So...you've
decided to take Rumi's advice and experiment sometimes with letting your life
be like a guest house. You're welcoming whoever (and whatever) comes. Meeting
them at door laughing. AND, against so-called 'better judgment'...you're
inviting them in.
So,
here's the question: Where in the world are you putting all these guests?
Last
week I wrote about the quality of awareness. I started with TOLERANCE...
"Tolerance
is a beautiful thing. It's a growing ability to see, to recognize, to accept
and to work with things as they are (in contrast to how we wish or perhaps fear
they were). The more we cultivate and appreciate tolerance, the more the
quality of our AWARENESS expands and deepens."
Look
back at whatever you've been welcoming, tolerating lately. Ask yourself again,
Where AM I putting all these guests?
Is
it that you're holding them in awareness? Holding more and more stuff in
awareness--more than you used to be able to hold? Is maybe the quality of your
awareness expanding and deepening?
The
fruit of tolerance is SPACIOUSNESS. Roominess (I can't help making the
pun--Rumi-ness--since his 'Guesthouse' is coming to be such a widely loved
metaphor for spaciousness).
In
mindfulness we don't exactly practice spaciousness. We practice 'welcoming' and
'tolerance' which teach us there's more room in us than we ever guessed.
Because of our commitment to welcoming whoever comes, the old certainties of
becoming engorged with and smothered by what we're scared of and disgusted by
don't seem true anymore. The tightness of fear and repression is being
transformed into the spaciousness of trust and welcoming.
This
is a big deal. Fear keeps things 'out there' somewhere in the dark--unknown and
potent. Repression keeps things pushed down, crammed somewhere down in the basement--unknown and potent.
Tolerance welcomes them all, brings them into clear and kind attention.
"Here" (as opposed to "there") we make the acquaintance of
what we fear--we befriend our supposed enemies.
Spaciousness
is a big table. God prepares a banquet for us in the 'presence of our enemies'
and fully intends for us to enjoy the feast. Trusting that this is possible
helps make it so.
