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The text in this piece comes from a longer poem called "Entering the Shrine." I wrote and posted that poem here last summer around this time. What I'm thinking about lately is the nature of commitment. Surrendering is something you have to do sometimes once you've made a commitment. Because when you're truly committed you are inevitably going to hit some hard times. What I'm talking about is not just hard times but Haaaaaard Times, the squeaky places inside ourselves that refuse to love, to be loved. Places that were perhaps wounded long, long ago and will not be touched. The beauty of commitment is that we're saying we'll see ourselves through these moments when these places inside us get revealed - whether through dreams, a deeper awareness of our feelings, or the repetiveness of things that don't work in our lives. Addictive responses often get formed as a way of avoiding feeling the pain that surrounds these old and largely hidden wounds. Being conscious is staying awake and feeling the pain, not going into reaction mode as a response to the pain. This is very difficult to do but I don't think any healing can occur unless we stay still and feel it. I know I keep repeating different versions of this point but it's what I'm grappling with all the time and I'm doing it...and it's hard. Like a Charles Dickens version of hard. Believe me. And in my version at this moment I'm talking about being commited to my true path, whether in or out of relationship. So there's feeling the original pain, that's like a repetitive theme, and then the habitual response which is to run away, and there's also the work of pulling back one's projections - which is another form of running away, really. Marion Woodman, in one of her lectures, archived in a collection called Sitting by the Well says that this work of pulling back our projections is some of the HARDEST work we'll ever do, it's the work of a lifetime. This is the work some of us commit to do, in the course of living authentically, and in the living of this commitment we are also constantly surrendering.
Not for the faint of heart. But there's true vitality to be found there. And love. It's the true coming home to ourselves.
"If you suddenly feel very light, clear, and deeply at peace, that is an unmistakable sign that you have truly surrendered." Eckhart Tolle, Practicing the Power of Now
