I'm just gonna... feel
I got an email about that last post. Did you know it was depressing? At first I got kinda pissed, then I thought... it's interesting how difficult it seems to be for many of us to just... feel. Hell, sometimes it's difficult to even recognize and name what you're feeling beyond, say, "I feel icky" or some other non-specific term.
I spent a long time running from pain. You paint it with a brush that hides the darkness, make it something else in your head, focus on someone or something else so you don't have to feel it.
The Invitation, and the man who showed me The Invitation, changed that. I'm different now. I choose to experience all of life, which includes the darkness.
It is ok to feel sad. It is ok to feel hurt. It is ok to feel pain. The sensations of helplessness, even hopelessness are not permanent - they are waves, they wash over you and recede - if you let them. And then, suddenly, the next crashing wave isn't so dismal, has elements of renewal and promise. Fighting a rip tide is the worst thing you can do.
My friend has a saying: feel what you feel, notice what you notice. When darkness comes - and it will, it does - this is particularly good advice.
I spent a long time running from pain. You paint it with a brush that hides the darkness, make it something else in your head, focus on someone or something else so you don't have to feel it.
The Invitation, and the man who showed me The Invitation, changed that. I'm different now. I choose to experience all of life, which includes the darkness.
It is ok to feel sad. It is ok to feel hurt. It is ok to feel pain. The sensations of helplessness, even hopelessness are not permanent - they are waves, they wash over you and recede - if you let them. And then, suddenly, the next crashing wave isn't so dismal, has elements of renewal and promise. Fighting a rip tide is the worst thing you can do.
My friend has a saying: feel what you feel, notice what you notice. When darkness comes - and it will, it does - this is particularly good advice.
posted by MysticSpirit (Sass) at 3:27 PM
7 Comments:
rick... I don't think I've ever read anything of yours that was 'nothing' *smiling*
Yin and yang. For one to appreciate the light, one must experience darkness.
Even as one who has been battling a case of depression for much of the past year, I understand its purpose. There is often no explanation for the dark mood, just part of the cycle, and those brilliant bright notes shine all the more clearly for it.
It seems to me that the important thing is to be present IN each and every moment and appreciate it for exactly what it is, good or bad, the 'Power of Now' as I have heard it described. It seems senseless to do otherwise.
If I can feel your joy I have to be able to feel your pain.
Right on.
this was the strangest thing - in a good way tho :) read this and felt a deep connection - cuz its so very like some of my own process over the past little while.
thank you for sharin it.
That's such a great saying!
It's strange... some people run from pain as you describe. Some people can't live without it, the masochist in us creates it in order to provide proof of feeling, proof of something...
What Edge said...
that is very interesting.
I agree with him.
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