In any experience, there is an optimal moment to make a move. We first hear it as a whisper. If we move in that moment it will be effortless, and if not, it will become progressively more difficult. We know we are in that moment when we are still stunned and in a bit of disbelief that this is what we are being asked to do. It makes gut sense rather than rational sense. We know it is the next step, but it is not necessarily something we want to know. If we take action, circumstances will begin to collect to support our efforts in the most unexpected ways. And we will suddenly find that, a few strokes into the action, it is as if reality had been perched there, simply waiting for our yes. It transforms our experience of change as something scary and uncertain into something adventurous. It is our goal to learn to catch these particular waves when they come. They are like free gifts in consciousness, where if we catch them, we get carried onto a new shore of experience with our entire environment supporting and cheering us on. The questions of whether or not it is indulgent, frivolous, or makes good sense fall away in the face of the groundswell.
It can be an intricate endeavor to shift within a peak. The experience of making a skillful exit, where we close the door to the last peak while keeping the door to our heart open, is an incredibly narrow pathway to pass through. If we do exit the peak with its lessons, the potential for return, should we ever desire it in our heart, is intact.
The greatest challenge is that exits invariably have a pinch where we were once tethered to an experience. The pinch that arises as we remove the tether invites a whole set of reactive responses: a desire to throw pain back at the situation through hurting the other person, the ego satisfaction of rejecting, wanting to cut the tether off entirely by allowing for a tumescent and prideful response, telling us the situation was bad and we are now moving to something good.
The most difficult thing to do is to allow ourselves to remain connected to the experience with the recognition that all that is in our past is still us. So, if we cut ourselves off from the experience, we cut ourselves off from ourselves. By the same token, we are in fact called to move.
One of the greatest calling cards is that a situation grows to be painful or untenable. This pain is the urging of our future to move us forward, and whatever is causing us pain is in fact a friend when we act in cooperation with it. And so, to mentally thank that friend is not an act for them but rather a skillful way to keep ourselves intact and to avoid the counterforce action of rejecting that experience.
The rejection, more often than not, will keep part of us caught in the door in a cycle of resentment, anger, and obsession, where our body may be gone but our mind and heart are still stuck. More importantly, the increasing pain of a situation gently cuts the ties that keep us bound to a past experience. These ties prevent us from freely entering, untethered, into the new experience our reality has built for us, which we definitely want to be entirely available and present for so we can sense every last nuance of it.
If we are not leaving with kindness, we are not leaving. True leaving is when we cease to fight anyone or anything and continue to move forward with a grateful heart that is open both front and back.
