Seven Lights of Love

Free Preview Always looking for relief from my pain, I headed off to The Tattered Cover, my local bookstore here in Denver. I wasn’t quite sure what to look for, but found myself in the spirituality section. Having been raised Catholic, I knew very little about Eastern religions or philosophies, but I was curious and started to look at the many books and titles in that section. In front of me were a number of thin little books by an author I had never heard of, Pema Chodron. Titles such as “When things Fall Apart,” “The Places that Scare You,” “The Wisdom of No Escape. “ These certainly described me. I bought them all and a week later went back to that same section to find more. I devoured them . . . life and pain and struggles all started to touch a cord. And the idea that life had a deeper meaning and that our souls had a path that included facing fears and suffering and pain that could be voiced . . . well it made sense to me on some level I did not quite yet understand. The idea that I might just sit with my fears and anxieties even if I didn’t understand them and they frightened me was completely new. Although I experienced what I now understand were many shadows (lots of anxiety and depression) throughout my life, I never acknowledged them, never talked about emotional pain and just forged ahead. I had always prided myself in never giving in, but rather hanging in. But now, my own Body would no longer allow me to just hang in there and forge ahead. And as much as I just wanted to be done with the pain, Pema was giving me permission to feel what I feared. Looking back all these years later, I realize how much of a “gift” finding Pema Chodron was. I needed to talk about what I thought and felt in my life. Though it was easy and acceptable to talk about the “happy” and “good” feelings, expressing the painful, anxious or bitter feelings was not acceptable to me and to those with whom I chose intimate relationships. Even my husband at the time would often say that if only I would be “happy” and learn to see life more positively, our marriage would be just fine. In the many counseling sessions I and my husband attended, the purpose seemed to be to work through anxiety or depression with the goal of getting beyond it. Now this Buddhist Nun was saying, hey, life as a human being IS, not just can be, but IS painful, fearful, sad, depressing. . . and guess what: It’s OK. It’s normal. Just be with the feeling. Sit with it . . . Stay with it. Don’t wish it away, don’t ignore it. Stay with the feeling. . . My body had done more than her share of carrying the burden of my inability to listen to parts of me that I hardly knew existed: my Feelings, my Spirit, my Soul. My little 5’2” 110 lb being had no choice but to start screaming at me to “STOP, LISTEN, FEEL.” Though at the time I felt betrayed by my body, over a number of years I came to realize that I so loved her wisdom and began to thank her for speaking a truth my mind would not allow me to speak. Even today, these many years later, my body continues to connect me to my truth. It is an essential vehicle through which I can know my inner world of emotions and spirit. When I feel physical pain, I go in to my emotional state first. By tapping into the body, I’ve come learn how to live the life I came to earth to live and ultimately move into the love and oneness of the universe. Ahh. . . sounds pretty good and straight forward, right? Not quite, it was light years away from where I was at the moment in these early years of my soul’s journey.