"Discovering your Soul Signature" by Panache Desai
"There is an exquisiteness to sadness and pain. It has a quality and resonance that is unique. It's a way we all can relate to one another, because we all feel sadness. Were it not for our judgment of that emotion, no one would have a problem feeling it. Sadness is socially unacceptable - we're conditioned from day one to understand sadness as a sign of weakness - so people refuse to experience it, and it accumulates weight. Its density grows in the body. Look at the body language and posture of someone who is experiencing a depression: They seem to carry a weight on their shoulders. They're hunched over. They can hardly get out of bed. It's like a weeping willow tree as opposed to the mighty oak. the weeping willow has allowed the burdens of life to bend it."
"The key is to shift your experience of sadness. Grief? Loss? Tears pouring down your cheeks? Good. Feel it all. Know that you are one of 7.2 billion people on this planet who experience the same thing. The rejection of sadness further separates you from your own wholeness. Lean into it. Breathe. Accept. Embrace and embody the blessing of sadness, because where there is acceptance, judgment no longer has any power. When you let this energy wash over you, there will be an intensity to it, but as you keep allowing it to flow through you, it will eventually diminish. Allow life to do its job."
"As the Buddha said, life is suffering. But there is a magnificence in that suffering. And what's more, there is no true turning away from it. It is in turning toward suffering that, paradoxically, we discover our most vivid, alive, electric, feeling, sensitive, sensual selves."
"When sadness arises within us, we are being given an incredible opportunity to integrate the wounds of the past. We are being allowed to experience the very fabric of our story. Perhaps you woke up this morning and, for no reason, seemingly out of the blue, you felt sad. Your natural tendency would be to tighten up in the face of it. Buck up, old chap. Think about the way we cry. Either we stuff our tears and swallow the lump in our throats, or we allow our tears, which stream down our faces, real and true and irrefutable."
"Take a moment and put down your cup of coffee. Unless you are driving, close your eyes. Feel the swells rising and falling within you. Riding those swells is a feeling you like to keep at bay. What would happen if you felt it? Envision a tiny boat, tossed about by the crests of the waves that are always inside you. That boat is an intricate thing of great value and beauty. It is honed and colored by what it means to have been given this precious gift of life."
"I am asking that, as you move through your day, you allow life to impact you. When you see a young child reach for his mother's hand, allow your heart to open. When you see someone struggling in the street, allow your heart to open. When you receive a disappointment or a setback, allow your heart to open. This is the exquisite doorway through which life becomes larger and richer. Your sadness doesn't make you less of a human being. In fact, it makes you more."
"More expansive."
"More connected."
"Painfully beautiful."
"Raw. Open. Completely alive."
"Allow life to touch you. And when life touches you, meet it with softness. Meet it with authenticity. Allow your heart to merge with the hearts around you. See yourself in the faces of your fellow human beings. Just for today, live in the truth that there is nothing to defend. Live in the truth that vulnerability is power. Live in the truth that your sadness makes you human. As you leave for work, your child calls out, "Bye Daddy! I'm going to miss you!" Feel it. Allow your heart to break open. As you drop your older child off at school, notice the mother walking her disabled eight-year-old through the school's front doors. Don't look away. Feel it. Feel it as if that is you - because it is you. When you stop at the market, notice the elderly couple shopping together. They've been married for sixty years and are still holding hands. Feel it. This, too is you. Drive past the cemetery where your parents are buried. Look out at the thousand of tombstones, the lives once lived. Feel them. Feel them all."
"These feelings are not going to kill you."
"In fact, these feelings are going to connect you."
"To your own story, and the stories of others."
"Allow. Just for today, allow all that sadness in. Whenever you feel your heart, your body, and your mind hardening against what you're seeing, soften. Relax your belly. Breathe into your heart. Become aware of the soft and tender place that is always inside of you, like a pilot light, softly burning. That light is waiting for a moment of conscious recognition. Receive these moments. Experience them. Live the blessings of your exquisite life."
Night
"I am the tears you will not shed. I am the result of a life unloved. I am the experience of trying to please everyone else. I am the feeling of being lost. I am inconsolable. I am the part of you that you will not put on display, for fear that I may quickly turn into a raging river. For the fear that I might drown you. I am the part of you that you always keep secret. I am your secret lover. I share space with you on your pillow at night. I am present in your heartbreak. I am present in your loss. The accumulation of me leads to your grief. Without me, you would be lost."
"I reside in your lungs. I suffocate you from within. When I arise, a tight pressure and viselike grip surrounds your neck, encircles your throat."
"I render you mute."
"I steel your voice."
"You're all choked up."
"You will do everything you can to push me away. You will drink. Smoke. Have sex. Overeat. You'll try to outrun me, only to discover that you cannot. I linger within you. I linger within all of us. Moments of vulnerability expose my presence. Relationships draw me up and out. I reach a point when you no longer can contain me. When you no longer can hide me. When you have no choice but to admit that I exist."
"I am real."
"I am here."
"I am a part of you."
"You can run no more - and it's okay."
"I was present at the birth of your children. I was present at the death of your mother. I was present in the moment of abuse and trauma. I was present when the world rejected you and shunned you. I was present on the playground. In the cafeteria. In the locker room. I was there when the news headlines reported tragedy: the gunned - downed children, planes flying into buildings, young girls sold into sexual slavery. I was the uninvited guest at your wedding. I was there at your child's graduation. At the death of the family dog. At the birth of your grandchildren. The loss of your wife. The ringing of the phone. The officer at the door. In the hospital. On the cold, cold ground. I have been there every step of the way."
"I am your sadness."
"I am your tears. I am your grief. Your loss. I am you. I will exist until your last breath. To be in human form is to feel me."
"Allow the dam to break. I need to move through you. Come home to me. Come here. I have something to show you."
"Come"
"I have been waiting for you."
"Allow me to lead you home."
"Open to me. Allow me to flow. Allow the stream of me to move through you freely. I need to be free. Don't be afraid of me. Allow me to go. I must go now. Don't worry - I'll be back. I can never really leave. You will always feel me - but feel me like the wind on your back, or the lake surrounding you, the simple air you breathe. I always want to be moving. I always want to be in motion. Don't hold me back. It only hurts both of us."
"Let me go."
"Let me go."
Panache
Here is what I know. You are not alive if you don't feel your sadness, the lower levels of grief and loss, the vast emptiness of sorrow. And, I also know, that when you can feel this; you can feel the highest feelings as well.
And, you simply can't be your authentic self, if you push away these feelings of sadness. It is a huge part of who you are. And, the not allowing it to flow through you, is to stop living.
This is the first I have read about the beauty of sadness...how it is the exquisite part of living. I totally agree. It is what I call brilliantly tragic.
To meet a person who is afraid to show their sadness, is to meet a partial person.
"Vulnerability is Power."
It is to be a whole person!
