Tension & Attention
Seeing Clearly ...
Dear Friends,
It was the night of my senior prom, and I was not going. At the time, I felt a great deal of loneliness and despair in my life, and I was dreading an evening at home knowing so many others were out dancing and enjoying themselves.
“Can’t I just sleep through this?” I remember thinking to myself, not wanting to feel the isolation I felt. At about 4pm I cajoled myself to sleep, and woke up the following day.
I did it. I had slept my way through the experience. Yet it was not healed, only avoided.
We all relate to challenges differently, and one way is to avoid them. Just recently I had a day with a number of challenges, and I noticed myself sitting in my car engrossed on my phone focused on nothing essential. After about 30 minutes, I thought. “What am I doing?”
It was a different kind of going to sleep. Avoidance says, “I’ll just look this way, thank you very much.” It could be for 30 minutes or it could be for 30 years.
Of course, the challenges do not go anywhere. In fact, the resistance to them just gives them more power.
Our other choice is to see clearly, to bear witness to the truth of any situation, be it internal or external, from our feelings of isolation to climate change.
Interviewing Gabor Maté recently, he said, “Where there is tension, it deserves our attention.” So true, and so easy to forget, especially in a world of devices more than happy to satisfy our inclination to distract.
So here we are, doing the best we can, and when we can turn ever so gently to what is here, to the tension, the seeing allows us a type of freedom. We are not limited in the same way. We can walk down a variety of streets in our life, not just a few.
So today my friends, as you go about your life, may you see what needs to be seen, feel what needs to be felt, and allow what is ready to come forth.
Blessings,
SOREN
Uncovering the True Self
We are not what we perceive us to be
We let our emotions and roles define us
Will I succeed at this
Will she love me as I am
Will I be recognized and popular.
These are the uncut stone edges
Covering the meaning
Waiting to be sculpted
The excess of stone from emotions and worries
Which beckon to be chiseled
As Michelangelo did
To reveal an underlying beauty
We call the soul of our work.
Our work here on Earth
Is to spread among us
Our true loving nature
Buried within us and beneath
The uncut stone of our thinking.
We need the chisels and tools
Of a Michelangelo
To remove the excess material
That covers the spirit
A spirit of loving kindness
And surrender to what we feel in our heart
Is our true nature and beauty
Awaiting release from the excess we are not.
So let us apply our own chisel
And remove the excess fabrications
Surrounding our soul
And sculpt our statue to expose
The beauty within us
A sculpture free of the raw stone of fear
And excessive needs for self-promotion
That grew out of mountains
Of uncut stone.
(8/8/23)
George Weiss