Resting in springtime sun
Reading Haemin Sunim’s ‘The things you can see only when you slow down” over the last few days. Enjoying some slowing down time as springtime sun comes to visit us here. Resting in resonance with some of his words:
” I wish you could see my true nature. Beyond my body and labels, there is a river of tenderness and vulnerability. Beyond stereotypes and assumptions, there is a valley of openness and authenticity. Beyond memory and ego, there is an ocean of awareness and compassion.”
The body and labels – sometimes it’s like the everyday busyness of getting things done strengthens and galvanises these, hardens over that river of tenderness and vulnerability. And it’s like this hardening, takes me further away from this true nature and makes it more difficult to soften when there is a resting time, more difficult still to rest in that flow of tenderness and vulnerability. Agitation arises, attention narrowing to the habit of thinking, thinking about anything but here, this agitation of simply being.
I’m reminded of Tara Brach’s ‘spacesuit’ metaphor – the suit each of us develops in response to our conditioned experience as we grow up and out. The space suit of stereotype and assumption, of memory and ego. And I connect with the longing for freedom of life beyond spacesuit living, to have that place and space to be spacesuit free, to walk barefoot on the dewey grass and soft earth, connecting both in and out – boundless. To venture into that valley of openness and authenticity and to raft on that ocean of awareness and compassion. So for this weekend, in this springtime sun, I am choosing to be with that river of tenderness and vulnerability and whenever my mind wanders off to its spacesuit familiarity, I am choosing to invite my attention back to being with the vulnerable, magnificent experience of living.
