The Courage to Be Open to Life As It Is

The time we spend running away from certain core experiences is what shapes our life. — Tara Brach

Since last year, I have been a fixture at the 5:45 am Burn class or 5:30 am CrossFit class every weekday. My morning routine is orchestrated to the minute. The alarm goes off, and no matter how tired I am, I get moving. There’s no going back to sleep, not even for 2 minutes.

So this week, when I went back to sleep on a Monday morning and missed 5:30 am CrossFit, it was a sign for me to pay attention and investigate my resistance. When it happened again on Tuesday, I was annoyed at myself. Although I didn’t violate my “no snooze” rule, I felt out of integrity with my commitment to myself.

I allowed myself the grace to be human. No myth of perfection. Everyone has off days. When I stumble, I try not to let it go for three days in a row.

So when I went back to sleep again on Wednesday, and missed 5:30 am CrossFit again, I was angry at myself. I had wanted to do that day’s workout. Going back to sleep was an act of self-sabotage.

The Positive Spin

Instead of resisting what is, I decided to lean into the situation and completely switch things up with a walk outside before going to the gym.

I planned to walk around the athletic fields by my gym. While walking there, I discovered a mini “hiking trail” — unexpected in the midst of a fairly dense commercial area.

I took the bold move to explore a new frontier, walking through the wooded area and up a short hill. Surrounded by the barren trees, with old leaves from last fall crunching under my feet, I felt far removed from the traffic just a few hundred yards away. It was like being in a different world.

I’ve been going to this gym for a year, and I never knew that this little area was here.

I experienced a moment of grace.

I recognized that there was a higher wisdom in my resistance, and in my decision to get back into bed. There was something else for me to experience and discover.

There’s value in switching up a routine — indeed, that’s one of the big lessons of the Passover holiday.

I’ve been going through some astrology transits that are designed to shake me out of my entrenched regimens and liberate me from my own rigid expectations.

The Jupiter cazimi the previous day was an invitation to boldly explore new frontiers. Sometimes the new frontiers are right in our line of vision — if we only look up.

The Full Experience

This is typically the part of the story where you might expect the lesson about finding the good and feeling gratitude for life instead of feeling angry and annoyed.

And yet, even in the grace and gratitude for this spiritual experience of being in the woods, I was still angry at myself for not upholding a commitment I had made to myself, for missing a class I had wanted to take.

Human beings are remarkably complex, capable of feeling many emotions at the same time. That is our superpower.

It was all there together: the grace and the anger.

The Tree of Life: Chesed

Today wraps up the first week of the seven-week Omer journey through the Kabbalah Tree of Life.

The first week explores the sphere of Chesed. Often translated as “loving-kindness,” Chesed is more accurately defined as an open presence.

Today is the sub-sphere of Malchut of Chesed, sovereignty in Chesed.

Going through my notes archive, I found notes from an old Tara Brach talk from 2013, Absolute Cooperation With the Inevitable.

In the talk, Tara spoke about cooperating with life instead of resisting it.

Being open to what is, instead of constantly trying to change it.

She said:

Whenever there is suffering or conflict, there is always something inside us that wants acceptance.

This felt very resonant for me in light of the challenges I have faced this week: physical pains, resistance to going to the gym, self-sabotage in getting back into bed. Her teaching was to allow all the feelings to be as they are: both the physical sensations and the emotions.

The message she offers captures the essence of Malchut of Chesed.

The True Spiritual Path

Many spiritual “influencers” want us to believe that all it takes to turn around an undesired emotion is to “be love.”

Just repeat that mantra, find the love, and all will be well.

This is often how Chesed gets misconstrued.

The true spiritual path — and the essence of Chesed — is not about repeating a mantra of “all is love.”

Rather, true Chesed is about opening in presence to everything, including the parts of ourselves that are less savory or feel less acceptable. It’s about being open even to the difficult people we encounter, or the difficult parts of ourselves.

This fits with the astrology of Aries season, which calls us to find our courage.

Chesed about cultivating the courage to open to my whole life as it is: not just the emotions and experiences I want to have, but my entire spectrum of emotions and experiences. It’s about embracing the anger and resentment as much as it is about finding the grace and gratitude. And sometimes it’s about experiencing it all at the same time.