A few weeks ago, during the first hot week of the season, my heart was overflowing with gratitude, my body with energy, and my spirit with strength. To be honest, there were moments in which I could barely stand the intensity of the bliss. I knew all of the outward, yang, energy was unsustainable, yet my attempts to to cool myself off weren't doing the trick. I tried cold swims, cardio, sauna, weight lifting, yin yoga, herbs, mantra, and meditation, yet I still felt overwhelmed.
I outwardly expressed my joy through song, dance, words, and movement. But my meditations on emptying the mind, which had been so effective at managing challenging emotions, were no match for this joy.
This whole experience revealed to me that I was not used to being joyous and engaged in the world. I already knew how to sit with grief. I already knew how to breath through anger, how to accept betrayal, how to surrender to things beyond my control. But intense joy? That was new.
And then I crashed. My energy levels plummeted, my body rebelled with persistent aches and pains, and my creativity dried up. Throughout this process, I asked over and over again, how can I find balance?
Feeling like a car that'd been driven until the wheels fell off, I escaped to the bush to connect with nature and myself. I'm always astounded by the answers we find in the quiet, the secrets of the universe whispering to us in the form of of wind rustled leaves.
Teachers all around the world instruct their students to sit with discomfort, perhaps because there is no shortage of seekers asking for their pain to be taken away. I've applied these techniques to my own discomfort with great success, but it never occurred to me to sit still and experience joy. With no words, no labels, I needed to express my joy inwardly.
From this I learned the importance of balancing the inner and outer expression of my emotions. I will continue to express all of my emotions and share them with the the world and people in my life, but I've also committed to sharing all of these emotions with myself, and committed to feeling them as deeply as possible.
The symbol of a cross captures this teaching: balancing the horizontal, outward expression, with the vertical, inner expression.
On December 22nd, my brothers and sisters in the Northern Hemisphere experienced the winter solstice and those of us in the Southern Hemisphere experienced the summer solstice. On this moment, the day and the night are equal in length, their energies in balance. May you all find similar balance and harmony in your lives.
