Just because I tolerate your actions does not mean I condone them.
It does not mean they do not wound me, make me bristle or rattle my confidence in my own internal guidance systems.
Tolerance simply means that I am giving you room to be you – to learn and teach us both through your actions – to allow us to explore anger and fear, but also know patience, compassion, and forgiveness.
Tolerance is grace flexing its muscles. Tolerance is the power of my will to know my truth and allow you to explore yours.
Have you ever noticed there is a natural rhythm to the flow of things? When you are in sync with that energetic rhythm there is no resistance – everything flows.
Try to push or pull against the natural flow of your experience and it causes turbulence, imbalance and the potential for unnecessary suffering.
To reduce the discomfort, increase the pause. Slow the looking and the feeling. Sip it in until you can interpret the rhythm.
When I connect with my breath – the rhythmic pattern of inhale and exhale – it shows me the resistance, the tension, and where there may be imbalance. I can chose to ride the breath as it is or invite a shift. Either way, I am getting into the flow, balancing on the crest, and engaging a more comfortable and sustainable way of being.
When I pulse instead of push – on the breath, on sounds, on tastes, on interactions with others, or my experiences – there is a symmetry and unending sense that all is OK.
Funny how we assign emotions, assume other’s perspectives, and assimilate outside experiences as our own.
The body works so hard to represent the advisory panel of our thoughts, feelings, and sensations, but sometimes it doesn’t always get that representation right. Sometimes we read too much into posture, expression, engagement. We jump to conclusions.
All along, it’s just a series of labels we attach to things to create order — an illusion that we have some sort of control.
Let the labels wash away and then what is there? Energy — plain and simple chemical reactions — that whimsically attach to illusions. Eliminating the labels, we engage our intuition, not just our eyes, to interpret our surroundings. It is not always what I see that informs, but how it bumps up against me energetically.
The real gift in communication and connection is tapping into that energy.
Bored…or relaxed?
Impatient…or enthusiastic?
Sad…or peaceful?
Or maybe the energy isn’t connected to the expression at all.
Lose the labels…make the deeper connections…feel the power in knowing beyond seeing.
I certainly don’t claim to have any part of this whole dying thing down. But I have seen enough family and friends make that transition to understand that it is not in the clinging to this life or the wallowing in the departure that brings peace. It is not in the anointing or in the fighting that we pass on but in the releasing…the letting go of the story, the belief that we are only of value in this living physical form, the fear we have somehow not been or done enough, and the pressure to continue on in something that has drawn to a close.
I believe we always have the choice. There can be fanfare and drama or quiet and stillness. Those left behind can wail and wrestle with their loss or
be happy for the soul that returns to the light, which I believe allows the departed to float more freely, untethered to the strings of our emotions, fears, and needs in this temporal space.
We need not believe in “life” after this body, but we can be sure that we are more than this body. We can be grateful for the space this body provided for us to play and learn – whether just hours or days or many, many years.
We all have within us a mysterious longing to be free, yet we spend little time preparing for the opportunity to run freely when the gates are open.
One thing that is becoming increasingly clear to me is that it seems the way to die may be to live in love, to surround ourselves with those who are willing to hold the gates open for us, and let nothing hinder us from feeling whole, content, and ready to run.
So often during times of personal growth and expansion into self, we can find ourselves struggling in surroundings that seemed so comfortable and familiar before our transition into this new space. Family and friends become reticent, relationships unsettled. We are blossoming into harmony within as the world without seems to crumble.
We need not own that struggle. We need not judge those who seem to be hanging behind, unwilling to change, as we move into these new frontiers or feel slighted as they perceive us as weird or difficult to understand. There is room for us to all be who we will be. The important part is to stay true to who you are…no matter what.
Remember, you are what you are…and what a lovely you, you are…just the way you are!
Monday Mindfulness 