Sunday, July 25, 2010

Celebration and Suffering


Happy and sad fingers
Originally uploaded by zamburak

An invaluable gift of non-dual healing is that the world is no longer, for me, viewed as " This versus That" ; "All or Nothing"; it can now be seen from the places of "And this too"; "Everything has a place"; "This AND That ".

What I have come to discover in my personal house is that a room can be filled with celebration, while another one right next door can be occupied with suffering. And neither one has to be evicted.

For a great many years, however, during my alcoholic drinking, I believed that I was hanging out only in the room of celebration and that life was one big party. The truth is that I actually lived most of that time period in a small corner of the room of suffering and the booze deluded my brain into thinking life was grand. When I stopped drinking and immersed myself into an unhealthy relationship complete with care-taking, bullying, addictions of all kinds and resentments, I made suffering into one of those junk drawers or closets that rarely sees the light of day. There was not true celebration but rather "happy face" was the outer covering feigned for company and everything was about the main foyer having a neat and tidy appearance.

This past week, in particular, I experienced the exhuberance of celebration in my work/career path while simultaneously being steeped in the suffering of multiple losses -- supporting a grieving staff who lost a client with mental illness in a heat-related death; an AA friend who died from a drowning accident; my other dog who resided with my ex and was put to rest a few days ago. Neither set of experiences required me to cancel out the other nor did they find me polarized to one end of the feeling spectrum.

Living non-dually in a world that is filled wth opposites allows for this all to be possible. My house comes to life because of its many and varied rooms -- all of which are open and visible, some cluttered and others neater, some occupied more and some less, yet no room is off-limits. My house is a work in progress. And I like residing here.

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