“Spiritual awakening is frequently described as a journey to the top of a mountain. In the process of discovering bodhichitta [the awakened heart], the journey goes down, not up. It’s as if the mountain pointed toward the center of the earth instead of reaching into the sky. Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward the turbulence and doubt. We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away. If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes, we let it be as it is. At our own pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down. With us move millions of others, our companions in awakening from fear. At the bottom we discover water, the healing water of bodhichitta. Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die.” —Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, pages 91-92
This advice is counter-intuitive. It even sounds crazy. Why would anyone move towards pain? Isn’t the idea to be free of it? But how does that work for you? It doesn’t work. Pushing away doesn’t work. Ignoring it doesn’t work. (It may feel okay to the person ignoring it, but probably not to the people around the ignorer.) It doesn’t go away. It just gets worse.
But oddly, when I can embrace pain, insecurity, turbulence as a natural part of my life, as a natural part of the human condition, neither good nor bad, it doesn’t wield the power over my life that it once had. Accepting it is oddly freeing. Oddly comfortable. Not saying that I can do this every moment, every day. But when I can, it’s YES! in capital letters.