Another one of those wee hours wake-ups when life beckons me to the keyboard to type what I may not be able to experience emotionally. I came upon the words of Panache Desai,  author and spiritual teacher who I had the joy of hearing back in 2011 at the Celebrate Your Life Conference in Phoenix, Arizona. The room in which his workshop was held felt colder at first than the others I had been in that day. In short order, I would discover the reason. The chairs were arranged in a circle and he stood in the center. As he spoke, he walked around and around and around, stirring the pot, creating a vortex, generating energy that raised the temperature in the room, or so it seemed to me. His words stirred my soul as well. He expressed in his soft voice, that also projected strongly simultaneously that we were all already worthy of so much love. It began to sink into my doubting heart.

This morning, I found a meme he had created with the simple and direct invitation:  “Feel what it is to be human-all of it.”  Not sure I ever have. There have been times when I haven’t been quite sure that I am fully human; joking over the years with my parents that I was an alien baby left on their doorstep. I have felt kinship with my fellow planetary dwellers, sentient or not AND at times, a disconnect with those who I perceive as doing harm to others. I have attempted to understand their way of thinking AND have put my hands up to shield myself from getting too close to comprehending the darkness in which they seemed to be living. Admitting I have a shadow side has not come easily. I would rather feel nothing than that much anger and fear. Sadness, I can handle at times. Deep grief (even as I teach and write about it) has been a spectre that lingers, waiting for me to take down my guard so it can pounce. I have felt it when my husband died in 1998 and when my dad passed in 2008 and my mom joined him in 2010 and then ‘put it in its place’ in the service of  functioning, thinking I was doing alright. Maybe I was. I teach people that there is no ‘right way’ to grieve.

At the moment, I am facing losses that have taken place in my body, with a series of health issues that include a recent heart attack and three days in a row last weekend with kidney stones. While I know that there is a physiological component to both of those conditions, I am just as certain that they showed up in my life now as spiritual messages. Not ‘blaming the victim’ (and I don’t view myself as a victim, anyway) mentality, but rather, seeing where the seeds were planted to have come to fruition at this moment. Both have brought with them a new awareness that the ways in which I was living my life wound inexorably to this moment and that if I chose to remain incarnate, I needed to make changes. Beyond the obvious rest, meds, nutrition and exercise, a shift in perception (one way in which A Course in Miracles defines a miracle) is necessary.

I have been doing the unthinkable….postponing events, smoothing out my schedule, saying yes only to what I know I can do and choose to do, saying no to what I thought was expected of me, for fear of losing love and approval. When I am ready, the opportunities will be there and I will have more of value to share after what I am moving through.  I have been (slowly and gradually) allowing people to do things for me that I can do for myself, because they offer and encourage me to accept, without feeling needy,  feeble and (one of my mother’s favorite words) ‘decrepit’. I am slowing my walk, my talk, my eating and sleeping. I am not just putting out, but taking in. I have moved past the denial that this body will last forever.

I am seeing friends experience and heed wake-up calls in their own lives and health. I have said goodbye to friends who have moved on to their next incarnations; most recently my friend Bob Goodwin who passed yesterday at 91. I will be writing more about him in the next few days, but he was a friend/father figure in whose presence I felt safe and loved. When I first heard, my initial reaction was (echoing what my own father used to say whenever we would find out that someone had died) “Ah no.” and then the door closed, leaving grief on the other side of it. It wasn’t a conscious thought to stop feeling. It just happened. I thought about his wife, Hannelore and what she might be feeling. They were quite a pair; marrying later in life, following previous marriages and families. She too is a dear friend. I send out love and healing for her heart as well from a place of calm compassion.

Being human and ‘feeling all of it’ comes at a price and with gifts. I have to face the messiness, pettiness, not-so-much fun feelings and call them out into the light. I get to roll around in the mud, and splash in the puddles. I need to confront my gremlins and take my own inventory. I am called on to make amends and accept those offered by others. I can allow myself to feel resentments, acknowledging them without carrying them forever. It really is okay to ask for what I want, knowing that I may or may not receive it. It really is acceptable to give voice to dreams and desires. It truly is a blessing to be fully human.

Photo credit: Robin Schwoyer