by Miriam Greenspan
Pain invites us to change our lives and ourselves,
to transform the way we look at the world.
Though we may want to push out
of our discomfort zone immediately,
despair asks us to slow down, take our time, be still.
Sometimes it compels us to stop everything
in order to painstakingly remap our world.
It is through surrender to the unwanted
that we embrace our vulnerability.
Our helplessness teaches us humility.
When we are humbled by pain, we see
our smallness in the vastness of the cosmos.
The ego gives up its hold on reality,
its paltry attempts to control and to dictate
its terms. It lets go of its agenda.
Its grandiosity thus diminished,
there is an opening, and a larger vision can emerge.
Amazingly, this letting go,
which is a kind of death,
is also one of the great joys of life —
an effort that is the end of all effort.
When we unfurl the gnarled fist of control,
letting the hand open up to receive and to give,
our smallness — once the source of our agony —
becomes a source of comfort.
Whether we listen to them or not,
the dark emotions will emerge.
Once way or another,
they exert their call through the body —
as an act of grace or an act violence,
a cancerous growth or a surge of creative energy.
Dark emotions don’t go away.
They simply come to us in
whatever form we can bear.
When we master the art of staying
fully awake in their presence,
they move us through suffering.
We discover that the darkness
has its own light.
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