shifted. Exactly what, I
cannot say. But I experienced each sensation as a current of energy, a flow of consciousness. Feeling
these currents of energy was to be alive. It was Being surging through the numbness of Not Being.
Feeling these sensations of energy without clinging to them or avoiding
them, I noticed the still space they flowed through. I sensed this
still space as the womb of creation, the Great Mother that spawned my
mother (and me) and nurtured us throughout our lives. I also sensed this
still space, this womb of creation, as the home of all sensations, the
home she (and I) always searched for. It was always in the background
whether or not we noticed it.
The willingness
to feel the currents of both pleasure and pain is the willingness to feel alive. It is the
willingness to notice the spacious stillness of the womb of creation and be at home with all
sensations. Opening
to
the aliveness of both pleasure and pain and the home of these
sensations is an affirmation of my life. It is a dynamic, living
healing. I'm glad to be alive to feel this. I'm grateful to the Great
Mother and The Great Home for birthing us, sustaining us and receiving
us whenever and however we follow the currents of experience into them.
Simply beautiful.
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