What a relief to have finally understood that there is nothing wrong with me
Dear Soul,
photo by Kristina Tripkovic
Dear Soul,
What a relief to have finally understood that there is nothing wrong with me.
How I feel right now is simply the natural, inevitable result of the entirety of the life I have lived up until now - meeting the exact circumstances I find myself in today.
When I am tempted to point the finger of blame at the past for my present pain and say, “You see - you got what you asked for!”, my grief is here to tell me:
This too means that nothing is wrong.
Because what I wanted in the past was simply the natural, inevitable result of the entirety of the life I’d lived just before I met the exact circumstances I found myself in then.
Because my grief has always accompanied me, I can safely guess, that it always will.
Whenever I need to admit that life is not pain-free in order to shed my delusions and take right action in the world, my grief will be there for me.
My delusions tell me how my life “should” be.
When my mind talks about what I “should” do, what I “should” feel or who I “should” be, my body knows exactly what this means.
I know it in my bones, dear soul.
“THAT is the LAST thing I want to do!”
“Feeling like THAT doesn’t fit my reality.”
“Being THAT person could only be a performance that I could never believe in - even if I manage to convince the others.”
When I ignore what is and commit myself what “should” be, my body keeps the score:
“Time to brace for suffering. Infuse all action with at least one droplet of internal resistance. Mix in doubt, guilt and resentment to taste.”
When I believe I “shouldn’t” grieve, I refuse to acknowledge that I am exactly who I am, I am doing exactly what makes the most sense to me to do, and what I feel is unavoidably colored by all the “lessons” I’ve ever “learned” and all the blindspots I have yet to see.
My resistance to grief IS my blindspot.
Yet each time I admit to not having the answers, to not understanding how to “do what I should,” you have given your blessing to my confusion, dear soul.
My tears are your wisdom, that does not know how to deny who I am, how not feel what I feel, nor how to do more than the very best that I can do right now.
This seems to be true, dear soul, not only when I experience profound tragedy, but also when I burn the toast, arrive late for my appointment or lose my temper at an inopportune moment.
The truth is: my mind was occupied with concerns that felt more pressing than vigilance to a slice of bread.
The truth is: I simply didn’t plan my morning like a shift supervisor, or perhaps I was interrupted unexpectedly.
The truth is: in that moment, I had not already provided for myself the necessary nourishment such that I could face that dissonance with calm and creativity.
The entirety of my life experience simply met my circumstances in exactly those ways in those particular moments, which are already passed and can not be changed.
But I can grieve them, dear soul.
I can wash the dust from my eyes and turn to face life again with the presence of knowing that THIS is who I am and THIS is how I feel.
From this vantage point I can see clearly that there is nothing that I should do - and nothing that I shouldn’t do. There is only this gift, this infinite opportunity for learning.
Somatic Inquiry is a practice of deep listening that takes you below the level of your thinking mind and into your body where your compass is always oriented towards well-being.
April 24 & 29: Cultivating Relational Harmony through Somatic Inquiry