LeaveTakings

As I take my leave of you, I think of all that we've been through.

I release the emotional residue, as I take my leave from you.

There has been anguish, tears and pain, but I'm so tired of that refrain.

Life is births and endings, change.  There's often anguish, tears and pain.

There's also growth and love and joy - those most precious of life's alloys

Sometimes sparkling, sometimes coy, there's always growth and love and joy.

And yes, a maudlin song feels deep.  The tears into your voice can creep.

Your eyes can shimmer and 1 tear weep when singing that song which feels so deep.

But life is not the single tear.  Life is the screech that rings the ear.

Life is the laughter loud and clear.  Life is a torrent of bloating tears.

And all the things we have been through - the stops and starts, the false and true,

are endings yes, but startings too.  There's growth in all we have been through.

So I sing, as I take leave.  We shall celebrate and grieve.

The memories shall shift and sieve.  The song may change after I leave.

But joy will always be refrained. 

I hope you have a great life!

-Lila

Enlightment is Awesome - Finding the Center

The best thing about being a teacher is how much I learn from myself. We teach most that which we need to learn most. We work our way through it for someone else and are therefore brought to the light of the situation ourselves.

Grief is tearing and painful. Joy can be as well. And when it feels like all is turbulence around you, the joy and the grief seem almost intrusive. It certainly feels fatalistic; the emotions so explosive, I feel my head might burst, my heart might stop, my breath might fail. I long for the quiet dignity of the single poetic tear glissading down my cheek.

By having been requested by circumstance to repeat and repeat and repeat the calming phrases and steps to calm decision making; by showing the way to the center of self; by spouting virtuously that the center is the best place to make decisions from, I have led myself (or stumbled along behind my student) finally to that calm and centered place.

And when the comfort food is churning acid, and the alcohol is vinegar, and the sad songs are annoying and the happy ones are raucous; when the words spoken and heard no longer mean anything, finally I come to the center and the peace. I fall away from the pressure. I deny it. I float free, down and in. Calm. Connected. Grateful that the violence has passed, if only for a moment. Every time the moment lasts longer.

The hardest part to learn - this calm, this center, is not a denial of the emotion, be it joy or grief. It is acceptance. Total acceptance. Complete acceptance. Acceptance deeper than the grief, than the joy. Deeper than the fear and the hope. Deeper than the learned perception of self.

Follow your breath in. And Down. Find your center. And discover a whole new world with me.