FInding peace

 

      It's two in the morning and I have been through what is the emotional gymnastics that I formerly would have called suffering and which I would have avoided by stuffing my face with food, or having an diversion into sex.  It would have put off the suffering or at least avoided it for awhile but would have eventually caught up with me in some other difficult way. I would have felt isolated and abandoned.
      This time I watched as the issue of isolation came to the fore and felt how desperate that feeling is. To realize that I am alone and will probably spend the rest of my life that way used to fill me with dread, this evening it was the subject of meditation. It is not a cheerful prospect but it no longer one of dread, since living alone and dying alone is the way everyone does it. It is not the living alone of physical means since that is not what is important, but rather the dying alone that all of us must do.
       What happened this evening was on the order of both acceptance of dying alone and becoming at peace with it. Each person that one meets in the course of a day, be it the most intimate person one shares ones life with or the person one stares at the ceiling to avoid talking to in the elevator will die alone. My death must  be faced either voluntarily or involuntarily. I believe that I have chosen the path of wisdom by facing it voluntarily. By watching closely the physical reaction to the thoughts that formerly I avoided, by feeling where they are in the body, by breathing deeply into the sensations, the awesome dread that had been so prevalent becomes merely a set of sensations that are not significantly different than any other sets of sensations derived from other circumstances.
        There is a line about pain and gain being exactly the same. While the results are different, by closely examining what is happening in the body as a reaction it really seems similar. Faster breathing,tension in some area generally the chest, a reaction of the mind being carried away in the circumstances that occur. Dispassionately observed they certainly look the same.
          What suffering allows for  is the opportunity to be motivated enough to no longer avoid the suffering but rather  observe it closely enough to realize that the grasping mind is the cause of the suffering. By looking at how my body is changing and realizing that it cannot do the things it used to do I see that wanting things to be as they were leads me to suffer. By taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly into the morass of emotions and sensations I let go.
         The fear is palpable but that is just another series of sensations in the body. More suffering. The feeling of abandonment and isolation is intense. More suffering. At the very moment these are happening the body feels the sensations as neither good nor bad but rather as sensations. Deep breathing and letting go lead to softening
         I will work with these emotions more I am sure, but right now there is a sense of peace, acceptance, and love for which I am deeply grateful.