True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart (28 page)

“Please Love Me”

Indian teacher Sri Nisargadatta writes, “The mind creates the abyss. The heart crosses over it.” Sometimes the abyss of fear and isolation is so wide that we hold back, unable to enter the sanctuary of presence, frozen in our pain. At such times, we need a taste of love from somewhere in order to begin the thaw.

This was true for our community member Julia as her cancer treatments continued. She was uncomplaining about her fatigue and pain, but as her friend Anna commented, “It feels like she's barely there.” And despite her determination to “just handle it myself,” she was increasingly dependent. Her friends organized themselves to bring her food, and one evening when Anna came with some soup, she found Julia curled up in bed facing the wall. Julia thanked Anna weakly, told her she felt queasy, and asked her to leave the soup on the stove. She heard the door click, and drifted off for a while. When she woke, she felt the familiar utter aloneness, the sense that she was locked in a dying body. She began crying softly, and then to her surprise she felt a gentle hand on her shoulder. Anna had shut the door, but rather than leaving had been sitting quietly by her side. Now the crying turned into deep sobs. “Go ahead, dear, just let it happen … it's okay,” Anna whispered. Over and over, she told her, “It's okay, we're here together” as Julia gave in to the agony of held-back fear and grief.

After about twenty minutes, with interludes for tissues and water, Julia quieted. She was still a bit nauseated and felt weak from crying. But for the first time in as long as she could remember, she was profoundly at ease.

“Some shield I had put up between me and the world dissolved,” Julia told me the following week. “Even after Anna left, I could feel her care. The aloneness was gone.” But then, she went on, several days later the shield hardened again. She had an appointment with her oncologist, and he told her that the cancer had spread. “I guess I feel most isolated when I get scared.”

“Is the shield up now?” I asked. “Do you feel scared and isolated?” She nodded, “It's not too intense because we're together. But there's a place inside that feels so afraid …”

“You might take some moments and pay attention to that place.” Julia sat back on the couch and closed her eyes. “Can you sense what that place in you most needs?”

Julia was quiet for what felt to be a long time. “It wants love. Not just my love, though … it wants others to care. It's saying ‘Please love me.'”

“Julia, see if you can let that wanting, that longing for love, be as big as it wants to be. Just give it permission, and feel it from the inside out.” She nodded and sat quietly, eyebrows drawn, intent.

“Sense who you most want to feel love from … and when someone comes to mind, visualize that person right here and ask … say the words, ‘Please love me.' You might then imagine what it would be like to receive love, just the way you want it.”

Julia nodded again and was very still. After a minute or two she whispered a barely audible, “Please love me,” and then again a little louder. Tears appeared at the corners of her eyes. I encouraged her to keep going for as long as she wanted—visualizing anyone who came to mind as a possible source of love, saying “Please love me.” I also suggested she imagine opening and allowing herself to receive the love. She continued, and soon was weeping as she said the words. Gradually her crying subsided, and she was just whispering. Then there were deep spaces of silence between her words. Her face had softened and flushed slightly, and she had a slight smile.

When she opened her eyes, they were shining. “I feel blessed,” she told me. “My life is entirely held in love.”

We met for the last time three weeks before Julia's death. Anna had taken her to a park early that morning before anyone was around. They put down a blanket to meditate on, and Julia was able to make herself comfortable, leaning against a tree. “I don't know how much more time I'll have,” she told me, “so while we were quiet I did an inner ritual. I felt this precious life that I love and that I'm leaving—my friends, the whole meditation community, you … swing dancing, singing, the ocean … oh so much beauty, the trees …” Tears welled up and Julia paused, feeling the grief as she spoke. Then she went on: “I could feel the solidness of the big oak that was supporting me, and sense its presence. I started praying … I said ‘Please love me.' Immediately love was here. It flooded me, this knowing of being related, of being the same aliveness, the same one consciousness. Then the grasses and bushes, the birds, the earth and clouds … Anna, anyone I thought of … each being was loving me and we were united in that consciousness. I
was
love, I was a part of everything.” Julia was quiet for a while. Then she said slowly, “Do you know what I'm finding, Tara? When you accept that you are dying … and you turn toward love, it's not hard to feel one with God.”

We sat silently, savoring each other's company. Then our conversation meandered; we talked about dogs (she loved my poodle and insisted the dog be with us when we met) and wigs and wigs on dogs getting chemo and an upcoming retreat. We were lighthearted and deeply comfortable. We hugged several times before she left. Julia's realization of oneness was embodied as a generous, deeply sweet love. In sharing her wisdom and in expressing that love, she gave me her parting gift.

Seeing Past the Veils

In the Lakota/Sioux tradition, a person who is grieving is considered most
wakan
, most holy. There's a sense that when someone is struck by the sudden lightening of loss, he or she stands on the threshold of the spirit world. The prayers of those who grieve are considered especially strong, and it is proper to ask them for their help.

You might recall what it's like to be with someone who has grieved deeply. The person has no layer of protection, nothing left to defend. The mystery is looking out through that person's eyes. For the time being, he or she has accepted the reality of loss and has stopped clinging to the past or grasping at the future. In the groundless openness of sorrow, there is a wholeness of presence and a deep natural wisdom.

