Willingness

In peace I write to you.

Yesterday I took my love to the airport to send him home to New Zealand after a long visit. When I got home from the airport, I sat on my bed facing the warm sunflowers in the back yard, my system shocked with withdrawal from the drug of love I’ve been mainlining for the last three weeks. It was a sunny, bright Saturday afternoon and the room was light and spacious and cool. Sobs soared through my mind and body.

And I said, I'm willing.

This is it, I knew. This is the work. Stay open.

I thought of you, my readers, and knew I am living this for all of us.

My chest rippled with waves from my gut. I let just enough thought come in to keep igniting the fire under the flame of heart ache. It didn’t take much. Otherwise I dropped the story line and felt. I watched the ripples rise, let the waves move over me, like lying in the surf on a beach in Maryland when I was ten-years-old.

I kept breathing. Sometimes I felt like I was losing my mind. Have you ever been gripped with heart ache? Yes, and doesn’t it overcome a body and mind? Everything seemed shocking and upside down. And the sunflowers smiled and waved warmly and their green stalks greatly matched the bright hot blue Texas summer sky. It was all happening at once. I craved my boyfriend terribly and at the same time I swam in the unquestionable perfection of the moment.

And I continued to be willing. I took care of myself. When I felt like I really needed it, I called up some trusted friends and went to see them. Another house where I could cry my eyes out and keep my heart open but not be lost to my mind in the solitude at home.

We ate good food, I cried some more, and we spoke of truth and allowed presence in. Trust allows us to settle back in its arms when we're willing.

Be willing. The emotions are not there to take you out. They are there to tear open the door, like Hanuman tearing open his chest: the Divine lives in there. Right there. It's asking you to trust.

Do what you need to do when it comes time to rest. And as long as you can, stay willing.

Be willing, in fact, also to rest.

I wrote the word willingness on my leg today in my car with a marker to remind myself to write this. An hour later I read an email about a conference call I’m on tomorrow. Each week there’s a different topic and the email told me that this week’s topic is willingness. This is what happens when we’re willing to feel our feelings. Synchronicities flourish through the cracks in “reality” that appear when we are willing to rest even in feelings of turmoil. Even when it seems like we can’t stand it, we keep breathing, we stay open. And our trust in Source rewards us with the ultimate gift: presence, which = love.

Are you willing to go in so that you can come out the other side? The "other side" really is within. Stay open.