The Exquisite Balance

I have few words to speak on the atrocity that has become my mind. Whirlwinds of endless chaos, sweeping me away as a river down its bank. But this river, it reaches further down into a darkness I do not know, yet somehow am deeply familiar with. I wouldn’t like to be here, but when fear takes over and the unknown sweeps me away, I find myself delighted to be unharmed. I end up somewhere I know I should be, wondering why fear was ever present to begin with. The storms of my heart have an exact destination. They don’t wish to drown or slam me against rocks and jutted edges. They only desire to reveal the destination of my truest seeking.

Tangled limbs unravel with surrender of release, a tongue once clamped now laughing, rejoicing sobriety; a clarity gifted only through profound trust. In what? We wonder. Gods and Goddesses of the Great Mother and Father Universe, or something even grander than embodiments of energies known to conscious minds? The Great Spirit, life of all life, home to all our souls, a divine orchestration of free will and endless possibilities, it is You I give praise to. We are all manifestations of You; every incisive shadow, biding torture of a lost soul, and tender newborns giggling in their mother's arms as butterflies dance in sunlight. If You are all of It, then should I not also be unified with it? Every pain and pleasure experienced in equal measure, without resistance but a quiet acceptance of what is? Not necessarily to secede in my right to live joyously, no, but to be in motion with all things, including my desire for life. It makes sense logically, yes, but only great masters understand.

Intense navigation swollen with departing timelines in every direction. Fear of pain yet another lesson to accept. So even if my thighs brush against jagged stone, slice open rosy ribbons of translucent life into a stream of uncertainty, what then? Is pain not a gift of the Divine as well? To be lost is to always be found. Am I only meant to sigh gratitude and relief when I am handed experience without suffering? Why haven’t we enough appreciation and honor for the initiation rituals of growth through suffering? To make common knowledge, breath is the anchor to which we submerge within waves of despair and anguish. And it is in this submergence we become one with pain until darkness itself is us, and we it, and through that single passing, it is then over with as quickly as it came. To be present with suffering both extends pain's eternity and also relieves us of the staccato battle of resistance, amplifying its burn.

Few understand this. Unless they themselves have set fire to their flesh in quiet meditation, slowly pushed a baby’s crown through the most tender space stretched to capacity without being subdued, or allowed grief to swallow them whole in the most reverent dance of surrender and honoring of what was. Some of us have tasted these moments of death in little ways, kissed pain with pleasure, and brought beauty to chaos as light does when it sparkles on broken glass. Streaks of raised skin transformed into delicate art, the loss of a loved one carried carefully through every second, and a lost child staggering into adulthood with only their inner compass to guide them right.

Little deaths. Caught in our breath with every suppression of rage seeking a stage to reveal and sway what was never allowed to be conveyed. Little deaths. Momentum lost to inevitable change, whether we consented to delays or consciously gave it away. Little deaths. Sacrifice of the selfish kind made with the most precious love in mind. Little deaths. Little deaths captivated in the pearls of our eyes, looking to sunrise to memorize what it felt like to truly be alive, when little deaths become a size too great to compromise, swallowing the days that invade what cannot be escaped. Little deaths. Known in our everyday lives, we think we are the dying, a walking dead forgetting what it was like to know gentle light. Then it’s in this prolonged story we either falter or give thanks, cherish the shimmers, or smite roiling shadows we believe to be our blood. What then? Where can the peace be found? How then do we create heaven within hell?

Choice, I say. Always choice. The darker the happening seems when we have known it’s polar opposite, lived in the abundance of wealth in health, danced in the purity of love, and rejoiced in its ever-giving nature. To compare is to add weight, to cast shadows from our light remembered.  The darker it becomes. But a child who has known hell from birth, who has not once tasted proclamations of a deemed heaven may find beauty in the most mundane of kindnesses and mercy. There is no grander bliss to compare it to.

There is only gratitude.

There is only acceptance of what treasure is being gifted.

When little, is more than enough.

So then, it is in this I truly believe the greater we know bliss and pleasures, the deeper we know darkness and suffering. They balance on one another, live for each other. The further we go into one, the more we know the other and so there I wonder. Is ignorance truly bliss or a fraction of it? Is the sacrifice to know ecstatic bliss to also know what it is to be without it? Or must depravity first be known so one’s cup begins empty and is therefore always full? Perhaps only in this realm of duality, yes. It seems not in higher realms devoid of these laws. For it is always in this realm where we are anchored to that which is within is without, as above so below, and in breath so in ether.