Usually we regard loneliness as an enemy. Heartache is not something we choose to invite in. It’s restless, pregnant, and hot with the desire to escape and find something or someone to keep it company. When we can rest in the middle, we begin to have a nonthreatening relationship with loneliness, a relaxing and cooling loneliness that completely turns our usual fearful patterns upside down. – Pema Chodron
Pema Chodron describes the nature of the heart as being our ‘soft spot’. It is normal for us to try to protect our heart, because it hurts when it gets poked and prodded by our ever-changing relationships. The instinct for most of us is to close it off, to defend our soft spot with layers of impenetrable armour.
In those especially raw times in our lives we each feel that heat, that restlessness of wanting to escape from the pain of an agonized heart. These naked moments, when we feel our most vulnerable and wretched, are actually the richest territory for awakening. Moments when we can till the soil of the heart, to soften and open it up so that something new and vital can begin to grow there.
Moments when we can share in our combined heritage of full-spectrum emotion as another generation of human beings.
Cameron Gilley has been teaching yoga for over 8 years and has a vested interest in yogic philosophy. He is a faculty member of Semperviva Yoga College, and will be greatly involved in the 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Trainings. Cameron draws from his deep well of esoteric knowledge and endeavors to communicate it in an open and expressive manner.
Check him out at camerongilley.com