How I Got Here...

When I was a child, I used to have panic attacks a lot.  During my teens, they seemed to die down, but they came back with a vengeance around my senior year of college.  I can remember walking home from class one day and the vastness that I felt was too much to take in.  The main question that kept coming up for me was about death.  Why were we here if only to die?  I couldn't stop thinking about it. 

Close friends and family didn't seem to be interested in my enquiry and I can remember feeling very alone, so I did my best to distract myself and it worked for a little while.  Years later when I was in my late 20's I began to feel the vast hole inside me again.  I can remember asking my mom one time, how do you know that there is God?  She told me, it's just a knowing that you feel in your heart.  I loved her answer, but it didn't satisfy this place in me.  I felt trapped by the question and the fear.  

It wasn't until 2001, after I had moved out to San Francisco that I began my spiritual journey.  I had just turned 30 yrs old and was going through a separation from my first husband.  Times were tough and a friend of mine from work felt like I could benefit from meeting his spiritual teacher, and so I did. And life was never the same after I met her.   

She was dynamic, down to earth, hilarious and exuded a confidence around life that was so attractive.  We began working together in the fall of 2001, shortly after 9/11.  The first time I met her I felt like I was at home.  She was extremely warm and seemed to understand me better than I did myself.  I began to share my experiences and feelings with her around the vastness and death.  She was the first person that was able to explain what was happening to me in such a way that made perfect sense.  There wasn't anything fundamentally wrong with me, I was actually waking up to reality.  This was such a relief and for the first time, I can remember feeling excited about exploring the world within.

I became deeply involved in my teacher's work and spiritual group and went full force into my enquiry around existence.  My teacher's wisdom and understanding around surrender and letting go was so invaluable to the place I was in at that time and I will always be grateful to her for the help she gave me.  

During the eight years I spent in her community, I learned that letting go felt better than holding on.  It also became obvious that what I was letting go into was not other than my own Heart.  The vastness I had been experiencing had only been terrifying because I hadn't recognized it as my true nature.  The intense fear had always been an invitation to get intimate with my own Self.  

Each time I would let go of a belief about who I was, I would experience this uncomfortable, uncertain, unfamiliar feeling that at first was very alarming and brought up the intense panic attacks again and fear of annihilation.  But over time and with the help of my teacher and her community, I began to feel at home in the discomfort and uncertainty, and this gave me the courage to keep going. I began to experience myself more and more as the space that holds the fear and all other emotions.  

Fear would shoot through the space like a rocket and if I began to have an anxiety attack, it became clear that my tensing away from it or following it with my attention, made it way worse.  Staying still gave me a different perspective on the fear and showed me over and over that there was a part of me that was much larger than the fear and all of my stories I had about it.  This freed me beyond belief.  I could never again believe in the fear in the same way.

As this realization deepened, I began to go through many changes and transformations over the years spent with my teacher.  And while this was occurring, she too, went through many changes.  She became a guru to serve the awakening of her students more directly.  I embraced her fully as my guru, as she had been so extraordinarily helpful to me during my existential crisis.  I trusted her profoundly.  Though in July 2009, I found myself having major doubts about the nature of our relationship.  I began to see that I had built up a spiritual identity around my teacher and the teaching which created a strange power dynamic between us, as well as with everyone in my life.  I also started to experience my teacher as a distraction from integrating more deeply into my own Being.  It became clear that this too, had to be thrown into the fire, so I left everything I knew to be true and trusted again beyond what was certain and familiar.  

The years that followed my leaving were messy and didn't look anything like what I had considered to be spiritual.  The spiritual realization I once had while I was with my teacher had fallen away and everything was under investigation. I experienced a deep anger and despair around life that I had never felt before.  It was a dark time.  But, as grace would have it, it was here in the absolute mess of life that Being revealed itself to me more profoundly than ever.  I didn't need to push anything away or look to find anything.  I sat with open eyes, as the mess itself and was completely accepted, embraced and allowed to be here exactly as I am. Nothing, absolutely nothing is rejected.  Even rejection and resistance itself is free to be!  This brought about a deep acceptance and appreciation for the nature of reality - and has forever changed the way I relate to myself and the world around me. 

Nothing can define who we are.  No circumstance or experience can conclude anything about our true nature.  We are so vast and such a mystery to our own selves and to each other. It is such a miracle that we are even here!  May all beings go beyond the comfort of their minds and take refuge in the Heart of Life.  May we live in this mystery together and embrace one another as this same unknowable Source that breathes life and love into us in every precious moment.