I think I have preached fairly regularly about the idea of perspective. It’s the old parable of the blind men and the elephant. They all feel the same elephant and come away with a different perspective. None of them are wrong. They just don’t see everything for what it is.
And, so, this brings me to the idea of unraveling and what side of this I have heard and thought. Unraveling has a totally bad wrap. A thread of string becoming thinner and weaker. The part of the carpet my puppy has decimated. A lack of self- control, emotional dys-regulation and a downward spiral into hopelessness. If you told me I was becoming unraveled, that is the side of the elephant I would feel and hear. I would be hurt and angry.
But yesterday morning, my perspective became enlightened. I told you all that I have started a 200-hour yoga certification class – a goal of mine that has always seemed out just out of reach these past few years. I have tried to give myself grace and accept the fact that my timing for this goal may be dependent on my hips’ cooperation. They finally got the message, I guess.
One of my favorite parts of my yoga classes is the time at the end where my mind is willing to accept a message that is independent of what my body says. My eyes were closed. I teetered on concentrating on my monstrous Friday work schedule just ahead, but was able to silence my thoughts and hear this message:
“We let go into this grace. It's something we fall into, like when we fall into the arms of another, or we put our head on the pillow to go to sleep. It's a willingness to relax, even in the midst of tension. It's a willingness to stop for just a moment, to breathe, to notice that there's something else going on other than the story our mind is telling us. In this moment of grace, we see that whatever might be there in our experience, from the most difficult emotional challenges to the most causeless joy, occurs within a vast space of peace, of stillness, of ultimate well-being. If we can let go for just a moment, if we can relax, if we can fall into the center of now, we can encounter directly the freedom that we've all been seeking. It is right here, right now. It doesn't lie in the future. It's not going to come when life changes, when the circumstances of our day-to-day reality become different. Freedom is something that's right in the midst of this moment. When we begin to surrender our demand that life change, that life alter itself to suit our ideas, then everything opens. We begin to awaken from this dream of separateness and struggle, and we realize that the grace we were always seeking is actually right there at the center of our own existence. This is the heart of spiritual awakening: to realize that what we have always yearned for is the very thing, in our deepest source, that we have always been. Freedom is always available to us. In those very moments when we know we don't know, when we take the backward step, heart wide open, we fall into grace.”
- Adyashanti
So, I allowed myself to see a different side of the word, unravel. Now, it also means to let go, to relax, to lean into, to be. It means that I am giving myself grace to be. Imperfect. Flawed. Alive. Strong. Full of grace. Free. What do you see?
