How Pain Brought Me Home

How Pain Brought Me Home

Am I this pain?

When everything I am and have been shatters, and pain rips across my consciousness like a roaring forest fire ... I am nothing.

I am nothing and I like it.

I like it because in this moment there is no struggle. It is lovely, vast and empty. In this moment I am not the structure of many years of yoga, not the scars of parenthood, nor the many questioning thoughts that drag me to places congested with doubt, judgement and fear. In this moment, illness liberates me and insists I ride the waves of pain inside my body. Inside my body there are no answers and it is freeing. 

Finally, I get it. I am a Will O' the Wisp. A fleeting explosion of heat and colour. And I am cast back to vivid childhood where I was what I was; a small human lying on summer-dry grass, watching rain clouds roll across a high, wide sky. At four years old, there was no doubt - I was who I was. I could feel it. In time that innate feeling dissipated and was replaced by dissonance. 

Labels- the shy one, the stupid one, the talented one and so on. At forty years old I am no different to the little person I was at four. I can begin to chip away the labels that I clung to with ferocious determination. The labels that disguised a DO NOT ENTER sign which prevented me from returning to the wisdom I was born with. Returning to an awakened heart - Bodhichitta.

At four, I rested in Bodhichitta and life was sweet. Today, thanks to illness, I spend time drifting through my body. I have let go of my delusions, search for the self and fear of letting go. What more is there to living than love? Love for oneself. Love for every being.

Spend time in your body. Embrace illness. Your body has no answers but it is home. And home is where the heart is.

With love, Veronique