I think they have always been there. I have to believe we step into studentship when we are ready, to do so pre-maturely makes it impossible to recognize the gift of true mentors, of true teachers. Max has awakened me to the myriad of masters in my near surrounding and the teachers in my everyday.
The everyday teacher is in the woman who is rude to you at the tire store, or the woman at the Hilo Farmer's Market who asks very loudly "How'd your baby die?" and when you pause with a look like she just stung you with a taser gun in the side of the head... and instead of her realizing that the question might be insensitive she then asks it again but this time twice as loud "How'd your baby die". As a student to life's mysteries as tempting as it is to teach her a lesson in manners, or sheer crumble by hiding in your car and telling all of your friends to never buy kale from her so that we have stake in attempting to destroy her livelihood, we are invited into studentship at that moment. Pause. Let's be honest. Revenge might feel good for a few days, years, lifetimes. If we take a good look at our habits, revenge can sometimes be sneaky and slide in behind our motivation, anger, shame, or fear. So be on the look out for your old habits of retaliation. Don't get me wrong, people can be fucking ruthless and insatiable in their own agendas. BUT Max is inviting us to be awake enough to be able to approach these moments with "these people" as great teachings.
What we are up against Wonder Warriors is not the world, but the temptation to feel entitled in it. Max is asking me to be bigger than to fall victim to this current situation of him not staying in his form. I have to watch responses like "please give me a break or please be gentle with me... We just lost our baby". Sometimes that may be totally appropriate. But here is the teaching, loss is our common thread. Now that I have been shaken awake by the loss of my baby we must walk through the world and tend to our interactions knowing that everyone is experiencing or will experience incredible loss of loved ones.
We must be gentle with each other. The more intense the interaction, the more gentle we are being asked to be. Max has widened our spectrum of compassion and he is asking us to truly hold every person we meet with the tenderness of a mother who just lost her child. We don't just get to be nice to nice people. We don't just get to respond to the callousness with lethargy. We don't just get to respond to the cruelty with retribution.
Then there are the Masters Max has given me. These are the people who have honed their skills so sharp that what they offer keeps me on that razor's edge of the grief of loosing my son and the realization of birthing my heart teacher. These offerings are the radical ones. The ones that keep me out of my head and in my heart. Like this one, "lucky are the ones who are blessed with a wound that only god can heal." Holy Hell if this is true, then what a gift Max gave. Not only did Max give me eight days to recognize my beloved and our love eternal, he actually swapped our physical relationship with a spiritual commitment so deep it is connected by the umbilicus. The nourishment needed to heal this wound is fed only by that connection and source from which he came. In all of this insanity there is gratitude.
I am deeply grateful to have you walking that edge with me.
Let Love In
Heather Bear
4 comments:
This is always so good for me to read! Its so easy to want to retaliate rudeness with rudeness and its just more of a reminder that the easy thing is not always the good thing. that no matter what, we will always encounter people who are on different wave lengths then ourselves. as hard as it is they are there to teach us the tough lessons :)
but you and Max are here to teach us the tough lessons in a beautiful way.
Thank You Heather Bear!
From you uterus to your hearterus. There he is. The reminder of how wide the spectrum of human experience really is...gives us the space, patience and compassion for all of us really living in it as authentically human as possible. Even over a kale sandwich!
...sigh.... you and Max are oh so right... you guys make me strive to be a better, more compassionate person every day... thank you for sharing your soul with us Heather... (although there is still this dark little corner in my heart that really wants to go whoop some kale lady ass at the market in your honor)... :) mucho aloha...
Heather, Your truth resonates so profoundly with me. It is so hard sometimes in the moments of raw interaction with people to remember that we are all just soft, squishy masses of unexplainable miracle walking around a rock that is whizzing through space. But pause and wow.... the power of it all almost knocks me over.
Thank you for providing a place here to remind me of that miracle and how I want to proceed as part of that miracle - with utmost gratitude and reverence.
I love you.
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