Grateful Dead love song

As we work with extending thoughts of loving-kindness to the difficult people in our  lives, it becomes evident that we sometimes wish to pull back, to not go there, not to expose ourselves, perhaps fearing the imagined consequences of leaving ourselves open and vulnerable.  

Oddly, we may find that it is precisely in vulnerability that we may find a place of refuge, a place of invulnerability. This heart space is a place of courage.

From the Bhagavad Gita: “If you want to see the heroic, look to those who can return love for hatred, If you want to see the brave, look to those who can forgive.” 

When you are held prisoner by your own past, or the past of others, we may see our lives frozen in some regards. Forgiveness meditation is not intended to force anything, or to pretend anything is in any way other than just how it is. But when we begin to go there, to open our hearts to those terrible things which need our love, as Rilke suggests, we may find some inner movements, some warming of patterns frozen in time. 

It’s a kind of dying.

As a culture we seem to have lost respect for grieving. When you do this again and again, this radical letting go of the past, you are one of the “grateful dead.” 

But in this dying there is real life, real love.

Jack Engler, a psychiatrist and long time vipassana practitioner writes: “Insight by itself is not enough, in therapy or in meditation, because insight doesn’t necessarily lead to change. We all know that we can have a very good conceptual grasp of something, or insight into ourselves, and still do the same damn thing we’ve always done. It’s the inner resistance that has to be dealt with before change occurs. So there really is no way around grieving in this transient world.” 

Meditation is creating a space that allows what needs to happen to happen. “There is no way around grieving in this transient world.” Although we are constantly coming up with new ways to avoid it.