Leaving the door open
“Fear and hurt are lassoes drawing you through a door.” - Rumi
If I am fearful, with the help of the discipline of mindfulness and its techniques, I can self-regulate and remain open and interested in my feelings and allow myself to leave the door open to explore them. In order to do this, I have had to learn to remain with my response and primary experience of fear and hurt.
There are naturally some situations, past trauma around certain decisions and actions that I have taken and am not proud of, that I find more challenging and painful than others, and these require me to be approach them with a degree of gentleness and kindness that up until I was introduced to mindfulness, I was wary and suspicious of.
If I do not leave the door open for a response within my being, I am telling myself I cannot bear to be with my feelings and thus I shut the door on my experience of being with and tolerating them; the fear and hurt remain tightly bound and looming behind it.
“It is my presence and quality of listening that allows the transformation of this pain and with this I can edge closer to the door before I am lassoed through it.”
Rachel Podger
I am aware that if I do not face these feelings they will return in another shape or form but at that moment in time my feelings are so strong I feel that all I should do is walk away. I am captured by them. However, when I walk away with kindness and gentleness, I allow myself a moment to reflect on what it is that I am so afraid of and can then reopen the door, usually a little more slowly than I did previously, and have another look.
This has taken time and patience and with the help of psychotherapy and mindfulness I have learnt that the more I can be with my own pain and hurt, I can meet and be with it in another. I am often aware that there are no words that will ever feel enough to acknowledge the degree of pain and hurt, but I can be with them.
It is my presence and quality of listening that allows the transformation of this pain and with this I can edge closer to the door before I am lassoed through it. The joy that I feel having been lassoed through it, releases me to be in the present moment with all my experience and I feel freer and stronger.