Thich Nhat Hanh expresses this wisdom in a way that has touched me deeply. He experienced his mother's death as one of the great misfortunes of his life. He had grieved for her for more than a year when she appeared to him in a dream. In it, they were having a wonderful talk, and she was young and beautiful. He woke up in the middle of the night and had the distinct impression that he had never lost his mother. She was alive in him.

When he stepped outside his monastery hut and began walking among the tea plants, he still felt her presence by his side. As he says so beautifully, “She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tender, very sweet.” Continuing to walk, he sensed that his body was a living continuation of all his ancestors, and that together, he and his mother were “leaving footprints in the damp soil.”

In my understanding, his year of grieving, of experiencing this great human loss directly, allowed him to find refuge in a timeless loving. We each must surrender into the river of personal loss to discover that which is eternal, that which can never be taken away. As Thich Nhat Hanh expressed this truth, “All I had to do was look at the palm of my hand, feel the breeze on my face or the earth under my feet to remember that my mother is always with me, available at any time.”

Whether grieving the loss of our own life, or another's, we each have the capacity to see past the veils of separation. If our hearts are willing, grieving becomes the gateway to loving awareness, the entry into our own awakened nature.

Guided Reflection: Prayer in the Face of Difficulty

Prayer expresses the longing of your heart. When offered with presence and sincerity, it can reveal the source of what you long for—the loving essence of who you are. The following guidelines and reflections are offered as a support in awakening the vitality, depth, and healing power of your prayer.

You may already spontaneously pray at times of great need and distress. Without naming it as prayer, you might say something like, “Oh please, oh please”; and call out for relief of pain, for someone to take care of you, for help for a loved one, for a way to avoid great loss.

If so, begin to investigate your experience. What is the immediate feeling that gives rise to your prayer? What are you praying for? Whom or what are you praying to? Becoming more aware of how you pray spontaneously will open you to a more intentional practice. You might consider prayer as an ongoing experiment, drawing on the guidelines below.

Posture for prayer:

If you bring your palms together at your heart, do you feel connected with your sincerity and openness? What happens if you close your eyes? If you bow your head? Find out whether these traditional supports for prayer serve you, and if they don't, explore what other positions or gestures are most conducive to openheartedness.

Arriving:

Even when you are in the thick of very strong emotion, it is possible and valuable to pause and establish a sense of prayerful presence. After you have assumed whatever posture most suits you, come into stillness. Take a few long and full breaths to collect your attention. Then as your breath resumes its natural rhythm, take some moments to relax any obvious tension in your body. Feel yourself here, now, with the intention to pray.

Listening:

The strength and purity of your prayer emerges from fully contacting your felt experience. Bring a listening attention to your heart and to whatever in your life feels most difficult right now. It might be a recent or impending loss or a situation that summons hurt, confusion, doubt, or fear. As if watching a movie, focus on the frame of the film that is most emotionally painful. Be aware of the felt sense in your body—in your throat, chest, belly, and elsewhere. Where are your feelings the strongest? Take your time, allowing yourself to fully contact your vulnerability and pain.

Imagine you could inhabit the most vulnerable place within you, feeling it intimately from the inside. If it could express itself, what would it communicate? Buried inside the pain, what does this part of you want or need most? Is it to be seen and understood? Loved? Accepted? Safe? Is your longing directed toward a certain person or spiritual figure? Do you long to be held by your mother? Recognized and approved of by your father? Healed or protected by God? Whatever the need, let yourself listen to it, feel it, and open to its intensity.

Expressing your Prayer:

With a silent or whispered prayer, call out for the love, understanding, protection, or acceptance you long for. You might find yourself saying, “Please may I be better, kinder, and more worthy.” Or you might direct your prayer to another person or being: “Daddy, please don't leave me.” “Mommy, please help me.” “God, take care of my daughter, please, please, let her be okay.” You might feel separate from someone and call out his or her name, saying, “Please love me, please love me.” You might long for your heart to awaken and call out to the bodhisattva of compassion (Kwan-yin), “Please, may this heart open and be free.”

Your prayer will continue to deepen if, as you express it in words, you stay in direct contact with your vulnerability and felt sense of longing. Say your prayer several times with all the sincerity of your heart. Find out what happens if you give yourself totally to feeling and expressing your longing.

Embodying Prayer:

Often our particular want or longing isn't the full expression of what we actually desire. Similarly, the object of our longing, the person we call on for love or protection, may not offer what we truly need. Rather these are portals to a deeper experience, an opening to a deeper source.

As you feel your wants and longing, ask yourself, “What is the experience I yearn for? If I got what I wanted, what would it feel like?”

Use your imagination to find out. If you want a particular person to love you, visualize that person hugging you and looking at you with unconditional love. Then let go of any image of that person and feel inwardly that you are being bathed in love. If you want to feel safe, imagine that you are entirely surrounded by a protective presence. Then feel that peace and ease filling your every cell. Whatever you are longing for, explore what it would be like to experience its pure essence as a felt sense in your body, heart, and mind. Finally, discover what happens when you surrender into this experience, when you become the love or peace that you are longing for.

Throughout the Day:

Your formal exploration of prayer creates the grounds for weaving shorter prayers into your life. Remembering to pray in the midst of daily activities will help you become aligned with the kindness and wisdom of your heart.