Longing and Gratitude

I recently spent a wonderful week on retreat near the ocean.

The first morning back home, I woke with a sense of loss. We had been near the water, and the rhythm of of the waves was the soundtrack for our week. Now all I heard was silence. No rhythmic surf keeping time in the background. Sadness enveloped me. The longing to go back filled me.

And … when I made a point of noticing, I also felt the beauty and loveliness of the experience still moving through my body. In my imagination, I was back with the waves, walking the shoreline and soaking up the beauty. I recognized how easily the feelings of loss could overshadow the remembered joy.

Connecting with the rhythm of my breath, I intentionally made space in my awareness for the loss and then intentionally recalled the many experiences through the week that had delighted me … the endless variety of shells washed up by the waves, the feeling of the sand under my feet, the brilliance of sunlight breaking through overcast sky.  I “held” both, side by side, in my heart.

My spiritual teachers talk often about this very kind of inner work. They call it “holding the tension between opposites”. That tension is uncomfortable, and as humans, we try to avoid that discomfort by attaching ourselves entirely to one side or the other.

It is a soul practice to give space to both, to attend to both, to allow myself to experience the discomfort of the tension between them. It is a spiritual principle that when I can be present to both, and bear that discomfort, there will come a gift from Spirit. There will come a moment when something new opens in me that isn’t from me, that includes both “ends” of the paradox. 

This gift, this opening, is not something we can make happen. It is a gift from Beyond. It is Mystery.

The gift that opened for me in my experience was the sense of my heart being enlarged to hold both the loss of having to leave the beautiful environment and the knowing that it is always there for me to revisit in memory and imagination. I realized I don’t have to ignore the loss in order to be grateful for the delight. I was surprised (and this is when I know Spirit is at work) to realize there really is room in me to gently hold how much I miss the rhythm of water when I’m not near it without being consumed by the longing. Connecting with that tender place in turn expands my sense of gratitude for the many gifts of the week. With just a whisper of a thought, I feel myself back beside the waves.

By giving attention to both the loss and the remembered delight, I feel tended in my heart and my soul. I soften and expand in the warmth of my own light. My heart feels bigger, more alive. I feel more resilient. This is the fruit of caring for my own Soul, and it is gift from Spirit.