The Feelings are not the Problem!
Letting go kicks my butt, both in general and in specific. I want that which I want, while defending what I already have with righteous compulsivity. Even the potential loss of that which I think I need or deserve is, in its anticipation, excruciating. I have devoted great life energy toward keeping close to me my most prized and imagined necessities. Just this week, I found myself tussling with reality because of an inevitable office change that was looming on the horizon for months. Even though it was fully expected, I dropped into strong reaction, with mumblings and grumblings galore.
Life, in its brilliant perfection, is having its way with me. These past few years, culminating with this last Year-from-Hell, have come to bless me with growth. Project after project, option after option, and identity after identity, many have been rattled and evaporated before my eyes. I believe with all my being that I get what I need to grow—I just don’t like it very much.
I am growing. Not perfectly, not ease-fully, not elegantly, but with kicking and screaming and mumbling and grumbling, I am growing. Let go or be dragged? I eventually do let go.
The question that emerges for me is this: as I let go of the external, the thing, in this week’s case, the office, what emerges? As I stop the fighting, wanting It to be different, what do I confront? The answer, dear friends, I believe, is our feelings. We confront our feelings. I am also beyond-positive that the feelings are not the problem; feelings are the doorway in, the entryway to transformation and transmutation.
Underneath the smokescreen of my annoyed grumbling about the ineptitude and blah blah of this office process, I am simply sad. Much has happened in this office, many good beings sat and opened their lives and their hearts to me in this office. Things were spoken into this phone; words were created on this computer. Life was lived fully here, for years. And in the offices I’ve had before this one, the spaces I have occupied in this wacky building for almost thirty years, much life has unfolded. The form is ending; an era is ending and I have feelings. With my changed status here, I will now only share offices. This is timely and this is right, and I am sad. These feelings are not the problem. My resistance to the feelings sabotages and undermines the organic and energetic process of integration.
Today I did a little walkabout, a retrospective walk through the Kripalu halls, visiting some of the offices I lived within for this past almost thirty years. It was a bittersweet ramble down memory lane. I was touched and teary as I was filled with gratitude. I am without regret.
Why is it hard to feel? Why do I run from these parts of myself? Why do I continue to find other distractions from just being with? I don’t know that the why’s interest me these days. I simply want to honor the brokenhearted child inside of me. I choose to attend to her. As I let that sad little girl be as she is, everything changes!
What does that child need? How can I best support her? Today, after work, I will go home and ride my bike into this blue and cool day. Bike riding was a place of great childhood comfort for me. As an adult, it continues to be a place of deep solace and awe-filled insight.
Here is a favorite clip of mine, from the brilliant movie, Inside Out. (A rerun for some of us, since I posted it last year—check it out again.) In this clip, Bing Bong loses his favorite toys, and the Sad Girl finds the way to offer comfort. Look at this brilliant modeling—it’s hardly three minutes in length and it has much to teach us.
When we lose our toys, and we will, let’s give ourselves and each other full permission to simply feel. May Bing Bong and the Sad Girl guide our way home. May we have the willingness and the courage to allow ourselves to be exactly where we are. May we be blessed by the sanctity of our own feelings.
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Dear Friends, what feelings do you run from? What’s the biggie, the feeling you are committed to avoiding? And what’s one thing you can do today, to rest, even for just a few breaths, within that part of yourself?
Keep me posted, please and always. I relish your responses. I am Aruni@rnetworx.com.
All blessings,
Aruni
