“Pay attention here.” This is a phrase one of my yoga instructors used frequently in class (and a phrase which is stuck permanently in my head). It is her way of gently pushing us to be aware of what we do moment by moment (asana, breathing, feeling, giving, getting), to go beneath the surface.
Our soul calls us to go beneath–beneath the surface of our mind and moods, beneath our ego. We go about our lives for years and years without paying attention to what lies beneath, to what is. Some hear this call early on, only to silence it until it demands to be heard–through illness, loss, heartbreak. They are all blessings which transform and humble us, and bring out what matters most in life. And teach us to surrender to all of life’s blessings, the ‘good’ and the ‘not so good.’ Heartbreak, I think your heart grows back bigger, once you get the shit beat out of you. And the universe lets your heart expand that way, because that’s the function of all the pain and heartache you go through. And you’ve got to go through that to come out to a better place. There is a phenomenal amount of vitality in a broken heart. I think of a broken heart as broken open. A broken heart does not equal sadness as sadness occurs when the heart is lifeless and stone cold.
If we shut down, we will become more and more numb to life. We will remain unchanged. It doesn’t matter when we hear this call, it only matters that we pay attention. I see crisis, illness, loss, heartbreak as messengers which help us evolve, teachers if you will. More and more often I choose to open the doors I closed/kept shut earlier to these messengers.
Another yoga instructor would from time to time advise his students to pay attention to the lessons we are offered, advising that we will be presented with the same lessons over and over (and over) again until we learn them.
The other night I found myself thinking about a mixed media drawing I started too many years ago to recall now (at least 20 years) which is titled “Of Absence and Presence.” I realized it represented the same message to “pay attention here (now)” to the lesson(s) here (now), to what is here (now). I became aware of a ’sensation’ in my hip. It wasn’t pain/discomfort. The pain/sensation I had before surgery is gone/absent. The sensation which is present here now is different. I wondered if I was actually feeling my body heal. I’ve found that when I reject what is painful, I only find more pain, and that I am also unable to embrace what is not painful. Life becomes sterile.
