Unparalyze Yourself

I heard this Rumi poem today:

Your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a mirror up to where you are bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead, here’s the joyful face you’ve been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes, and opens and closes.

If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding,

the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birdwings.

Rumi

This line stuck with me:

Your hand opens and closes, and opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed.

I notice my own conditioning to always be doing, giving, working, striving to the outcome.

Even though I know the value in stopping to rest, and even though I teach this, I often find myself feeling guilty for not “doing enough” — even on a day that I designate to be a day off.

Everyone I know who speaks honestly about this admits to struggling with it.

The conditioning is so pervasive we hardly notice the way it poisons us.

Finding the middle ground is a practice.

We need a balance between giving and receiving, doing and being, activity and receptivity.

If we are one way all the time we are paralyzed.

We need a practice in unparalyzing ourselves.