The Five Invitations by Frank Ostaseski

Author:Frank Ostaseski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flatiron Books

[10]

THE RAGING RIVER

What is to give light

must endure burning.

—VIKTOR FRANKL

How do we cultivate our essential nature without sidestepping our human nature? This is at the heart of Bring Your Whole Self to the Experience.

It is a most beautiful and difficult thing to be human.

Waking up in this human experience is not easy. Authentic spiritual practice is not about maintaining high altered states, transcending the body, bypassing difficult emotions, or healing all that remains unresolved within us. It is more grounded, real, and alive than that. Spiritual practice helps us settle into the utter simplicity of being ourselves. The healing that it engenders happens when we bring awareness to the places that have hardened in us through the conditioned habits of grasping, resistance, and avoidance.

Mindfulness is a de-conditioning. It cultivates a merciful, awake presence of mind that no longer blocks the heart. Then things are free to be as they are. We allow the difficult, dark, and dense. We become more intimate with our pain and difficulties, our joy and beauty, embodying our full humanity and discovering an ever-deeper, vast sense of wholeness.

Sometimes what is over there seems more valuable than what is right here. But being who you are can only arise from accepting where you are.

* * *

My daughter, Gina, and I were walking on a stunning thin strip of beach on an island in northern Thailand. As a young person, she was prone to emotional upheaval. This day was being swept away by her unrequited attraction to a boy back home. As we walked, she talked, explaining how she had to get to a phone to call him. I asked her if she was sure she wanted to spend her time in paradise strategizing about how to reach this guy.

Wisely realizing that she wasn’t even seeing the turquoise water surrounding us, she replied, “No, but what am I supposed to do about this? How do I get rid of this feeling?”

I might have dismissed this as a teenage drama, but I saw a small opening. I asked Gina to sense her body, particularly in the area of her chest. She reported the tension and heat she found there. She took a few breaths. I asked if she could name the feeling she was experiencing.

“Sadness and the fear that I will be rejected,” she replied immediately. As she spoke, she realized how this feeling was opening up a deeper pool of unacknowledged grief that she had been carrying around.

With all the love in my heart, I said, “Sweetie, don’t sell yourself short. Your thoughts and emotions are not who you are. They pass through you, but they are not you.”

She stood still. It was like Moses seeing the burning bush. Her mind momentarily stopped. That simple truth had the power of a holy revelation for her.

We lay down in the sand and looked up. I said, “You are as amazing as the blue sky above us. Your emotions are like the clouds passing through the sky. This story of unrequited love is just another passing show.

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