When you spend more time with something, you start to notice more, details, nuances, subtleties that you just weren’t aware of before. During COVID I spent a lot more time in my apartment. And I noticed the refrigerator door shelves. They were packed with duplicate bottles, tiny jars of unknown seasonings from long forgotten curry recipes and mysterious herbal salves that could possibly predate Jesus! How did it get like this? Why hadn’t I noticed? As I filtered through the menagerie of jars tossing/composting and recycling the fridge door’s jumbled contents into an tidy line of organization it occurred to me the importance of spending time in order to keep things fresh, accessible, and present. Spending time is where we put our value right? With our relationships and the people we love, with our hobbies, our livelihood, our causes (and hopefully our meditation practice! ) I only noticed the menagerie of jars on the refrigerator door when COVID lockdown had me spending more time at home and more time poking around the fridge for snacks.
Our emotional bodies are not unlike my icebox door. Left unattended, our emotional bodies can become cluttered, stagnant and clog up our energy fields. It needs time and attention to remain fluid, ordered and accessible— just like the fridge door and all the other important things we value giving our time to.
Sadly, most of us don’t spend a lot of time being present to what we feel, avoiding what is painful, distracting and dissociating from feelings that are overwhelming and that we don’t want to face. We have a breakup and head for the pint of Ben and Jerry’s that paves over the hurt with a cool numbness that dismisses the depths of what makes us human. When we honor ourselves, all parts of ourselves by sitting with our feelings, particularly the ones that are uncomfortable we are embracing our wholeness, we bring together all the parts of ourselves. In that unity we gain the capacity to expand our joy and happiness exponentially—and that is the part we miss when we dismiss our “negative ” feelings for not being worthy enough to be embraced. And how many of us harbor that unworthy feeling? The “I am not good enough monster “ that arises just when perfectness presents itself? Could it be that if we embrace and honor those feelings we push away, the “ I am not good enough monster” would begin to dissolve.? Definitely food for thought, or more correctly, food for feeling.
Beautiful piece and I love the imagery. I definitely can benefit from spending more time being present and in the moment with my feelings. Looking forward to more mindful insights.