Releasing Your Being

We know that pain is far from beautiful in its initial experience of heart wrenching agony. It appears as a chasm that is nowhere near complete or whole. It tears at us, and urges us to feel that if we don't identify with what happened, we may as well forget our lives altogether. Our actions become a response to the pain we feel and our own expressions of life lived are sometimes shadowed by living in our fears. This is where it becomes possible to feel our own pain return to us after being forgotten for a long time. We feel our lives change in response to what caused us pain, and that is what we identify with when wellness seems to be gone. The conflict can linger in our lives even when the pain is forgotten. This is apparent when we try to be whole and run into the wall of hurt that seemed to be gone.

Some days these feelings seem to be so present there seems no way through. Other days, a wall emerges in the midst of everyday routine that appears as the ordinary and mundane fades into reminders of feeling that hadn't occurred to us in years. As that present moment is seasoned with a taste of a feeling that we have felt before it can be recognized as those old feelings that lingered in our subconscious until we found that it was woundedness and resentment that pulled us under.

These feelings, be they disappointment, loneliness, bitterness, as any myriad complex of emotional mashups have roots in the daily life. The walls that emerge, seemingly out of nowhere, come from the build up of this pain that has been swept under the rug until it cannot be ignored any further.

We cannot always stay close to those who have hurt us when we need to be whole again. Sometimes we need to be accepting and patient with our lives as we take the steps to be where we need to be whole again.  It is easier to respond to our own hearts with an understanding of the tension and the shame that these instances cause us to feel. We can be conflicted in ways we didn't even know we could, and when we see our humanity, we see that feeling whole includes our being ourselves in the broken places of our lives.

Being face to face with the experience of our hurt places is a frightening idea. It brings us to a place of unease, until there is a recognition of who that person with experiences of pain and wellness together is. As pain is understood, by feeling the impact of it in our lives and those around us, we find it no longer overpowering us. It gives us a connection to our lives and our true nature as we use what makes us alive to bring ourselves back to living.

Encounters

Layers create the dynamics of our lives. What appears in front of us has a depth beyond and a shallowness before in an intersection of space and time. Nothing stands alone, even if it takes a solitary path. A simple melody is a sequence that allows each instant of life its moment and one moment would not be the same without the other. 

In the formation of the aesthetic of life, a rhythmic flow doesn't have to rhyme in order for it to follow the channel it moves along. Shifting ground, the layered forms don't stay in place for long. A new formation is created and develops so life can take place there. Just as the seasons change, so do lives and friendships that never held their place entirely forever. 

As I walk the world, the landscapes appear in front of me exposing my body to the growth that feeds my spirit and opens my consciousness to the experience of all that is interconnected and related. Flowers emerge where fungi once stood before. Leaves have fallen and gather where I stood years before. This isn't just my experience, but as time and seasons cycle, I notice that even in the similarity of life's patterns, there are still surprises of wonder. In the space of life we share, off and on the internet, there can be these layers, what is shared and what is a continuation of what has formed. As life keeps moving, so do the overlapping and colliding of reality. 

 

Transforming Moments Together

A transformative moment is not always created intentionally. Many of these transcend words in the moment they are experienced. Living within the power of these experiences sometimes takes us away from the control that is our sense of place in life. Such a sense of control leaves us with stability over our choices and our feelings. However when there is a change in this reality; be it something comforting in our lives that is lost or something new and less familiar, we can either feel the experience or run from it. And sometimes these changes can change how we think and feel about life and can influence what we do purposefully create.

For me, these experiences transform my understanding of life. These experiences doesn't necessarily have to be detrimental in order to provoke change or new understanding. Sometimes they can be held in place while the emotions of the moment run deep and the thoughts and inextricable connection of the universe brings you closer to the whole reality of the wonders of life.

Grasping onto to our realities can help us feel how shifting forces and experiences are a part of our own. When I feel this kind of reality, that of many others' intersecting with my own, I know how small I am, yet how integral this feeling is to my humanity. These kinds of experiences are usually brief, yet last in my heart a lifetime.

I lived on Long Island when the World Trade Center towers were attacked in New York City on September 11, 2001. I wasn't in the city to witness the horror, but I felt the immediate reverberations of fear and concern echo across people everywhere around me. I was aware that many competing forces demanded for the attention of the nation as the area around New York became numb with shock and later changed by grief and outrage. I had seen the World Trade Center towers in person and had walked in the shadow of their magnificent height. To hear of their destruction and the death of many lives continued to alter my understanding of our multiple, complex civilizations that exist and interact across our daily lives and histories. 

As the decade changed course from this pivotal day, so did I. I ended up moving away from the area that was once home and become a part of a new landscape. Western New York was culturally and socially different from the familiar on Long Island. And then almost a decade later, I returned to Long Island and New York City for a weekend. During one stretch of time, I wound up being intrigued by the reality that I hadn't been to downtown Manhattan since the attacks on September 11th. In seeing the setting sun fill the gaping hole that once held the site of many interactions that shaped lives around the world, I stood silent. Changed. The words that could have escaped my mouth were removed by the space of time. 

How interconnected we really are. How these realities of wonder, shock, memory, transformed my sensitivities and thoughts of each person. How fragile we are. How our connections can strengthen through understanding. May this understanding be one where we see how each difference is also our similarity, how each uniqueness also brings together our whole world. May this oneness be unifying, not in fear, but in harmony. Let us know that in loss, we remember how this moment was formed from our connected beings and in that new moment may we stand with courage in remembrance and hope for our moments in this shared world.

Ground Zero in Downtown Manhattan - 2009

Special Olympics statue at the State University of New York College at Brockport