Ending the War

5 years ago, if someone had shown me a photo of what life would look like today, I would have wholeheartedly laughed out loud.  If they had told me that, in the middle of the deepest grief and heartache of my life...as I was being battered and tossed by hurricane force winds and waves, I would wake up somehow in sacred space...I would have called them crazy right to their face.  If they had told me that, in 5 years, the whole landscape of my existence would be changed, I would have nodded politely and walked away shaking my head.

And yet, it all seems so.

Somewhere along the line, the raging, bloody, loud, relentless war with myself became a distant, intermittent whisper.  I don't know when it happened, or just how...one day, it just was.

I noticed that the language in which my head spoke to my heart had changed...less judging, more kind...

I noticed a certain tone of willingness in my life...to see...to stay...

One day, after a long period of pain...searing, ripping, blinding pain...I woke up and realized that something had shifted.  In that pause, for that brief moment, nothing hurt...everything was ok...nothing was wrong with me...and, maybe for the first time...I really touched that.  I believed it.

I trusted in the goodness of this heart beating in my chest.

Compassionate...loving...

Sacred space...

(It is almost a given that I will forget again.  So I decided to write it down)

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One of my favorite talks about ending the war with ourselves is a recent one from Tara Brach - "Radical Acceptance Revisited" - there is so much good stuff in it that I can't even fit it all onto the page.  Listen to the whole talk HERE.  (You can also visit her website at www.tarabrach.com for a ton of talks and guided meditations - all offered freely)