Letting Life Pierce You
Dejar que la vida te atraviese
A student on the verge of becoming a father shares his vulnerability about the birth process, and the teacher responds with reflections on fear, equanimity, and what it means to be truly broken open by life.
Letting Life Pierce You
A student on the verge of becoming a father shares his vulnerability about the birth process, and the teacher responds with reflections on fear, equanimity, and what it means to be truly broken open by life.
My partner's due date is the 22nd, so I just figured I would pop on. I was talking with our doula recently. My partner had to go to another meeting, so I had a moment alone with her, and I found myself touched by her presence and attentiveness. I think that had me feeling more in touch with my own emotions, my vulnerability, my feelings about becoming a father, and the birth process in general.
There's this natural physiological process happening. My partner's body has physically changed. I'm not in that boat. I'm not carrying a child in my body. But I could feel that something spiritually similar was happening in me. As I was telling this to the doula, I started tearing up, feeling the vulnerability and poignancy and maybe a little bit of fear in it. I asked her if she could offer some kind of guidance or support for me as well through this process.
I'm not exactly feeling that vulnerability right now. I just wanted to say hello and share this. I thought it was interesting, and I wondered whether you had any thoughts.
It's just such a beautiful process and life moment you're in. Just let it pierce through you. Let it completely break you, in a sense. There's a deep strength in that ability to be broken, and then your heart just pours through.
I think I'm sometimes surprised at how, even though I do know that, and I've had various moments of it, some new fear will come up. I find myself always surprised at this impulse to not be completely pierced.
The expectation that fear will end
That's because you're alive and you're human. The problem is the expectation of that ending. The expectation that fear will stop.
There's a very deep fear that can stop, but then life will still be scary at times, even if the fear of death dissolves. Life will still be scary, and joyful, and thrilling, and amazing, and challenging. The illusion is the expectation that there won't be natural responses to life.
Yes, there will be less of that contracting over time. But that's not really the goal. It becomes more like a side effect. It doesn't matter. In fact, there is something beautiful about finding yourself in a moment, shaken by what you're living. There's almost a loss in the expectation for that not to happen.
Equanimity is not what the mind thinks it is
Total equanimity, the peace that I talk about, is really not at that level. It does have an effect at that level, but it's not how the mind will interpret it and turn it into something like, "I would not be afraid of becoming a father." It's not like that. In fact, it can even become more scary, because you're able to feel it fully and not hold back. But it will be scary the way a roller coaster is scary. In a deep sense, you're okay and you're at peace, but you could be screaming on the way down.
There's something about that I find really satisfying and clarifying, almost like a relief. Because I sometimes think about the philosophical idea that death is an illusion, the self is an illusion. If you really contact that truth and embody it, then you'll realize there's nothing to fear.
Thoughts as their own escape
That's way too many thoughts, because when you see through that, you don't need to contemplate those thoughts. Those thoughts are maybe their own way of trying to escape. When you do contact what I'm talking about, you won't be able to understand it in that conceptual sense.
The phrase "death is an illusion" is only useful when you look at what can die. Your body, your mind, will end. That's not an illusion. You can't escape that. You can't work around it with the idea that it's an illusion. What you can do is see what you are and what you're not. Then you could say for yourself something like, "What I am cannot die," because what you are is not something. It's not anything. You could also say, "What I am isn't really there."
Life is real, but not as it appears
Is life an illusion? In a sense, yes, but it's really tricky, because life is what is. It's a mystery. It's real, but not absolutely in the way it appears. There's value in the pointing that all of the appearance, the world, the universe, the cosmos, life, is an illusion. But not as an absolute description. It's useful to see that it's not what it appears to be, and in that sense it's an illusion. But it is real.
So let yourself go into the fear. Let yourself be afraid. Let yourself be shaken, be pierced, be broken. And you will come through knowing more what you're not.
Is that just a never-ending process?
No. It ends.