GROWING PAINS

"When we learn how to be truly present with our joy and our sorrow, with our longing and our desires, layer upon layer of our selves and the world are revealed."

-- Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Hi Patrice,

As a student of Jeddah Mali, I am using meditation to know myself in a deeper, more profound way. By making the commitment to turn my attention inward and away from the many distractions of my outer life, I am exploring and experiencing the true power, wisdom and love that exist within us all.

On this inner journey, I now regularly spend time awash in qualities like peace, gratitude, compassion, and joy. So it's a real shock and downer to find myself at times in old patterns of resistance and negativity.

Yet this is an integral part of the process. The wholeness I seek must allow for everything -- the dark and light together. When a friend shared Phileena Heuertz's message of her experience of a sabbatical, it resonated so deeply that I'm inspired to share it with you. Thank you, Phileena!

~ Patrice

Allowing for Metamorphosis

Transformation, which essentially involves healing, is a slow process. It is rarely full and complete in an instant. It takes time. And during that time, it demands cycles of awakening, longing, darkness, and yes, even death. All are crucial to this most sacred work in us.

Being healed of that which shackled me and prevented me from being fully me took time and space for solitude, silence, and stillness. You might enter a sabbatical expecting a kind of convalescence, but it wound up being more like rehab for me -- lots of stumbling and frustration and even anguish. This is how we feel when we emerge from our cocoon as we begin to live into our true self -- the person loved for whom he is alone and not for what he can do or be for others.

During seasons of transformation, we have to find our footing and let our wings harden so we can make the flight of our life. An intentional Sabbath season made it possible for me to enter my chrysalis and submit to a metamorphosis of my soul.

~ Phileena Heuertz
Pilgrimage of a Soul: Spirituality for the Active Life, Intervarsity Press, 2010

"This being human is a guest house. Every day is a new arrival.

"A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.

"Welcome and entertain them all! ..."

-- Rumi, from 'The Guest House'

"Love for myself comes into being only when I accept and experience my feelings as they are, at this very moment, both pleasant and unpleasant. As I welcome my painful self, it heals. Loving myself provides the power for transformation."

-- John Ruskan