A few weeks ago I promised my editor a column for that week. He asked me to confirm as it was Labor Day and my column comes out on Tuesdays, normally I send them as they arrive within. Yet when the time came to write it, my head was clogged clay. I felt very pressured and pissy, and wrote what I was afraid might be a bit incoherent. YEt something intervened and I have gotten a number of comments from people around town how much it helped them. They also said the poem I added was so useful so I will add it here again. WELCOME all emotions, invite them for tea. They are not a problem or a fault, merely guest awaiting welcome.
Curiously I was reviewing a book last night, to decide if I would keep it. It is Alan Watts “The Wisdom of Insecurity.” I read it for the second time in 2003, I believe it was written in 1951. Here is what is amazing. Throughout the book are numerous quotes about the impossibility of running from emotions, how they will always follow us and grow until embraced. I heavily underlined all the lines even though I had no clue how to implement the knowledge gained. To turn TOWARDS my fear, my grief, my despair! Impossible! Yet just one year later, in answer to a prayer, I found a teacher how to do just that and became certified in the cellular memory process. I became a licensed therapist in 2003 yet not until learning CMR did I discover how to turn toward what I previously considered my greatest enemy. YEs, the process took years yet I was finally able to truly surrender to my anxiety, learn to embrace it and have compassion for the part of myself that had suffered so grievously for so long. I actually heard myself same maybe half a year ago that anxiety had been my greatest teacher and thus a gift in my life! Now in clients, I witness those dedicated to the task moving in months what had taken me years to do. That is the power of the current energetic climate.
Here is the poem so many are telling me was useful to them:
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
remembering the joy of being
