"To stay with that shakiness—to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge—that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic—this is the spiritual path."
Pema Chodron
The path to enlightenment isn’t a slide of joy, love and bliss, perhaps once you have untangled all the crossed wires and unhooked all the addictive tendencies, connected love of self, but until then…when you feel that it is hopeless, when it seems so upside down and backwards, head in.
Head directly in what is giving you stress and angst, and look about inside and outside, see it all as an experiment in humankind.
I used to look at others and see all the places they were backwards, where they made actions blindly and sat befuddled in the outcome, now I look at how I affect the world around me.
I am not excited or feeling blissful as I delve deeply into how my all or none actions are affecting me, my mothering skills, and how this all affects my children’s sense self, but in the moments when I feel so out of control, I usually am.
I usually have taken a learned behavior and never questioned its application. Not only on me, but those around me.
It leaves you breathless to see how your words and actions can literally change the way another feels about themselves.
One of the biggest challenges in all of this is to be the changeling mom, to be the one to undo and correct generations of useless tools.
I am never certain what will work, but I am always certain that if I don’t change, the legacy will continue on, a legacy of all or none living.
The perspective alone from all or none, to both-and leaves everyone with multiple options and the gates open wide in allowing different opinions to enter, for new ideas to be born, a change of the landscape as well as the people who live upon it.
It leaves me hopeful, always.
Hopeful that the damage I have inflicted can be turned around, that when I finally learn a new way, they will instantly feel the affects.
The affects of being accepted, of allowing their true selves to shine forth, their voices to be heard, a life to be noticed, hopeful they will be in a reality of Both and And.
