How are you? What do you need?

I say this prayer after all of my classes. It is sometimes referred to as the Metta Prayer or the Loving Kindness Prayer.

May all beings be well.

May all beings be happy.

May all beings be free from suffering.

We’ve had another one of those weeks that shows us just how much inner work there still has to be done. It was a roller coaster. Yay Georgia! Holy shit, the Capitol! The onslaught of images invoked a myriad of emotional responses: disbelief, fear, anger, frustration, confusion, despair. So many emotions surged through my body in one day. I could not even begin to process them all. My neck started screaming in pain. My mood got irritable. I yelled at my kids. I blamed PMS and sent myself to my room at 6:30pm, put on my headphones, watched The Expanse, and then went to sleep only to have my neck and arm pain wake me up again and again.

It was a lot.

May all beings be free from suffering. I love this prayer. I wish the prayer would be like a magic spell where POOF, you say it and it's true. I believe that words do have power like spells, just without the POOF factor. It is slower, and since suffering is part of our human experience, it has to be felt to be released. There were so many uncomfortable emotions surging through my body the other night I could not process them all.

In hindsight, I could have gone in my room when I felt the pain in my body getting louder and the angry dialogue getting more convincing and sat with myself in silence. I could have allowed the internal screaming to have its say. But it was the end of the day and I was tired. All I wanted to do was numb, hide, and escape because that seemed easier. I wanted a break. So much darkness. So much trauma. So much drama coming out of my phone. 

Yet, I found a middle ground. I soothed myself with some sci-fi, yes, but I was up early the next day and gave myself some loving attention. I gave my pain attention, first with internal resistance. Why does my neck and shoulder still hurt?  Why do I have all these angry thoughts in my mind? Asking why, for me, I realized was a form of resistance. I just wanted to be given a break. Can’t we all just be given a break from this? Where is the light already?

And it came to me. Truly allowing the darkness to come up and have its say allows for light to be integrated into daily life: more light in the body, the mind, the words, the actions. 

This world stage we are all a part of, and a witness of, is purging great darkness. We can name that darkness systemic racism, injustice, corruption, ignorance. It has many faces. But what we are seeing is simply a reflection of what is inside of us. It is not the other way around. 

But seeing this reflection gives us the opportunity to allow this darkness within us to have its fullest expression. To scream in our bodies. To rage in our bodies. To explode and release. That is all it ever wants, expression without resistance and with  acceptance. 

So, I ask you to reflect upon your experience this week. How did you feel?  Where did you feel this week in your body?  Where did you feel the last ten months in your body?  The body keeps the score (this is an actual book title). It holds onto these negative experiences we don’t know what to do with. Anger is uncomfortable and rage, even more so. Who wants to feel that?  Yet, tenderly, we must.

It is part of our nature. Negative emotions are just as valid and natural as positive emotions. Let us not be addicted to positive emotions. Let us not, also, keep our negative emotions around for longer than they need to be. Don’t keep reactivating them with thoughts and stories. This is, for me, the biggest challenge: how to stay informed and not reactivated.

It's a practice, a practice of deep self-compassion and tenderness. Continue to ask yourself “What do I need?” and “How am I feeling?”  Check in with yourself. Tune out for a while. You can catch up on all the information later. Give yourself quiet time to process the energy that moves within you. 

I truly feel when we can do that, then our actions - big and small - will be in alignment with this Metta Prayer. Experience and release your suffering first, dear ones.  This is how we change the world.

I’ll keep working on that right alongside you.