Day of Rest

Today is a strange blend of grief and joy, sadness and celebration. I am graduating from yoga teacher training this afternoon along with 10 of my friends. We’ve spent nine months studying together, and while I feel so content, happy to be done, to finally become a certified teacher, so lucky to have spent this time falling in love with my fellow students and teachers and deeper in love with yoga, it comes with heartache because it is also an ending.

At the same time as our graduation ceremony, they are holding Ann’s memorial. As I’ve said before, Ann fought cancer so hard and for so long, but it finally got to be too much. She’s one of the strongest, toughest, and yet softest people I’ve ever met. She’s the reason I kept practicing yoga, showed up to class at 6:30 am three times a week for years. Even if I was too busy or tired or the weather was bad or I didn’t feel like it, I went because I knew I’d get to see Ann. She made me laugh, made me try harder. And now she’s gone. I’m teaching my first yoga classes and she won’t be there. And because my graduation is scheduled for the same time as her service, I’m going to miss saying a formal good-bye, sharing my grief with others who loved her — and yet, I know that she would understand.

Life is just this, staying open to whatever arises and knowing when it’s time to let go, a mix of grief and joy, sadness and celebration. As the always wise Pema Chödrön says, “The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” May we make room for all of it, let it be what it is and let it go when it’s time. May we make our way towards a healing space today.

I am living in an in-between time right now. I can see a new path, a better way, and yet my old habits and ways of being run deep. I end up feeling like two people, like I’m living two lives, having two different experiences simultaneously. One version of me is committed to spiritual practice, to cultivating compassion and wisdom, to easing suffering, and can see the way through. The other version of me is still addicted, disordered, dysfunctional, confused, tired, and when she comes up against an obstacle, wants to give up, sinks down into the deepest despair.

When I woke up in my life, and decided to stay awake, to open my heart, to show up and be present, to allow the world to touch me, I went from being numb to being so incredibly tender, about everything. I feel joy more intensely, but I also feel pain in equal measure.

Hardest to shift is my sense of needing to be in control. I feel responsible for everything, for everyone. I am hypervigilant, always looking for what needs fixed, where I can help. If something goes wrong, I blame myself. I cling to the belief that if I am properly prepared and paying attention, ready, I can keep us all safe and happy. It’s exhausting. Worse yet, it never works, never has.

I’ve been contemplating this need I have for control, how I act on it, am hooked by it even though I know it isn’t possible or true. I’ve been writing about it, discussing it with friends, and talked with my therapist about it. Then someone posted this quote from Pema Chödrön on Facebook.

Photo by Jeff Warshaw

Sometimes when I am struggling with something, confused and looking for an answer, the answer just comes, like some kind of magic. After I saw this quote, I sat down to meditate. My practice recently has begun by reading a passage from Pema’s book When Things Fall Apart. Each chapter is only about 3-5 pages long, so it’s easy to read one just before I meditate. I’ve read this book twice already, and this time I’ve been underlining and making notes — making a mess of it.

When I sat down yesterday to read, I thought I was on the chapter about doing no harm, but when I opened the book, I realized I’d already marked up that chapter. I was actually on “Hopelessness and Death.” It was exactly what I needed, at exactly the right moment.

One section in particular had me in tears.

Hopelessness means that we no longer have the spirit for holding our trip together. We may still want to hold our trip together. We long to have some reliable, comfortable ground under our feet, but we’ve tried a thousand ways to hide and a thousand ways to tie up all the loose ends, and the ground just keeps moving under us.

When I talk about wanting to give up, I mean the whole thing. All of it. I want out, want it to be over, think in that moment that I just can’t go on, can’t do it anymore. Pema, in this chapter, talks about a different kind of giving up, another version of surrender. She suggests that hopelessness (“giving up all hope of alternatives to the present moment”) is something to cultivate, the place to start. She ends the chapter with this,

Giving up hope is encouragement to stick with yourself, to make friends with yourself, to not run away from yourself, to return to the bare bones, no matter what’s going on. Fear of death is the background of the whole thing. It’s why we feel restless, why we panic, why there’s anxiety. But if we totally experience hopelessness, giving up all hope of alternatives to the present moment, we can have a joyful relationship with our lives, an honest, direct relationship, one that no longer ignores the reality of impermanence and death.

Today, on this day of rest, I am contemplating hopelessness, and practicing giving up in a whole new way.