I am moved, (ongoing) by the ‘Together: Let’s take a moment to Just Be’ article @ 360° Nation (click below). It comes with a gallery (which everyone can contribute to) of folks taking a moment of ‘Just Being’ with their eyes closed.
My eyes are drawn into photo after photo of folks, young and old, consciously taking a moment to ‘Just Be’. I am struck by the certainty that although they appear to be in their own world, solitary beings, they are not alone. They are what they appear to be, solitary, and much much more. By choosing to take a moment away from the busyness of this physical world they open into a universe with infinite width and breadth. And I know beyond a shadow of a doubt when I enter my own moment of eyes closed, I can tune into something beyond my physical body, that is inclusive and pulses with love. I may not be able to see it or touch it and yet I am graced by good, supportive, restorative, expansive company.
I have been living, for a number of months now in the intimate company of a soul-searing, heart-torn-wide-open pain. I am in the midst of healing from my son’s transition from life a number of months ago. As I have been healing, I have been searching for ways to bear this pain. Fair enough. I look for lessons, growth and yet this quote shifted my perspective and took my healing process in a different direction:
Many spend their lives running from their feelings in the mistaken belief that they cannot bear the pain. But you have already born the pain, what you have not done is feel all that you are beyond the pain.
~Kahlil Gibran
I don’t need to bear this pain any longer! I have already born it. The pain of his sudden death, the pain of knowing that I will never be able to touch him again, the biggest pain that I will never ‘know’ him on this earthly plane. I loved being his sidekick, listening to him and being heard by him, playing with him and his family, ‘being there’ with all my attention and love.
Now my reasoning mind comes into play. You say you want to “know’ him? How well do we ever know one another? The only one I can ever know is myself.
What I had not done is to feel all that I am beyond this pain. I now regularly invite myself to feel all the feelings, to feel ‘the expansiveness’ of all that I am, beyond the pain. As I enter regularly into moments of Just Being – I see those times now as ‘being with my eyes wide shut’. Beyond the pain of the past, I expand into feeling beyond the tips of my fingers, beyond the edges of my physical body. I open to the throb, the pulse of the universe, the grace and supportive love of this planet, and beyond what I cannot see, into the cosmos. I become at Home with this fulfillment, gentle and sometimes simply blissful, a fulfillment right now. That simply put is a deep connection as I feel and explore the ocean of my expansive beingness. I am coming to ‘know’ and feel my son’s ongoing, loving, humorous, and tender presence as it manifests now.
Back to the gallery of folks – who have shared their photos -, I look at all of us with our eyes wide shut and I feel love. I share love. I am so grateful. We are Home, we are not alone.
I am so glad you wrote this. It explains with clarity what I have been “expanding into,” and makes me feel less alone in that experience. Thank you, thanks for the quote from Gibran, and for the reminder that pain is only a small part of all that I–and the whole collective I of the earth–am. Beautiful!