This weekend I’m leaving my apartment that I’ve lived in for 7 years.
It’s hard. Harder than I expected it to be.
The reasons I’m leaving are all so expansive and good. In the past several months I’ve bought a house, I got engaged, and I’m moving on to a whole new phase of life. I’m deeply excited about the future, but as the move gets close I’m also discovering more and more sadness around saying goodbye. Not just to my apartment, but to a whole phase of life.
One of the great things about practice is that over time, you start seeing things more clearly. At first for me this was great, I noticed I was growing the skill to see through the emotional layer of other peoples comments, to the truth of what they were saying. When I found myself in arguments I noticed that sometimes I still got sucked up emotionally, but I had a new ability to pull out and get perspective and clearly see where they were hurting and what they were asking for.
So that’s great.
Unfortunately, with outward clear seeing also comes inward clear seeing – and one day I realized that I was clearly seeing my anxiety and fear in a much different way. I realized that I had been existing for quite a while in a bit of a soup of fear and anxiety – low grade and pervasive. As if there was always something that was making me uneasy or fearful.
When I talk to people about their spiritual practice, one of the big complaints I hear frequently is “how do I integrate my practice into my daily life?”
I hear this from meditators, but also from other types of spiritual practitioners – it’s as if we have two lives, our spiritual lives and our regular going to work, taking care of kids, doing grocery shopping and sitting in traffic lives.
On a level everyone knows that’s not true, that it’s all the same – but we experience it as separate. It’s not that nuts then to want to integrate things together, to be able to hold that peace of practice (whatever it is) – as we move through the world. I mean, isn’t that the point?
the Good Heretic 