I had a ‘real-eyes-ation’ the other day.
I wrote it down before I could forget, and have since gone back to it many times as the words give me comfort. Now, it may be that they give me comfort because I wrote them to myself in my own words from a direct personal experience, but there is something in me that feels compelled to share them.
{I’ve tried not sharing and it is still nagging away at me.}
So here, interspersed with some photos from my roof garden, and against my ego’s insistence that I keep it private because “it’s personal and embarrassing and everyone will think I’m being pseudo-spiritual ~ oh and by the way showing weakness is really uncool” {I know, kind of hilarious in black and white!}, is what I wrote. {Unedited – eek.*}
May it comfort you too.
“I was just crying during my cushion time**, thinking about the things I struggle with and how the struggle feels endless and is so hard and painful, and I was thinking ‘it feels like a mountain’ ~ of stuff to overcome/get over/deal with. And I said ‘please help me, please help me’.
I don’t know what order it happened in but suddenly I thought ‘There is no mountain’, and I saw that there is only this, now, this, now. No mountain ~ the mountain was in my head, I made it up, it wasn’t real. I only had to do this moment now, where there is no mountain.
I’m not sure I’ve ever really understood experientially what it means to drop from the head to the heart, but I heard that by touching where your heart chakra is you automatically refocus there, so I did. I didn’t really feel different but I did realise that in my heart there’s no thinking, so there’s no pain.
There is only love and peace and joy there, and if I refocus/go there I see that everything in my head is not real or true. I tell myself story after story and then believe myself, buying into the pain and fear and loss and sadness and frustration.
My heart takes part in none of this. The heart is only love, constant and flowing, like a river over rocks.
If I stay in my heart I tell no stories, I accept what is, I go with the flow of whatever’s happening around me, and I don’t get tangled up. It’s not about denying, ignoring, running away from ~ the stories will probably always be running.
But they can run in the background instead of the foreground. It is about refocusing to a place where all my offerings are.
Where I am not withdrawing in discomfort, or frustrated and raging, or heartbroken {mindbroken?} and sad. I can let those things be there while I sit in my heart and know love and acceptance.
As I write this I am wondering if I am, as always, intellectualising a concept, but that is also a story! A distraction by my mind to keep me in thrall to pain and suffering. I want and need to hold onto this real-eyes-ation.
I forget my learnings so easily. There is no mountain.”
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*20 mins of “meditation” I do every morning on a cushion
**photos are totally edited {attempting to silence the ego with a compromise :)}
Thank you for opening your heart and sharing these words of wisdom. They are reverberating throughout my heart and ringing true, true, true….I cannot begin to tell you how much this means to me, I will just say that there have been awful storries playing on repeat in my head these days and this stopped the madness. I have not been by in a while with our move and such but stopping in today and spending time catchin up on your writing, painting and photography was just lovely. Peace, light, and love to you.
Thank you Tara. I needed to hear this today. Also your photos are beautiful. x
wow… I just thought I would quickly read your post before I rushed out the door this morning, but there was no rushing going on here this morning… so much to take in. These words of wisdom were all so true, but I think the second one really got me, really made me stop and take note.
Thank you Tara for being you and for sharing…
xxx
‘there is no mountain’!!! That is the key to realising that living in your heart is so much more preferable to living in your head. It usually takes a long time working through life experiences to come to this realisation but in your case, dear Tara, I think you are fast tracking 🙂 .
We are given trials along our life’s path which our brain interprets as mountain to climb, when in fact, all we need do is live through the trial, accepting the lessons we are taught and being encouraged by what we learn, so that, as and when our mountains appear on the horizon, instead of seeing them as mountains to climb, we can see them for what they truly are – opportunities to learn about ourselves and to grow from the experience so that what we do learn can be passed on to others, to make their journey through life a little less hard.
x
Please feel no shame in sharing this. It’s inspiring and beautiful to see yourself acknowledge your own healing. That mountain was a false idol, a negative, draining, unloving lie compared to the perfection of your hearts true feelings. Even the painful kinds are fluid and perfect. Now that the truth has been remembered you feel rebalanced and at peace. You may still feel exactly what you felt to come up with that description/symbol of a mountain BUT feelings of the heart are true- it’s only our attempts as mortals to describe them with words that fail us and distract us. The words and symbols become more powerful and warped with fear then the feelings in the first place. That may be why you are drawn to visuals as they represent your heart better? I find music does that for me. I have zero musical talent nor much interest in music day to day but when I need to confront an emotion I find music completes the circle. Often the lyrics will have no relation but the sound expresses exactly how I feel. It’s hard to just let a feeling be a feeling because even feelings are described as a ‘feeling’. That’s the beauty of meditating because you get to quietly address that and just accecpt that sensation for exactly what it is in all is silence and nothingness and peace. I love how there is no word for it. It’s just ‘—-‘
A final thought. You don’t have to climb a mountain. You can always sit and enjoy the view.