Between Worlds
By Matt Licata, via his blog, A Healing Space
Sink into the womb of now
At times, all our reference points will be taken away, with nothing given to replace them. What we were so clear about just a few days ago is nowhere to be found. The relationship we thought would be there forever, the creativity in our work, our deepest insights and realizations – recycled in the activity of the vast.
The solid ground we once took refuge in has disintegrated underneath us, sending us spiraling through space. We were so sure we were beyond breaking yet again, that we had finished with all that, but the beloved is not interested in maintaining the status quo. It is the nature of all form to disintegrate, so that new forms may emerge.
Between the worlds, burning up, longing for an end to the contradictions. We have found ourselves in the liminal, but how do we rest there? Where is the healing, the transcendence, the resolution? How could we be asked to surrender more? It can seem that we are falling apart, but were we ever together to begin with? Is that even the right lens from which to attempt navigation? Or were we always something more vast, more whole, more majestic that all that?
Slow way down. Breathe deeply from the lower belly. Feel your feet in the mud of the earth. Sink into the womb of now. For just this moment, set aside the need to understand, to figure it all out, or to replace this moment with another. Today may not be the day for answers, but to let your heart break open to the vastness of the question.
Look up into the winter sky. Lay your hands on your heart and attune to what is really happening here: There are blues coming into existence that have never made their way into this dimension. There are oranges, reds, and purples that have been sent to remind you of the rarity and outrageousness of one human heart.
Stay right here. Don’t move from this moment. Listen. Receive. Everything that has ever happened, and everyone you have ever met, has led up to right here, and right now. While it can seem that the dark and the light are two, things are not always as they appear.
Spirit buried inside matter
The difficult emotions, the confusion, the struggle, and the heartbreak. The fear, the doubt, the ending of the relationship that was supposed to last forever. On any true path, we must confront and integrate the ending of dreams, the dissolution of one world so that another may emerge.
The hopelessness, the struggle, the devastation of the crushed longing. The disappointment that it was never going to turn out the way we thought. The painful wondering if we’ve done something wrong, if somehow we’ve failed.
These are the raw materials we have to work with on the path of the heart. Place them on the altar in front of you and bless them with safe passage. You need not transcend your vulnerability, problems, or neurosis to know this. For inside the broken is a wisdom found only there.
Sadness has something to show you that joy could never provide. Inside aloneness is a secret offering that can never be found in connection. Hopelessness, when entered, reveals meaning that hope is unable to reveal.
It is pure and creative inside the symptom, but remains unseen in the overemphasis on becoming and in the tragic loss of imagination. But the alchemists and tantrikas and the unseen ones and the moon, the sun, and the stars have come to remind us. To re-enchant the imaginal and pull back the curtain to reveal the gold behind the veil.
There is spirt buried inside matter. Multiplicity is just as holy as oneness. The dual and the nondual are not two. There is no separation between the raw tender feelings and the flow of wisdom essence. Each are made of the same substance.
“What about my passion?!” Rumi demands of God.
God says, “Keep it burning.”
“What about my heart?” asks Rumi.
“Tell me what you hold inside it,” says God.
“Pain and sorrow,” says Rumi.
God says, “Stay with it. The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
While the trance that there is something wrong with you is sticky and seductive, slow down, unplug from the unreal, and listen. Feel. Sense. We are conditioned to find a problem where there is an invitation. Place your hands on your heart. Attune to the aliveness of the inner body. Follow the breath back into essence.
About the Author
(image) Matt Licata is a psychotherapist in private practice and Director, Division of Professional Studies at Sounds True. He studied Psychology and Religion at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His new book is available here – The Path Is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You. Matt’s next event will be a five-day retreat, The Place the Light Enters, with Jeff Foster, April 4-9 at Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, CO.
Yes
It is right as It happened to me