These are notes from a coaching session last week, that touch directly on what seems to be one of the next steps in our evolution. I am calling the client I was working with Sam.
Shayla: Love, what is love? To explore this question is to open ourselves to something that is profoundly and deeply alive, a llving being, that cannot be trapped in words or concepts. It’s being so intimate with what is here now, with who is here now, that I am dying to the past, to all my memories of what has been.
Sam: Yes, I feel this, I really feel it, and then when I try to hold onto it, it slips like water through my hands. It’s like talking into the wind.
Shayla: Yes, that’s it, and I feel the energy, the consciousness of the heart alive in you. It just has not been fully recognized, and called forth, called deep into your own being-this tenderness for yourself, for your own experience of despair, and confusion.
Sam: I want to tell my friend about this, how he could really begin to care for himself, to feel himself, to be fully present to himself, to listen to himself.
Shayla: But it doesn’t really work, does it, when we tell each other things? It’s like a parent, pointing the wagging finger at us, so we don’t want to listen.
Sam: Yes, that’s right. And there must be something here for me too, not just for him, or I would not be feeling such despair.
Shayla: I think we can find another way, instead of telling-- learning to call forth this heart-wisdom in the ones we love, not telling them anything, but trusting that this wisdom actually lives in them, no matter how long it has been denied.
Sam: So how does this relate to me and my despair?
Shayla: It feels like an invitation to open to this dark emptiness that you speak of, that comes when you are just sitting. Instead of reaching for something else, for something better, for what you have heard some other teacher speak about. To lay down this movement away from where you are, and to really open to this darkness, this emptiness.
Sam: So how does this relate to me and my despair?
Shayla: It feels like an invitation to open to this dark emptiness that you speak of, that comes when you are just sitting. Instead of reaching for something else, for something better, for what you have heard some other teacher speak about. To lay down this movement away from where you are, and to really open to this darkness, this emptiness.
Sam: That feels so difficult.
Shayla: So that is another inquiry for you-is all of this really so difficult? Can you make room for another possibility, that in the heart, the awakeness of the heart, you can learn to welcome all that you have turned away from. Without making great efforts, but just going slowly and patiently in this new direction-opening to this, welcoming it, allowing it to be held deep in this space that we are calling the heart.
But really it has no name. And yet it’s different from the awakeness in the mind. Its nature is totally different, and yet not separate. And it’s the only thing that can fully support our awakening in the field of relationship. So we need this, in our individual lives, and collectively, right now.
It’s like a new turning of the wheel. A new evolution of the teachings, calling us back home to a love, and a freedom we have never lived-- in all of our relationships. Our relationships to work, to people, to nature, to our body, to money, to creativity. What an incredible opportunity. And the time is now.
