Yoga Far Off the Mat: Quiet: A Revolution

I’ve always needed a lot of quiet in my life. One of my favorite things as a child was finding my own quiet in a world that always seemed so loud to me. I searched the sky. I climbed trees. I made a special place in my room and I always saw a place when I closed my eyes, beyond the horizon that brought me home to myself.

I’ve spent the last several months requiring more quiet than I ever had in my life and from where I sit now, I see that I found myself my deep sense of “happy” and began replenishing my essential well-being. That is what quiet does.

For a long time, I was negotiating this need for my own quiet in my relationships. The reason for this is because we all need and require different levels of intimacy. The “key” is in listening to each other’s needs and in respecting our differing needs. When you love someone, it’s critical to not take it personally if that person requires less intimacy than you do.

The problem becomes this: If you push up against this principle (and I believe pushing up against it is foundationally one’s own unhealed wound), then what ends up happening is you draw people towards you over and over who simply push for more intimacy from you than YOU desire because you have not reconciled a wound and integrated it as a part of who you are (because it has not been healed). You have not owned it as a part of your own humanity. I know because this was my experience.

I let go of a relationship that I fought hard for. By hard I mean fought with every ounce of love and tenderness and hope and resilience I could find. The only thing left to do was to surrender.

To surrender to all that I was losing. To all that I had to relinquish, even though everything in me wanted to and needed to continue to FIGHT TO SUSTAIN the relationship. To surrender to a BIG TRUTH: that I come from a family that I am not a part of and even BIGGER than that, in spite of their limitations, that I never stopped loving them and most likely never will.

Here comes the most GROUND “SHAKING” TRUTH, which humbles me to my very core. As a child, I never would have believed it, but in this crystal clear moment, I have been shaken and rocked by a truth I cannot ignore (whether it is ever told to me or not). HERE IT IS: Even though people walk away from you, it does not mean they do not feel love in their hearts for you, which is not meaningful to them. Sometimes, the relationships are too confrontational or too painful for some souls to sustain.

Those who know and love me may kick and scream with self-righteous indignation. But I know I love my family. I know I demand fierce honesty that is frightening for many. I know my heart is soft. I know I need a lot of quiet and this is a boundary which is inviolate. I know forgiveness in my core. I know how to sit in pain, physical and emotional, and I know how to keep going. I know what it means to rise and fill my heart with love.

Quiet has been my revelation my whole life. Lately, since my inner renovations, I have required more of it than ever. But it has been revolutionary. Sacred. Godly.

And it has allowed my joy to rise up in me in the deepest and most sustained way.

Quiet. Sustained. Ground shaking. Joy rising. Love.

Blessings on the eve of this memorial to all. May we all hold in our hearts the love we choose to abide in and remember.