When we’re bombarded by waves of reactivity – such as cravings, impulses, a compulsion to overeat check out, overwork, overdo, or escape, or emotional triggers or upsets – everything in us can tighten up and say, “No.”
Our natural reaction is to resist the painful feelings and impulses – especially since these impulses can lead us to do things that cause us suffering.
And sometimes we feel bad for feeling bad – we may not like ourselves when we feel judgmental, harsh, critical or scared.
One of the tools that we teach at Growing Humankindness is to invite in what scares you – to meet these places of contraction, aversion and resistance with a soft heart, acceptance and an invitation to exist.
Rumi described this process so beautifully in his well known poem, The Guest House:
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
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This process is easy to describe, and may sound like a good idea – but it’s not always easy to do.
For one, we can get identified with our impulses, thoughts, emotions, cravings, and interior weather and feel shame, guilt, aversion or fear when our inner weather is stormy. So of course we may feel driven to make it ‘go away.’
One of the teachings that has helped me feel more welcoming of my Guest House is something Bonnie Badenoch shared with me in a year long training I took with her in 2022.
She was talking about how we can respond when places of unhealed trauma arise in our nervous systems, which often rattles us.
We often call these moments being ‘triggered.’ But Bonnie describes these moments as being ‘touched and awakened’ to reflect what’s really happening: some part of us is awakening and arising, asking for care, support and holding.
Rather than seeing these experiences as triggers that we want to heal as quick as we can so they can go away, she invites us to welcome these experiences as the very opportunities that bring healing:
“I’m going to make an outrageous suggestion…to say thank you here – thank you for being here so there can be healing…If you don’t want to do that, that’s okay, you don’t have to.
It’s taken me years to get to the place of feeling like when these [places] come up – that I can mostly feel, after a moment of, ‘Darn here we go again’ – shortly after that ‘Oh, yes here we go again!’
Here’s an opportunity. Here’s a possibility. Here’s a way that somebody inside has requested healing because you’ve come into my awareness. And I can begin to pull in my supporters to help me do that – come and help me be with what’s arrived for healing.” – Bonnie Badenoch
This approach brings a giant exhale inside. We can feel like we’re ‘failing’ or like ‘we’re doing something wrong’ when painful emotions arise, or when we feel dysregulated, or when we’re in pain.
What if, instead, we could pause, and we can see this experience as the very opportunity, the very medicine we’re needing – that something has arrived for healing?
Rather than running from the pain, or trying to shut it down, we turn towards it, open to it and allow this hurting place to come home, to bathe in the waters of compassion and care.
Rumi, again, comes to our aid. “Keep your eye on the bandaged place. It’s where the light gets in.”
To your bandages, and to the light that holds them.