Grounds for Sculpture

Grounds for Sculpture
MY HAPPY PLACE

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Deeply Embedded

Some people enter our life and they are jagged, clumsy.  Never quite fit.  We contemplate the karma and we notice that we spend a lot of time agitating over their presence, practicing patience, tolerance and tact.
Some enter our life and our heart and cause unimaginable hurt and harm and then never afford us the opportunity to say goodbye to them.  
Yet, there are others who enter.  They may even be silent about it.  They may even stay on the periphery.  But they are there to help us find our way.  And we know it when we meet them.  Others will try to convince us to feel a particular way about these folks.  But something in us is steadfast and unwavering.  We will even defend to the death about these folks, even if we haven’t seen them in years.  Even if we only met them but for an hour.  There is a knowing.  A deeply embedded knowing.
These are our soul retrievers.
I met mine five years ago, eight months into my yoga practice, during my first teacher training.  And she woke me up.  Her name is Kelly Morris.  The woman who was leading the program at the time asked us to make suggestions about what we wanted Kelly to speak about, to go home and think about it.  I didn’t have to think about it.  I went up to her at the end of training that day and said, “I’d like for Kelly to speak about forgiveness.”  Kelly came to be with us the following weekend for four hours.  She spent three of those hours speaking about forgiveness.  It was utterly magnificent.  SHE is utterly magnificent.  
Her teachings went in deep.  And I knew that because her words stayed with me for years.  Partly because she is a woman who means what she says, and partly because she entered my life that day, silently but powerfully.  
Ours was to become an ongoing conversation.  
There is too much to say here, because I am still learning from it all of the time.  But there is a karma that brought me to this moment where I can truly say, “Thank you.  Bless you.  For always and consistently showing me that you are my teacher, and a beloved holy being.  I bow to your goodness.  The goodness you see in me.  The ways in which you only wish light upon my world, for me to find my own wisdom and strength and compassion and for my suffering to end.  And for all of the ways you stay real with me.  I honor you.” 
Flash forward, five years.  I had a transformative experience yesterday with a magnificent healer.  The terrain covered places of deep loss, deep wounding, and big trauma.  I stayed engaged and present every step of the way.  
I found a way to say “thank you” every step of the way.  Thank you for still being here (alive and embodied).  Thank you for the source that looks out for me.  Thank you for my survival skills.  Thank you for being held in this moment.  Thank you for knowing how to keep myself safe. 

Today, I went to Kelly’s class.  It was MAGNIFICENT.  She spoke of almost all of the same things my healer spoke to me about yesterday.  I cried through most of the class.  Every moment of the class, even ever tear, felt like a blessing to me, releasing me from the shackles of the pain that I can no longer choose to be in.  And in those tears, I realized, maybe our deepest blessings are our moments of awakening.  Truly waking up.  Because when we feel seen, if the person who sees us cares on that subtle level, she helps to call our souls back home.  And that is how we begin to heal.
As we laid in Savasana, she spoke beautifully about aligning our breath.  The first suggestion was to think of it like a baby would breathe with its mother.  The second was like two lovers breathing in sync with one another.  Tears began pouring down my face.  She saw that my tears weren’t stopping.  And as the function of Savasana is to quiet the nervous system, this is the opposite of what was happening for me.  She said “if you are finding that your thoughts are getting in the way here, try to go back to whatever occurred before you had the thought and feel beneath the thought into the body, into the sensation.  See if you can feel if your body feels warm, or soft, whatever it is telling you, and see if you can let the thought release itself.”  Mine did.  And I was able to find my breath again.  And settle.  And feel held by a teacher who could see past my pain and call me back to myself.  Fully.  And respectfully.
In gratitude, and blessing, I bow.
March 25, 2012
Jill Bacharach

3 comments:

  1. I thank you for being a fellow soul bearer. Your story is filled with a raw truth of love and one of my favorite words, surrender.
    Keep on writing and living out loud.

    love and warmth,

    Tara (passthesaltpeach) blog

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    Replies
    1. Wow!!! Humbled. I am deeply deeply humbled. With sincere gratitude and love, Jill

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  2. I posted your blog to my fb page and wrote this below. I am one of D'ana's bff's from PA.

    For those who I know have shared my heart, my words, my yoga (long ago) and my need for connection, I introduce you to, Yoga Far Off The Mat. She'll knock your socks off!

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