Tides
“Cutting our expectations for a cure is a gift we can give ourselves. There is no cure for hot or cold. They will go on forever. After we have died, the ebb and flow will still continue. Like the tides of the sea, like day and night—this is the nature of things. Being able to appreciate, being able to look closely, being able to open our minds—this is the core of maitri.” -Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart
“In the contemplative journey, as we swim down into those deeper waters toward the wellsprings of hope, we begin to experience and trust what it means to lay down self, to let go of ordinary awareness and surrender ourselves to the mercy of God. And as hope, the hidden spring of mercy deep within us, is released in that touch and flows out from the center, filling us with the fullness of God’s own purpose living itself into action, then we discover within ourselves the mysterious plenitude to live into action what our ordinary hearts and minds could not possibly sustain. In plumbing deeply the hidden rootedness of the whole, where all things are held together in the Mercy, we are released from the grip of personal fear and set free to minister with skillful means and true compassion to a world desperately in need of reconnection.” - Cynthia Bourgeault
When we accept life as an ebb and flow that continues regardless of how we manifest in it, our way of being present to all circumstances and decisions feels as if one is floating through a dream. Our minds expand and we don’t grip onto our desires and impetus to control so strongly. In letting go and expanding, we encounter not emptiness but fullness, a fullness that doesn’t come from filling our minds and the space that we share with another with the assertion of our thoughts, opinions, and wants, but a fullness of being more than a small, separate self. A fullness of being a witness to the ebb and flow that continues through and beyond us. With a mind and heart so full, we ironically find more space to hold and live out what our small hearts couldn’t before because it feared the unfamiliarity, the strangeness, the possible threat to the security of a known and carefully-handled life. There is strength in such openness, in riding the tides.