So we have really been spending our time past month at least reflecting on how much of our life is shaped by loss and not just the big obvious losses but the subtle ones that are happening all the time.
And as we slow down and pay attention I think that my hope is that we're beginning to see that loss isn't an event.
It's not something that only happens when somebody dies or when something falls apart.
Loss is a condition of being alive.
Something is always ending.
A moment ends,
A breath ends,
A version of ourself ends,
A mood arises and passes,
A plan changes,
The body changes,
And so much of our energy goes into resisting this very basic truth.
Check that out for yourself.
We don't want things to change.
We don't want to lose what we have.
We don't want to become someone we don't recognize.
And the response to that is that we develop edges,
The jagged edges of defensiveness and rigidity,
Like rigidity,
Wanting things to go a certain way.
Fixed,
Fixed views about who we are and who other people are and how life should be unfolding.
And underneath all of that there's often a very simple and human impulse.
It's an impulse,
The sense of me that must be protected,
Like protect ourselves from change,
From the impact of another person's words,
Protect ourselves from loss,
From uncertainty.
But what happens over time is these edges,
They don't protect us at all.
They harden us and they make it harder to meet life as it is.
They make it harder to be in relationship with others and with ourselves and with this moment as it is.
So our practice is is kind of an erosion practice,
A wearing down of what has become rigid.
And over time the practice begins to to smooth the edges,
Not all at once,
You know,
Not dramatically,
But slowly and almost invisibly.
It was like what Brian was pointing to,
The softening of river stones that have been carried in the current for years and worn down like smooth,
Not by force,
But by steady contact.
Contact.
Or like the way the wind shapes rock.
You know,
Nothing you would notice in a single moment,
But over time how it changes the landscape.
My kind of go-to example of the smoothing out the edges of the jagged rock is,
You know,
The clenched fist.
If you pay attention,
You know how much effort it takes to keep the fist clenched.
And how natural it feels of eventually to let it open.
This is what the practice begins to reveal.
So much of our holding requires effort.
And so much of our tension is learned.
And everything that we take as solid,
As fixed,
Is fluid.
So as these edges in ourselves begin to erode,
Something else becomes available.
There's a lightness,
Not because nothing is lost.
Oftentimes the edges soften because of loss.
But because we're not gripping so tightly,
There's a real sense of relief.
Of not having to carry everything.
Not have to manage the outcomes.
Not have to defend,
You know,
The fixed sense of who we are.
In that softening,
In that surrender,
There's a lot of openness.
And I think that,
You know,
In my experience,
Loss,
It strangely creates space.
When something falls away,
Something else has room to appear.
And sometimes that's tenderness,
And sometimes it's grief,
And sometimes there's a quiet presence that wasn't accessible before.
And like Lily pointed out,
There can even be a kind of joy.
Not joy that depends on things going our way,
But it's quieter.
A joy that comes from not being so burdened and entangled in holding everything together.
So I think it's important also to say that as we surrender to the erosion,
You know,
Beginning to practice in this way,
It is not uncommon that there is a kind of exhaustion.
Because we start to see just how much we have been holding.
How much effort has been going into maintaining control,
Into defending our identity,
Into keeping things from changing.
And when we begin to loosen that grip even a little bit,
It can feel like working a muscle that hasn't been used before.
And in that there can be fatigue.
Sort of that I think the sense is like,
This is a lot.
This is a lot.
I really actually experienced this during this last visit to California.
I was with my mother-in-law and her aging looks really really hard.
She's strung very tight and is very very controlling.
There is no room for another view.
And you know,
So I show up and there's this practice that I have,
Thank goodness.
And you know,
Having the practice I can say has made things a lot easier over the years.
But what I noticed this round of visit was like,
I'm so tired.
Why do I feel so much more tired this this trip?
I felt completely depleted.
And this too is the is the path,
Right?
The tiredness,
It wasn't a sign that there was something wrong.
It was a sign that I was feeling the cost of holding on.
I'm so practiced at bracing and tightening and managing myself in relationship to this difficult person that when I soften,
It's disorienting.
It's like,
Ah,
Where am I?
So part of this practice is learning to include that exhaustion.
Not to turn it into another problem,
You know.
Let even the tiredness be held in awareness.
And then in that,
In that allowing,
Something,
Something happens.
There can be like a lightness that happens in the body and a kind of a sense of relief.
The relief of not having to carry everything.
Not having to manage outcomes or defend a fixed sense of who we are.
It's surrender.
It's like we begin to notice and soften.
Like when we lose patience,
Instead of building a story about it,
We just notice it.
Like,
I feel so much impatience in the body.
This is what impatient feels like in the body.
And then in noticing the impatience in the body,
Something softens.
Instead of immediately trying to fix it or resist it,
There's a,
There's a sort of resilience that happens.
A skillfulness that emerges.
Because what,
What I begin to trust is not that things will be easy,
But that I have the capacity to meet it.
There is something in us that can stay present,
Even when things fall apart.
And that willingness to stay,
That's what allows the edges to wear down.
So maybe,
Maybe the invitation is to notice where something is changing in your life right now.
Something small.
Something subtle.
Notice that.
Instead of turning away,
Stay.
Notice where the edges are.
Where there is tightening.
Where there is holding.
Where there is a sense of this shouldn't be happening.
Stay with it.
Just stay for a moment.
See what it's like.
See what it's like.
Breathe with it and let something soften.
Maybe not all the way.
Maybe not perfectly.
But enough to feel another possibility.
That even here in the middle of this change,
This edge,
There's an opportunity to surrender.
