Beauty and The Pain

Yesterday I was witness to an amazing experience that I believe was heightened by 27 consecutive days of a new yoga practice. I have spent hours retraining my breath and listening to my body while twisting and bending into purposefully expanding postures. Without it, I may not have arrived at the healing destination that took place on a long drive home, after a long and arduous day.

It only took three words to cut through me like a knife. Cast out through the snarled lips of the past, and out of the mouth of one of my greatest teachers in this life. Those three words triggered a painful history, leaving tears welled up and hovering at the edge of my lower eyelids. Held back like high-water at the dam's edge.

More than the words themselves, it was my surprise reaction to them. And as I enter my sixth decade in life's classroom, this particular assignment continues to keep me after school. The curriculum has been a coarse one and today's lesson sat waiting patiently behind my tears and blurred vision, as I stepped behind the wheel for the welcome drive home.

I took a different route home than was usual. One less congested and stop sign free allowing for an ease in driving. In that freedom, the day's concluding event replayed in my mind offering fully the effects of the opened wound, bleeding and raw. Recently read passages from my new favorite contemporary philosophical author, Mark Nepo, reminded me to feel these moments fully. And so I did. This, in tandem with my return to a yoga practice, had opened me to locating visceral experiences happening inside my body.

I could feel the pain, the hurt, so intensely as it first circled the area around my heart, taking a route traveling down the path along the spine, through the pelvis, reaching even further down the legs, and coming to rest at a tingling in my toes. By my own calculations about 80% of my body was fully engaged in the feelings of emotional pain—all at the same time. Connected and unyielding, heart to toes.

With a single blink of my eyes, the dam broke. In the very next moment, what laid before me, in the expanse of the sky was an unobstructed sunset in the making. I could feel my soul switching its gears, moving past the pain and into appreciation for the beautiful gift of nature. These words, like a yogi's mantra chanting in my mind, "This is real. This is the only thing that is real. Thank you." The feelings of emotion in this raw and open state, as I breathed in the expanse of sky and beauty of color, allowed the eyes of my soul to see beyond the pain of the previous moment.

I could feel the expression of joy in this moment so intensely as it first circled the area of my heart, taking a route traveling down the path along the spine, through the pelvis, reaching even further down the legs, and coming to rest at a tingling in my toes. Sound familiar? Yes! If I may answer my own question. The same physical experience of deeply rooted emotions around hurt, located in the depths my heart connected to the bottom of my toes, were exactly what I had experienced in the raw moment of appreciating beauty.

The lines completely blurred between beauty and pain. The heart-to-sole channels cracked open wide. The path of pain and fresh wound followed directly by the healing bandage of beauty. Perhaps it was in that order, or maybe it was happening simultaneously, I'm no longer sure.

What I do know or witnessed for myself is, created through beauty or pain, the sensations were the same. And with that, I believe I have found a tool for future healing. When the heart is broken open there exists an open portal of opportunity to seek the bounty of beauty that surrounds us, to sooth the wound when broken open or anew.

Consider this...it might just work for you too.

Meet Yourself

If you ever have cause to wonder where you are on your journey, go outside into the world of people and—meet yourself there. In the safety and sanctuary of our private spaces, we can only come to know some parts of ourselves—usually the parts we like. The other parts become 'revealable' bumping up against others.

Yesterday I met myself at the corner gas station in an encounter/altercation with an angry man that quite frankly, rattled my sensibilities. The gas station, partly torn down, was creating a challenge for those of us wishing to use the three remaining pumps with two possible points of entry. All the pumps were full. I wasn't in any hurry, so I waited patiently for my turn. I move toward the first open pump and a woman swooped it and took it. Maybe she was there before me. I didn't see her and maybe she didn't see me. Practicing my best Mother Theresa impersonation, I let it go.

I evaluate the other two cars parked at the pumps, one man was just beginning to fill his car and the other was underway. A man pulls up behind me and I logically decide to pull forward and circle around to get in line behind that one further along in the process. This also allowed the guy behind me to keep the backend of his car from spilling out into the busy street.

Finally, the woman in front of me finishes and leaves. But before I can put my car in motion, the man who was behind me in the street, swoops in and blocks me from the pump. I can't believe this is happening. I calmly got out of my car to walk over and have what I thought was going to be a rational, polite conversation—which quickly turned to him spewing out his anger. He firmly stated that he was not going to move. It was a stand-off at the pumps.

From his perspective (and my 'I can't-get-a-word-in' attempt to explain), I was indecisive in choosing a pump. He's shouting and waving his hands in the air "Which one is it going to be lady?" I, on the other hand, didn't see it that way. I was by all accounts first in line for the three precious pumps. I soon realized that he was not open to listening—at all. My heart was pounding fueled by the rage coming out of his mouth. All I could think to say was (with no explanation mark), "You are an a--------." He of course, responded in kind.

The man next to us, still filling his tank, yelled out of his window to the pump-jumper, something along the lines of "Dude, that is so wrong." Other cars started to pour in from both directions. With my car facing in the wrong direction for my tank, I decide to walk over to the next two cars in line to let them know I needed to turn around, pointing over at the pump I was going take.

Ordinarily a situation like this wouldn't really affect me. For some inexplicable dip on the biorhythms chart, it cut through me like a knife. I felt completely helpless.

After my car was full with fuel and I was heading toward home, I began to cry.

There is a phrase "If it's hysterical it's historical." I knew what I was meeting at the pumps were a host of people in my history, where I felt physically and verbally defenseless. And lord knows what kind of day or life the angry man in the white truck was bringing to the moment.

With triggers like these, my mind races to the sanctuary of home with thoughts of never coming out again. More importantly, in times like this, there exists an opportunity to meet ourselves. A real-time look at what remains to be revealed and healed—if I am willing to meet myself there. And for you, if you are willing to meet yourself there, too.

Note: I went back this morning to photograph the gas station, finding all of the lanes open and the construction crew pulling up the last of the caution and closed signs.

The irony in timing—don't you just love it?