Allowing Pain In

I think most of us can relate to those times when others around us are suffering and it can feel like a heavy weight sinking us down. The practice of mindfulness teaches us many strategies for learning how to hold others pain lightly in an effort to be of service to both them and yourself. This is, of course, often understood in theory but difficult to deploy in practice which is why it is called just that… a practice. As I sought guidance on this topic myself I went where I often go, to my trusted books of inspiration, and this reading became by message for last week. 

Allowing Pain In, Mark Nepo

I am becoming water:
I let everything rinse its grief in me and reflect as much light as I can

Another paradox I continually struggle with is how to let others in without becoming them. How to open the door of compassion without the things and people we feel for overpowering us. 
It goes as far back as Jesus and Buddha, and the miracle of such spirits is that they show us that there is some basic clear element in each of us, like water, which can glow without a name, which can allow the pain and grief of others in without turning us into just pain and grief. 
Many traditions speak to this. We call it love when we do this for another and compassion when we hold this intention for all living things. The Tibetan Buddhist tradition has a meditation practice called tong-len that asks us to breathe in the suffeirng of the world, to hold it in that unbreakable place of compassion, and to then breathe back light. 
The beauty of such a practice is that it assumes and affirms that there is something timeless and indestructible within each of us that can heal us and the world if we can just open ourselves to it. 

Both on the mat and off this week we practiced connecting to our water element. Water is both strong and flexible, powerful and resilient. It can be soft at times like a gentle stream, and at other moments overtake anything. Water picks up all kinds of things on its journey but leaves behind what it doesn’t need in order to continue on its path; and the entire time it is reflecting back the light of the sun or moon. 

Water is one of the strongest forces on earth and it yields its power at times. Yet it can also be a source of great solace and calm. Within water lies the beautiful balance between strength and ease; the balance we look to attain on the mat in our bodies and in our hearts and minds as well.

The picture above always makes me laugh because 2 seconds after it was taken that wave came in and washed me out! It was a humbling reminder of the both the beauty and the power of this force of nature.  As we can see, there is quite a bit we can learn from water; how to channel and deploy the different parts of ourselves when we need them, how to vacillate between strength and ease and how to not get washed away in the grief of others so we can reflect light back instead.