Sitting in the flame

Today I am “sitting in the middle of the fire” (Becoming Bodhisattvas: Pema Chodron). I am being turned back to myself, to look inward for secure attachment. Security within allows for a sense of safety no matter what happens because I will know how to take care of myself. Even as I type my heart swells with sadness, with despair, with a sense of crumbling weakness. My limbs feel heavy and slow as tears prepare. Thoughts muddy. Oceans move deep within my heart and soul and I am unsteady.

Now I remember that I have capacity. The tears pool and fall. My throat is pushing the tightness out or rather relaxing the tension that I held in. I’m allowing it to speak, to be, to exist. My pain has a purpose. I let it inform me and I aspire to sit in its fire so that I may learn. My own burning bush, so to speak. And now I feel nauseous and spent, but lighter and I see myself surrounded by closed doors. All alone. I sit and I pray and I meditate.

Every closed door is pointing me back to me. People, lovers, friends, sponsors, therapists; no one can heal me because I am not actually broken. I am in the flame and I am turning toward it. I am becoming unnumb. I let it singe me and I smile. The burn of a closed door is good because it brings me back to myself. I abandoned myself for others and am unable to anymore because of closed doors. The world is doing for me what I could not do for myself. So, alone I sit, among the flame, encircled by closed doors and I smile and I cry because I am not abandoning myself, anymore.