Release and Smile

There’s an odd sort of logic at play when life is fullest in release and yet we spend all our time acquiring, grasping, yearning for more. Over half of my mind-habits these days seem to be rife with receivings of some sort—confirmations about work, reconnections with colleagues about tasks to come, new horizons of learning and friendship. Mental energies fluctuate wildly up and down about little things as though they were monumental. And yet a simple release has calmed my mind, in action, in memory, and now in remembrance.

Several items of sacred recognition resurfaced in my purse the other day. Hadn’t thought about them in quite some time, as they had been out of sight. You know the old saying. Given how the path has turned and spaciousness of growth could only come without attachment, I startled a bit to listen for what to do with these precious gifts that I realized were no longer mine.

Listening with someone else always seems to pave new awareness for me, and this occasion was no different. “How do I return these to their proper place or owner without offense, without injury, without attachment?” I asked a spiritual friend. Her body language spoke what I knew too…simple returns had only renewed pain within them. Do no harm, we seemed to hear together.

Then she was given an image, an image she could share with me because she has learned—has trained herself as well as received teachings—to recognize them when they come. Rational mind would ask “Come from where” but symbolic mind rolls its eyes and reminds, “Does it really matter?” The image was perfect: a return to the place of origin of healing and attachment, a sacred grotto, to offer the gifts back to the One who had really given them in the first place. Our way of gift-giving gasps at this. How relationally rude to return a sacred gift from a friend given with such love and devotion! But if you think about it, such gifts are never not-received, after being received, wholly, once. Such gifts are not solely ours anyway, especially if we are all connected through the One whose nature is self-offering. As the Buddhists would smile: what self is there to receive the gift that it is now releasing back into the possibility for someone else’s need of it?

So now as I drive by, I am given a nudge to release, to breathe into what will come, to trust that I will be hurt again but Life beyond me will indeed thrive however it will. In a way inarticulate and quiet, I am thankful to have opened so fully, to be hurt so deeply, to know that Love never dies in the end. The action was necessary. The memory precious. Remembrance accomplished and release offered, received, alive.

Of course, now I’ll have to release attachment to the place, and this idea of release. What a pain in the ass. It never ends. J