To be understood

It’s a gift beyond measure. The cup is almost empty. A sip or two left of the tea, to wet the tongue. The fire has died out. And here, in the open space, I lay my body down. I rest. I rest amidst it all, the waves of fever and fury. To ash and dust we shall all return, tattooed across the heart of a stranger with bright giddy eyes. A dog approaches me across the sand and sits down besides me as his owner calls him away. Yet, on my right side with a butt planted tenderly, he sits as I stroke his spine. He has life to him, though his body is growing old. He runs with conviction, and from your mouth I learn new words. Two here, one over there. Something new and fresh added to my mind, I receive the stimulation and the awakening from the hearts and openness of those around me. I speak of the heart over and over and over again for it is the only thing that I know to speak on. It is truly the only thing that we have within this world that seeks to tear us from our stance, to knock out feet out from below us. The heart is the only force powerful enough to hold us steady. A spine can break, fracture, fall apart, yet a heart is fluid and tender and ever moving, it expands and breathes and opens as more life is fed to it, as more experience and heartbreak and glory is remembered and brought back into its central space.

This old dog seemed familiar to me for he resembles a similar essence to my dear cat Apollo. Dark purple and blue and deep red. He travels in the night, he moves amidst shadows, he goes where others do not yet beams it all through the brightness within his wide kind eyes.

The show is over, they’ve closed down the stage, the lights are turning off as everyone has gone home. Do their souls feel light? Or are they too carrying, feeling, breathing the weight of this life? For to keep the heart open means to intimately know the inner truths of others. Their suffering and their laughter. Where and why they edit their words and what’s on the other side of it all. Wanting to be understood, to share in experience yet to also be afraid. Afraid of being called out, afraid of being exposed and not seen. Not seen for the true spirit and essence of who they are. So to counter it all, I breathe. And I breathe and I breathe and I listen. And I know that the deeper we go, the more that we feel. In all regards, more of the bliss and more of the light and more of the dark hidden and trapped things that are ready to be held within our loving and compassionate awareness.

Laughter bubbles up easily these days though so much of the time is spent with a straight face. I feel grateful for the moments upon with the waves ride it high to the surface without force. There is simply no force needed, and the heart will continue to grow and to expand and to open even as it aches and mourns and grieves. I am grateful for this too, for to feel means to be alive, to understand, and to be understood. Even if it’s alone, alone in this space. To feel means to love and to love is all that we have, it’s all that we are.

So what more is it for? If my house were to burn to the ground in these very moments, I would hope to be brave, yet I would also be okay. If love is all that we have, let me be love. Let me die in love, let me live in love, let me be nothing but love and let me live a life so fully devoted to it without condition. If my house were to burn to the ground all of the external forms would go with it too, and to these I would say goodbye. Maybe I would grieve them, maybe I would mourn them for some time, but in the end I would be okay. Grateful for the time we spent together, grateful for the comforts of a home filled with art and soft blankets, grateful for the multicolored lights and candles and wood within the walls, yet all simply things. I could let it all go and still be okay. Okay with nothing other than the heart that beats within my chest. The air within my lungs, my body in space. I am okay with very little as long as my heart continues to beat. As long as my heart continues to power me through, I know that all will be okay.

The grief of loved ones being stolen from us, ripped from our hands as if we could hold them tighter and maybe they would remain. Yet too, this is fleeting. This is temporary, no one is around forever. And in this we must grieve, we must feel it, we must know that we will be okay. That our powerful and tender and all loving hearts will get us through. When pain pierces us so deeply and we feel as though we cannot live to see another day, our hearts continue to beat. Our breath continues to flow. No mater how jagged, no mater how strained. And from here, we carry on, we venture forth. People will come and go, and none of them can be held onto. Like the water or like the sand or like the wind, it all slips through our fingers. All that remains is the heart, the love that was shared, the memory of experience, of laughter, and a deep and utter knowing that no matter what happens, no matter where we are or what our experience is, the love will get us through. No more and no less than anyone else. When deep within the depths of a broken heart, a shattered soul, a love seeming beyond repair, the heart will always get us through. Slow and steady in its tender reconfiguration, I now learn the ways to bless the pain. To understand it, to surrender to it, there’s no use in fighting against it. Can it go any deeper? The depths of this despair? Can I travel any farther into the darkness of the unknown? No matter where I roam, the heart will always guide me there. The heart will always beat. The heart will stay and remain a constant and steady captain if the ship of my soul. I do not know where I am going, I do not know where all of this is heading, I do not know what will unfold, but what I do know is that the heart will always remain.

I do not need to reach or to grasp or to hold on, for the only thing thing that I need to do, is to breath into my center, into the core of me, and to listen to my heart beating.