The Dung Heap and the Lotus

When I was first beginning this ole spiritual journey, I believed that serenity might come my way if I were only good enough.  I prayed the serenity prayer, trying to discern what was in my control to change and what was out of my control, but looking back now can see that I gave hardly anything up to things that I could not control and had a hard time accepting most things about myself. It seemed to me then that if I could only work harder to be a better friend, daughter, partner, economist, woman, than I might not have to endure so many failures.  When things got difficult, as they did, when I lost jobs, friends, joy, control over my anger, I felt ashamed to find myself once again unable to create through force of will, character, and competence a fruitful, easier, fulfilling life. The image I have of this time is of the red sea parting.  On one side is all that is bad and the other all that is good.  I stand in the middle straining with my always too meagre force of will to keep the bad away from the good so I might proceed towards my easy, fulfilling life.

This started to change after my father died and I experienced a pain that I did not want to be separated from. Perhaps this is what the death of beloveds does for us, opening us up to a tenderness of heart that can only come through great loss. My father crossed-over but through the pain of grieving, I felt a part of him taking up residence in my tender heart where our relationship continued to heal and deepen.  

It was about this time that a new yoga teacher came into my life whose words spoke to me a new way.  Maybe my heart so tender after my father’s death was now ready to hear what such a teacher had to say.  She made the yoga sutras approachable, vital even, with all the lessons about non-violence, devoted effort, surrender to the divine. Most importantly, through the experience she created on retreat, I got a felt sense of the inner peace that remains untouched by what is occurring in our outer world.  This was something completely new to me, that my inner state might be tethered to something inside that was beyond my smaller self and which remained steady and constant even as the world around me felt chaotic, broken, inhospitable.

My great desire started to shift from trying to be good enough to keep the bad things from happening to tethering to the inner calm that might sustain me in the midst of chaos. Bit by bit, I began to find a way in that held a new hospitality and this required seeing, accepting, and even loving the previously disguarded parts of myself.  I found in there a deep healing that was taking place not of my own effort or will but by a complete surrender and acceptance of what in the past I would be so ashamed of.

Like the tide pulling the water out to sea, I am drawn to follow this path more and more completely, this embracing the parts of myself that are afraid, ashamed, lonely, orphaned and destitute.  I no longer want to be away from them in some easy comfortable place.  Because at the knife’s edge between what I hope for and what is happening, I have found the Divine unfolding of my life, and I don’t want to miss out on any more of it.  It is in the very dung heap of my life where the perfumed lotus has bloomed. The failures, mishaps, terrible self-sacrificing, giving way through self-compassion, tenderness and grace a deeper, richer more generous life where I am less afraid, more courageous, more generous.