I love you. The Invitation #4

 The Sorrow.

This chapter begins with;

"EVERY LIFE HAS PAIN AND SORROW in it. It is part of being human.

"...All the while, deep inside, I know what I have always known: that the knowledge will never be enough.

 

This is the secret we keep from ourselves. And the moment it is revealed, we become aware of a need for something else: for the wisdom to live with what we do not know, what we cannot control, what is painful -  and still choose life. Wisdom is often born in the shadows, frequently more visible in the darkness than the light.

 

...We must move into darker places if we are to find the wisdom we so desperately need. We rarely go there willingly, though every life contain its own cycles of grief and celebration. To meet wisdom in these dark places we must be willing and able to hold all of what life gives us, to exclude nothing of ourselves or the world, to tell ourselves the truth. Wisdom will stretch us far beyond where we thought we could or wanted to go. She will show us what we cannot change or control, reveal what is hard to know about ourselves and the world, and tear at the illusions of what we think we know, until we are surrounded by the vastness of the mystery. And all the while, wisdom asks us to choose life. She does not want us to just continue, to hang on, to survive. She asks us to experience life actively, fully, every day - to show up for all of it. 

*At this point, a reprise of a phrase of the poem is in order...

       It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.

          I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, 

                 if you have been opened by life's betrayals 

          or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain. 

                    I want to know if you can sit with pain, 

           mine or your own,

                    without moving to hide it

           or fade it

                    or fix it.

 

~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer "