The Doorway to Freedom

As I have been meeting all the challenges that come with cancer, chemotherapy and now discovering I am a covid long-hauler, I have been staying close to one of my favorite quotes from Pema Chodron: 

“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. If we run a hundred miles an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from the obstacle, we find the very same problem waiting for us when we arrive. It just keeps returning with new names, forms, manifestations until we learn whatever it has to teach us about where we are separating ourselves from reality, how we are pulling back instead of opening up, closing down instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully whatever we encounter, without hesitating or retreating into ourselves.” 

What is she saying here? She is saying that our challenges, the parts of our life where we resist, deny, ignore, judge, blame or endlessly try to fix, are really our teachers. They are for us! For how we become free from the world of struggle is to get to know it, to explore it, to investigate what we are experiencing, especially when our mind really doesn’t like what we are experiencing. In other words, what’s in the way is the way! 

But as you cultivate the art of turning toward rather than turning away, you will come to a startling truth – the mind loves denial. “I am fine,” it says when your best friend betrayed you. Or you spend your energy blaming somebody else in order to distance yourself from yourself. Or you just eat the thing, drink the thing, smoke the thing, take the thing, shop the thing or get very, very busy.  

I think denial has gotten so strong inside of us because our mind remembers we survived when we were young by getting as far away as we could from our difficult experiences. We were all raised by unconscious giants who may have loved us, but they wounded us in ways they didn’t even know. Also, most of us were alone with our wounds. So, we had to put up protective walls in order to survive, not only with the world but with the deep feelings that all children experience.  

It is startling to realize how strongly we were conditioned to turn away but that is like running away from a bear you come across in the woods. It is almost guaranteed that the bear will run after you. Turning away, even though it may be necessary at times, will never bring the deep and lasting healing you long for. Being aware of when you contract, being present for it, opens the doorway to freedom.   

Over the years I have cultivated the art of turning toward my experience and have brought home to my heart so many parts of myself I used to be ashamed of and afraid of. But there are two parts of me I’ve only been able to be with for a few seconds, maybe a few minutes at the most, and they are my core experience of life when I was very young. The first is the experience of feeling trapped, the feeling that there is no way out. Even as I write this, I can feel a tightening in my gut. The second is helpless, hopeless despair.  

Both of these states have been coming regularly in this journey through cancer and Covid, especially in the middle of the night. When woken up, almost every single time my mind initially reacts, wanting to retreat back into the oblivion of sleep. But I’ve been on this journey home long enough to know, deeply know, that meeting what I am experiencing is where I unhook from the world of struggle. 

So, after acknowledging the initial reaction with kindness, I then go exploring, usually with the question, “Without changing anything, what can I notice about what I’m experiencing right now?” As my attention stabilizes, I can see what my mind was resistant to experiencing, whether it’s deep fatigue, fear this is never going to end, pain, or my body feeling very uncomfortable. I then usually ask the question, “Without changing anything, can I allow this to be here?” Or “Without changing anything, can I touch this with tenderness?” Having cultivated an open heart over the years, this question opens the door of my heart, and it floods what I have been resisting with such tenderness and kindness it oftentimes brings tears to my eyes. And then I can stay for long periods of time with the healing that comes from enfolding what I formerly resisted with my own heart. This is what every thought, every feeling, every sensation you have locked out of your heart longs for, deserves and is worthy of.  

It is the spaciousness of your heart that will keep on reminding you that what is uncomfortable is your teacher and sanity comes when you turn and say hello. So, if you are ready, in Pema’s words, to see how you are separating yourself from reality, how you are pulling back instead of opening up, closing down instead of allowing yourself to experience fully whatever you encounter, then cultivate the art of turning toward. For everything you long for and everything you truly are, is already and always with you, right here, right now