Avoiding Pain

"What do you need today?" is what my yoga teacher asked as we set intentions for our practice. My mind scrambled for a moment and then I thought of hope, I need hope. A lot of shit feels pretty hopeless right now, but beyond current events, hope is something I've rarely had. Nearly a year and a half ago I gave myself a challenge of having hope for a year, and this fizzled quickly into oblivion. I normally do well with my self challenges but I see this idea was ridiculous considering my mindset at that moment. 

Hope is scary for me. Whether in my God believing days, or now when I'm floating in this odd energy - universe - intentions space, I've felt to voice my hope meant all the powers of time would work together for it to explode in my face. So I've worked hard to not allow for hope. 

In therapy today we discussed decisions I'd made and why I'd made them. My therapist explained, "we find our way back to what's comfortable...when we're facing what we've already encountered, we know how to survive it". My body lives in survival mode and is always on alert for what might take me. What is also comfortable for me is not hoping. Assume the worst will happen so if it's good then it's a nice surprise and if it's bad we were expecting it anyway so it won't hurt us too much. At the core of this is avoidance of pain.

I was listening to a Glennon Doyle talk today where she spoke of feeling pain is to be human. She said grieving is pain and grief is the price of love. "....stop hiding from the pain and instead turn directly towards it and march right into it....you need your pain...there is no glory except straight through your story...first the pain, then the rising". 

First thought, "Fuck this!". How much more pain?!? I'm truly nauseated. But...if you want a different result then you need to make a different choice. So I did some hard life examination and definitely felt pain I didn't want to feel. Doing the work.

Glennon also took part of a quote from one of my favorites, Pema Chodron, and said this stopped me cold, "everything that we need to become the people we are meant to become is inside the hot loneliness of now". 

The Hot Loneliness of Now. I've heard many descriptions of pain, loneliness and life's suffering, but this one encompasses so much more. It's mindfulness, it's sitting with what we think we can't endure, it's taking another breath when you feel you're suffocating. 

I do want to hope. I want to rise. I want to believe my life has meaning. As I recently read, I want to stop "devaluing your identity and constricting yourself to being trapped in brokenness". 

No longer avoiding the pain - I sit in the hot loneliness of now.