Illustration of the day…
I was at my first silent meditation retreat when I realized I needed healing. My entire body was filled with pain I’d been avoiding. I wasn’t sure how I would get through the retreat. I had no one to talk to and no one to help me.
That’s when I realized I had to think of something. So I decided to appoint myself my own nurse, and to think of my body as a hospital.
Because I was the only nurse, I had to do triage. And so I listened for the cries for help within me, and hurried to the bedsides of all those younger selves and listened until I understood, until they felt heard and soothed by my attention.
It was heartwarming at times, even hilarious at others, but mostly I wanted to do what I’d always done: flee. But I couldn’t flee. And staying put was not easy work.
For years I carried a lot of secret guilt and shame, but by the end of the retreat, I began to feel some release.
I began to feel like I was whole—like everyone inside of me had becomes friends, like we were now part of the same team—with my current self, the leader.
We can release pain. On a physiological level.
With the attention of our understanding and compassion, our pain can lose its weight and matter and literally defy gravity, by rising out of our bodies and turning into something else, an ‘it is what it is,’ something that’s no longer held hostage by all the meaning we’ve given it.
These days, I’m unable to do retreats, but I do my best to create mini retreats for myself in the wee hours when there’s no place to run.
I’ve amassed new younger selves, so there’s always healing to be done. And so I listen to the calls of pain within myself and then run to the bedsides of everyone I’ve been with all the love I’ve got.
-JLK
