Difficulties Can Heal You

What do I mean when I say awakening into life? I mean actually experiencing life – hearing it, tasting it, feeling it, seeing it exactly as it is in the only moment that matters – now. So, I invite you to pause for a moment and really open to this moment. It is no ordinary moment. It is the only moment that matters in your whole life!

When life started waking me up, I saw, really saw, that most the time I was somewhere else – in the past or the future, daydreaming or just spacing out. I was truly startled when I saw that when I was thinking about life, I was missing life! I also saw how strong the urge is to not be present for life. The last time we were fully here, in the first years of our lives, we got scared out of ourselves and out of life and became imprisoned in our minds, which are afraid of actually being present again.

As these truths penetrated my dense and busy mind, I began meditating every day, the kind of meditation that doesn’t try to get to any particular state. This kind of meditation is all about grounding right here and, when your attentions drifts back into the world of thought, it gives you an opportunity to get to know the stories in your head. This helped immensely because I could see there was a huge difference between experiencing life through my thoughts and actually experiencing it.

I am, like most people, a work in progress and yes, over the years, my ability to stay open to life has increased. But if I am deeply challenged, my mind will still contract in resistance and in fear – although not for as long as I used to. So, right now, I am being deeply challenged. I’ve been diagnosed with Polycythemia Vera. It is a rare type of blood cancer that is different than most cancers. You can’t take a chemotherapy drug and have it go away. It will be with me the rest of my life. It is essential to manage it as it can create clots, which will leave me open to strokes and heart attacks and it is possible for it to develop into more severe forms of cancer.

The easiest way to see how this diagnosis unsettles my mind is in my meditations. My mind is much more turbulent than it has been. Before, I used to fairly easily drop into the stillness that is always here, underneath the busyness of the mind. So, for many years, it was wonderful to rest in that stillness when I meditated and also periodically throughout the day. But now my mind is much busier because it is afraid. This diagnosis is bringing into stark relief the truth that one day I will no longer be here and in the meantime, I may not feel so great.

In order to open into the field of stillness, I have to open into what I am physically experiencing from the cancer – deep fatigue, increasing nerve pain and an overall feeling like I’m getting the flu. My mind really doesn’t like these sensations. But over and over again, this gives me the opportunity to say hello to my mind. When it is very upset, I say, “I see that you are scared but remember, being with what we are experiencing is where things open up.” And because I have created a loving relationship with my mind, most of the time it calms down and the field of stillness is there.

I feel a bit like a yo-yo in my meditations lately, I open into the stillness and then the mind takes over again because it wants to be anywhere but here, but this is such a good training ground. For more and more quickly, even when my mind is deeply turbulent, I remember this is just the mind, and with that realization my heart opens, which has room for everything. And when my mind let’s go, under the compassionate gaze of my aware heart, I am then again present in my body and wonderful heart energy floods my beleaguered body with love.

As I move through my daily life, it is so much easier to remember the preciousness of every single moment. We are so quick to take life for granted but this unwanted diagnosis is a blessing in disguise for I fairly quickly wake up when I see I am sleepwalking through life. And then the only thing that makes sense is to meet life with the love and wisdom of my heart.

So, this moment where you are reading these words is precious. It is the only moment where your life is completely brand-new, and it is the only moment where you can open into the truth of love!

What can you bring into your life that invites you for a moment here and a moment there, to open to life just as it is? Maybe giving yourself at least three minutes every day where you choose a focus in life like your breath or the sounds and every time you notice your attention is back up in your head, without judgment, you return to your focus? Or maybe it could be to live as if this were your last day to be alive. If these don’t call to you, ask life to show you how to move beyond the fear in your mind so that you can be present for this amazing, wondrous, alive, and constantly new journey called life.

Whatever you give to yourself, know it will become much easier to cut through the old games of your mind – the resistances, the entanglements, the struggles, the posturing, the trying, the doing, the endlessly struggling with life.  Then only love would be an appropriate response to whatever you are experiencing.

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To learn more about loving yourself, join me tomorrow for my Free Webinar: Falling in Love with You – exactly as you are, on December 8th, 5:30 PST. Learn how to move beyond all the beliefs, which say you have to be different than who you are in order to be okay and loved. If you can’t be on the call, send your questions to Devrah and Mary will answer them and you will receive a recording of the webinar. Please register by clicking on the link.

My new book Falling in Love with You: Nuggets of wisdom for a heartfelt life paperback is now available on our website and Amazon paperback & eBook.

This is a wonderful little book for a holiday gift for everyone you love and care about. A holiday special: buy three Falling in Love with You paperbacks from my website and get a fourth one for free. It will automatically be included in your package.