One White Rabbit for Empty Sky
if I die today, let me be in love with the world rather than afraid of it.
I awoke at the first dawn with that wish.
It is an easy slippery slope to make fun of the reactive fearful behavior of 'others'. I can giggle at their behaviors; hoarding paper, or flour, or yeast. I can say "I can't believe how he took all the apples, rather than offer some to the others waiting". What is it we cannot believe? Are we that hardened, that we have not felt these urges and done similar behaviors ourselves? I think not. What is it we cannot believe? Perhaps it is that we cannot believe that "I" am just like "them"? Perhaps we cannot believe we are not different? I must be higher, more logical, more controlled, more humane, because I can point fun at others. If I can put them down, then I move up. Consider this...
Why is it so hard to allow our heart to break?
Perhaps it is fear? Look inward. Is that so?
What if I can never put my heart back together again? What if my world never returns to "normal"? Well, Hurrah! A new heart breaks free. Think of the new shoots of a spring perennial plant. They are the freshest green, the first green, the raw, undisturbed green. They have been waiting all winter, hunkered down in the soil. They have appeared to all the world as a dried, gnarly root, devoid of life. How has your heart appeared to the world? A new heart peeks out of the old gnarly shield. At once there is the rawness, the bare uncertainty of the earliest sign of love, of deeply felt experience, of the fluttering potential of the not yet known.
During my second dawn meditation practice this morning, my heart broke apart. I received a gift, a blessing directly into the heart. Like a rolling earthquake, like an approaching thunderstorm my abdomen responded heaving and then shuddering deep at my core. Tears fell like a summer rain, dropping onto Kitty who had been purring in my lap. My mind saw all of us fearful people, sorrowful people, people rigidly holding onto worn out beliefs. "For the suffering of beings, may overwhelming compassion be born in my being. While such compassion is immediate, its emptiness is nakedly clear." (paraphrased Rangjung Dorje, Karmapa III, Aspirations for Mahamudra)
We are here, at the edge. The potential to turn back to old ways is strong. The potential to jump forward is equally strong. The world asks us "Can you shift? Can you open that gripped palm? Can you release your jaw? Can you allow your heart to open?
There is no enemy, but willfully ignoring what is happening.
That internal grip can keep us from tearfulness, from the pain of change, from the tremendous power of compassion.
If I die today, let me be in love with the world, rather than afraid of it.
~ © Copyright Gail Gustafson, mahakalaradio.org 3/26/20