Tag: sweet ache

“When the sweet ache of being alive,

Lodged between who you are

And who you will be,

Is awakened,

Befriend this moment.

It will guide you.

Its sweetness is what holds you.

Its ache is what moves you on.” –Mark Nepo

I talk a lot with my clients about how most addictions are simply humans looking for an outside answer to an inside problem.

I’ve had this hole that I’ve always tried to fill with substances, shopping, dating men, adrenaline sports, the glorification of being busy, desire… the list goes on. Anything I can I try to use to fill that void.

The universe is not having that behavior from me any more and has systematically removed vice by vice from my grip. Until just recently when I am facing what feels like true aloneness, unable to fill this void with food, sex, or dating.

Still got the sports thank God, but I better be careful and stay in balance with it otherwise I foresee an injury and removal of that outlet too.

I did ask for this. Since I can remember every wish I wished was simply to be happy. Man has that wish come true! My life is amazing, but with amazing there must sometimes be suffering. (I think the difference now is that I am aware this too shall pass and there is now an underlying ok-ness even in the face of darkness that rarely leaves me now).

Creator is making me sit in my shit and stew at the moment; it’s a little terrifying. But I’m learning. The practice of transmutation of suffering to light is happening.

This hole, this woundedness as I’ve come to call it, seems to be the original deep gash dealt when I was a baby (or maybe came into this lifetime with) and that was reinforced as I grew up. It is made up of abandonment, unworthiness, the vision I get when I breathe into the area of my body where I feel the pain well up, in my solar plexus, is that of a baby or small child reaching up to be picked up, screaming for love and not receiving it and that of a little girl being bullied and told she was ugly.

I am thankful that the therapy modalities I have been studying for the last decade have acquainted me with these parts of myself, over the years I have worked on acknowledging them when I feel suffering related to attachment or abandonment. Recently though I have been fortunate to get really close to these parts and start to begin holding this little girl part of myself when she reaches up for love and holding.

I have gotten from the inside out on a body and energetic/ emotional level that attachment to outside answers to inside woundeness causes suffering. And it seems giving this little part what no other can give her is the only sane answer, since when ever I let her look to another human for love it causes attachment to outcomes and expectation, and inevitable let down as no one can always live up to those expectations and then: suffering.

I have gotten some good practice with this lately. I’ve been dating someone who does not live near me and after each interaction I can spend time alone holding myself, providing containment and self love, I can let go of the attachment anew every time I see this person or even after we have conversations.

To my surprise this does not diminish my caring, in fact when I can adequately take care of myself I feel so free and good that I naturally want to be available to him, to be sweet and good to him.

I can really see the insanity with which I have been operating in my life thus far previous to having this set of tools to at least TRY to give myself what I so desperately needed without having to demand it from the other. Which is what I always asked partners to do in the past.

Make me feel you love me, make me feel worthy, make me feel less abandoned.

It never works, because the original woundedness is still there. Never to be filled by this outside answer.

(And just FYI, NO ONE is saying I do this perfectly, but the more I love myself the more I realize that I don’t HAVE to fucking do everything perfectly and I am still lovable even if I fuck it up, right?! Right)

And then when a partner does give love or acceptance, it’s like a bonus. And I can really recive it now. That’s a by product I didn’t realize would happen. Instead of grasping the love and looking for what’s next, I’m able to bathe in it.

Mark Nepo talks about each of us coming into these existences with a gift and an emptiness. That, part of the aim of living is to find where these two meet.

I am practicing now falling into the void, into the emptiness. It is scary, terrifying. Logically my brain says to my limbic system that it WILL be ok. There is no actual mortal danger, but my small baby parts equate that void, that emptiness to annihilation or death.

SO, that is where my gifts come in. My LOVE, my COMPASSION, my CONNECTEDNESS to the DIVINE. By loving these small parts and having compassion through my connection to the divine I am made whole and therefore loveable, truly lovable I hope, to others. And from that place may I be able to truly love others in turn.

“When we dig a hole or a hole is dug in us, we become preoccupied with all that is unearthed, even try to put all that dirt back, but the empty depth is waiting for us to shine a light in it” –Mark Nepo