Keep it simple, silly

Monday, February 23, 2004

I wish to write as essay on ‘openness’, only to discover I haven’t written a single thing for a week, which would have to be the only week in the past year apart from Vipassana that this would be the case.

And this at a time when one would imagine I would have the most to write. The time when everything I have changed my life for stands to be challenged, the time when I most need to examine myself and my direction.

A few days ago I opened myself to the community and shed tears that had been bottled up inside me for far too long. It was such an emotional experience that I have been ill ever since. Yet I am still incapable of sharing these sentiments with myself. I cannot put them down on paper. I cannot play with them, examine them and sort them out. Instead, I guard myself against them, refusing to write until such times as they are safely hidden away again, tucked in a corner of my psyche that refuses to communicate with the written word. And then I think I’m in a position to write an essay about openness.

But maybe I am being hard on myself. I was focussing so much on opening myself to the community last week that maybe I did not have the necessary energy to put it down on paper. Maybe. Or maybe I am still a long way from being true to myself and giving myself the chance to breathe freely.

And it explains so much about how little I am able to share with those closest to me. It seems the closer I get to me, the less prepared I am to open up, the more I fear what could come up. But I have nothing to fear. That is today’s lesson. I have nothing to fear of what I have stored inside me, as it is all the past and the past is an illusion. It must be freed, like a fart in a jar, to be consumed and cleansed by the emptiness of truth.

I keep using these big words like truth and universe and life, but I know so little of them. I have a picture, a vision, yes, but it is purely theoretical until I know that place in my heart that is pure and free and open, untainted by the prison of self-delusion.

I am on the brink of joy. I knew it last week, but the sickness of revelation took it from me again. Now the fear of showing myself has shut me up again and I lie in embarrassment hoping it will go away.

It won’t, and there is no reason for it to. For I have nothing to fear, nothing at all. I have opened myself up to people I can trust, and once I understand this I should be able to see that the person I can trust the most is myself.

I am beautiful, I am sincere, I care, and I am wonderful. But these words will still seem hollow until I can look myself in the eye and say, “This is what it is. Let it go. Let it be.” There is nothing inside that needs to hide – anything that feels that way needs to be freed and anything that is prepared to remain in full view may stay.

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