Tune Into Your Discomfort, A Wise Teacher Within

Life is a schoolroom of the heart and your core assignment is to follow love.  Why?  Because there is no one more deserving of love in the whole universe than you, exactly as you are.  It is quite an assignment when you really think about it because one of the greatest teachers in this schoolroom is discomfort. The more we wake up, the more we get very interested in uncomfortable things like surgery, the flu, a cancer diagnosis, or even when someone rejects us or when we lose a lot of money on the stock market.  Life is giving us so many opportunities to find out why our hearts are closed to these uncomfortable places.

I have had the opportunity to be a full-time student in the schoolroom of the heart.  In November, I was scheduled for shoulder surgery.  I arrived at the hospital at about 12:45 pm for a 1:30 pm surgery time, after having had nothing to eat or drink since the night before.  Several hours went by and I was still in my hospital gown sitting in a tiny cubicle with an IV needle in my arm ready for hook-up. Then at about 3:00 pm, my mind started getting upset.  I was hungry and thirsty!  Up until that point, I had been able to breathe into my belly and connect with my heart in preparation for the surgery.  But as the upset started to build, I yelled out “Hello, is anybody there?”  I was told it would be at least another hour.  My mind did not like that answer at all, so it decided it was going to take over. It did not take me long to become aware of the mind’s resistance to the situation, and I was able to bring curiosity and compassion to the resistant one who was feeling impatient.  My mind calmed down pretty quickly because I was able to see that scared little one inside of me and flood her with heart energy. Then all of the upset was embraced in my heart.

A week into my recovery, there were times when my whole being felt like it was underwater.  My mind did not like any of it, including the pain, lack of sleep, and not being able to go out of the house.  Each time my mind tried to take over, I brought curiosity and compassion to these upsets, or what I call “set ups.”  In my latest book, What’s In the Way IS the Way, there is a wonderful saying I use to remind myself that set ups are just part of the schoolroom of the heart:  “Life is set up, to bring up, what has been bound up, so if can open up, to be freed up, so you can show up, for Life!” As the set ups continued, I began asking questions of life, such as “What are you showing me? “ and “What am I ready to see?”  Asking questions without expecting answers is powerful because it creates a vacuum in the universe and the intelligence of life will live the answers through us.  Most people forget to ask life for help because we have been conditioned our whole lives to think that we are the ones that have to figure it all out.  It is such a relief to turn it over and let life be in charge of life.

There are huge gifts coming out of this surgery.  Every time I am at my edge, I am able to bring curiosity and compassion to the resistant one that does not like any of it.  And whenever I do that, I am back in my natural state of being bathed by my own heart.  Life is asking all of us to fall in love with whatever is showing up at the moment, even discomfort, and to meet ourselves exactly as we are in the schoolroom of the heart.  So, I invite you to hold the intention that your life is about discovering the places inside of you that are still closed to your heart or that your heart is still closed to them.  The next time you are at your edge, try asking life a question without expecting an answer.  Then bring curiosity and compassion to the part of you that is suffering.  How does it make you feel?  What is life trying to teach you?