Walking along the beach, I’m drawn into the bramble of a small grove.
Explorer’s eyes wide-open. Shells and sea creatures washed ashore catching my attention. A scanning gaze joltingly stops at a large dead bird. A pelican’s body, twisted and strewn out. Recently deceased as is evident from the perfections of life still intact.
I’m drawn in by its beauty. The elegant lines of its head, its feathers, fur, colors, shape. And yet… I’m scared to approach it. I circle the perimeter, maintaining a wide distance.
Why? Why must I stand so far away? Why am I afraid to approach this dead bird?
I stand with reverence. A moment of prayer. May you pass peacefully along on your journey.
The beauty beckons me forward. I’ve never been able to be so close to an animal such as this one. To gaze at its lines and shapes, to drink in the size of its life and presence. And yet I’m resistant. With fear. Why this fear?
I realize that I am afraid that it might not be totally dead yet. If I get close, I may see it move, last grasps at life. Its shape hints at an unexpected death. I project suffering. I recoil from fear of that suffering. If I get close, I might personally feel it. It will make me suffer too. And perhaps even the irrational fear that death will jump up and take me too.
I don’t want to see it suffering because I don’t want to suffer.
I don’t want to die.
I don’t want to feel that pain.
So I stay away. I stand back. I create distance.
Somewhere inside me I have been programed that I am doing this for my own protection.
I disagree. Not right now. This moment of beauty and death is calling to me.
I breathe with the realization that in this moment I am afraid to get close and genuinely feel what-is if there is a chance that I will feel suffering.
I must walk in. Walk closer. Push beyond this internally polarized force, repelling and invoking.
I flash to bigger picture, parallel patterns. In order to invite growth, change and transformation I believe that we have to start by accepting what-is, and then discovering what we can love about what-is. Often situations that are in need of transformation and change have a coating of suffering that surrounds the core. To face what-is means to be with that pain and suffering, to feel through that contraction and seemingly awfulness… for only in that acceptance is there room to travel beyond into the opening and fruits of possibility.
And so on this solstice day I dance with the balance of beauty and death, suffering and possibility, my own personal fears and universal patterns. May the light grow increasingly more abundant and may I discover new acceptance in the caverns of the darkness.