Do Not Turn Away

There are some things that are so painful, we don’t want to look at them. Turn away, curl into a ball, just make it stop. But once we get through them, or soften into them, they turn us into something else. Those painful moments of separation, grieving a death, losing a great love, having an acute chronic injury, getting cancer…I’m sure you have your own aching places. But what evolves out of these life events, is the experience of having lived it, and we are never the same again. It’s what makes the weathered grooves on an antique wood table, the inclusions in a diamond, the slubbed threads on a fine silk dress, the stretch marks on a mothers belly so poignant…are these imperfections to be disdained? Certainly not, rather they are great reminders of the wear and tear of life on our precious existence. Experience makes us unique, gives us each our own inimitable character. In the Japanese culture, the term wabi sabi describes the beauty in things imperfect and unconventional as deep, multi-dimensional, and mysterious. Aren’t we all?

Do not turn away,
Give yourself to the blackness…
Surrender completely,
Merge with the mystery…
-a personal mash-up from The Radiance Sutras by Lorin Roche

Photo by Michal Minster Tal