"This pain/sorrow/fear has been here for years and years! It will never go away! I feel like such a victim..."
Friend, if you drop the story "this has been here for years" because right now, that is just a collection of memories, arising in the moment, you'll notice that in reality, there is only NOW.
Only this moment, which hasn't been "going on for years and years". NOW is only NOW, it's no bigger or longer or more dramatic than that.
Facing a moment of something, however intense or uncomfortable, is infinitely simpler and kinder and more manageable than facing "years and years" or even "a lifetime" of something; which, in reality, can never actually happen.
Life is lived moment by moment. Nothing else is possible. The rest is memory and projection.
Come out of the epic story of time; the story of "me and my life". Be here; timeless, grounded, present, open to what is.
Never a victim, but inseparable from life as it emerges from the vastness.
Flow with life's ancient and relaxed timeline, not the mind's urgent schedule. From the perspective of the Universe, there is no 'by now', there is only now, and no image of how now 'should' be, and now is to be honoured...
Be patient with sadness.
Let it come closer, let it engulf you if it must.
Until there is no division between 'self' and 'sadness'.
Until you cannot call it 'sadness' at all.
Until there is only intimacy.
Let it come closer, let it engulf you if it must.
Until there is no division between 'self' and 'sadness'.
Until you cannot call it 'sadness' at all.
Until there is only intimacy.
Sadness keeps you soft and flexible.
It reminds you, when you have forgotten,
of the beautiful fragility underneath all things.
It reminds you, when you have forgotten,
of the beautiful fragility underneath all things.
In the softness of the heart lies its capacity to love.
Sadness is not the opposite of joy, but its gateway.
jf/ps/smoh
jf/ps/smoh
