the sky this morning

Even after all this time
the sun never says to the earth, “You owe Me.”
Look what happens with a love like that,
It lights up the Whole Sky.
~Hafiz

I continue to practice living with uncertainty, impermanence. This shaky, uncomfortable quality of life is so tender, so terrifying. I admit that I have moments of blind panic, where my sanity starts to slip and my perception blurs, when confusion and anxiety and despair cocoon around me. I forget that I can change my mind, take a walk or have something to eat, that I am loved and connected, not alone.

But this is the essence of practice. Sometimes, you can stay with the moment, be gentle with yourself, sit with your thoughts and emotions as they rage and quake, not running away or grasping or rejecting or numbing out, but rather peacefully abiding until they naturally dissolve. Sometimes, you just can’t. And yet, you continue to try, to practice, to show up with your open heart, broken and whole all at the same time.

You don’t give up, but you practice letting go, surrendering, again and again and again, the same way the sun rises and sets, every day–some days you don’t even see it, don’t look up, don’t notice, aren’t even awake when it happens, and other days it makes you stop, throw back your head and stare, unable to believe that a thing so beautiful could even exist. And through it all, it’s the same sky, the same sun, rising and sinking, simply doing what it does, fundamentally good and completely natural–just like all of us.

There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth,
Beyond us all,
beyond the heavens,
beyond the highest, the very highest heavens.
This is the light that shines in our hearts.
~Chandogya Upanishad