It's so easy to feel expansive and at one with such a lovely image as the wind through the leaves, the blue sky so clear!
Yet, a small branch within the tree caught my eye as well - this branch had been damaged and while it still was part of the tree, the damage clearly had killed it. The leaves were turning slightly yellowish brown, and when the wind blew, the branch merely lifted and fell. Like it was being pushed by the wind, instead of bending and flowing with it.
It was interesting to feel both the happiness of the living branches and the sadness of the dying one. To recognize that to be in inter-being with all things, means not only to experience the joy of the beautiful things, but also the very frightening experience of being at one with death and decay.
In feeling that poignancy of both joy and sadness was a good meditation that day - to know that one of the barriers that I face is my fear of intense feeling. Even in great joy, I feel a holding - a holding back when feelings are too good - too intense. I think down deep, I'm afraid that if I feel something that good, it will be taken away from me. Better not to feel it at all, than to have yet another grief on my hands that I don't know what to do with.
Yet, in my work with hospice patients, I'm discovering that while that level of grief is terrifying to me, that there is great value in doing one's personal grief work. I've simply collected my grief over the years rather than letting it out - very slowly, I'm learning what to do with it. I believe that it's the most important work of my life.
Buddhism is helping me, being in fellowship with others who are working through grief is helping, readings on the subject are certainly helping.
What is helping most, is sitting quietly, often through my tears, and turning my face toward the grief that has always been there, but that I refused to acknowledge - taking all the time I need to sit with it, feel it, and heal.
