Depth of Feeling

“We are so unused to emotion

that we mistake any depth of feeling for sadness,

any sense of the unknown for fear,

and any sense of peace, for boredom.

We are so schooled away from the life below, that anything beneath scares us.”

~ Mark Nepo from “The Book of Awakening”

It’s a scary place to start to look at ourselves beneath the surface. To face who we are, even when no one is looking.

We are afraid of what we might find and the depth of our feeling. Yet this is the place where the heart can truly open to all the experiences and feelings that have been denied.

Opening our heart to our inner being becomes a portal for our own awakening. So many of us think that when we become “enlightened” we will rise above our difficult feelings and fear. Awakening doesn’t happen when we seek to get away from our experience, it happens when we are open to the whole of life and our own very human nature.

I like how Mark Nepo reflects,  “When we bring up what we keep inside, it is sacred and scary, and the rest of us don’t know if we want to touch it or not, like reaching from a ladder into a nest of baby birds….But I invite you to anyway… For each of us is a fledgling that eventually, if fed, will fly.”

May we find the courage to reach for this sacred place with kindness and a gentle touch.

Nurture your precious baby birds. Let them grow strong, guide them into the world and then let them fly.

Namaste