Bowing Deeply to This Year, This Life
I’m currently reading the classic book by Buddhist master, Jack Kornfield, “After the Ecstasy, the Laundry,” where he describes joining a monastery and being instructed to bow down deeply to everyone who is his elder. He soon learns that his elders aren’t just those who are older in years, but each person who’s been in residence longer than him. In other words, he has to bow to everyone—even the haughty 21-year-old monk in training, or the old farmer who’s on the “farmers retirement plan” and doesn’t actually care to meditate.
While it was painfully challenging for him at first, he eventually learned to look for something in each person that he could bow down to. And soon he was bowing with reverence to everything in his life, even the trees, and his own room.
As he puts it:
“We can bow to both beauty and suffering, to our entanglements and confusion, to our fears and to the injustices of the world. Honoring the truth in this way is the path to freedom. To bow to what is rather than to some ideal is not necessarily easy, but however difficult, it is one of the most useful and honorable practices.
“To bow to the fact of life’s sorrows and betrayals is to accept them; and from this deep gesture we discover that all life is workable. As we learn to bow, we discover that the heart holds more freedom and compassion than we could imagine.”
As I was reading his foreword to the book, I was so moved that I broke into a sob; tears flowing spontaneously out of me. His words spoke to my soul, to the monumental 20-year struggle I’ve been on to maintain a spiritual practice through the challenges of life in the modern world—in particular while pursuing the epic missions that I’ve been called into. How much I’ve felt alone on this journey, even as I had some wonderful teachers and companions along the way…all the way to this very moment.
You see, my intention and word of this year was spark joy. At the beginning of the year, I thought for sure that if I just held on to that intention, it would be an amazing joyful year. I had big plans and it really spoke to me, but the truth was I didn’t spark as much joy as I’d hoped.
What I found instead was there was a steady kind of joy in pursuing the things that really matter to me.
I learned how to allow and accept what is—even those things that I dislike the most about myself and my life (including emotional wounds)—more deeply than ever before. Then I taught this as the foundation of all my healing and coaching work. Because allowing opens the door to acceptance, and acceptance opens the door to forgiveness and eventually through the process it’s ready to released, to grant you your freedom.
I followed my soul calling to a whole new kind of work in transformational writing coaching this year, creating a program that was life-changing for all the participants. I deepened my coaching work into an in-depth level of mentorship that I’ve never been willing to go as deeply into before. I even brought my book so close to being ready for publishing, but decided to hold back to give it the space to be the most effective and life-changing vehicle for happiness and transformation possible.
Ultimately, as I shared in my last post, Your Guiding Light, I was able to renew my purpose again—my reason for living. It’s not the kind of joy I was seeking, like a lightning strike heart-expanding kind of joy, but if I’m honest, it’s the greatest gift I could hope to come out of this year.
It’s funny, because we often think that if we just landed on the right intention, the right word, the right attitude, somehow everything will magically pan out. But things never turn out quite the way we imagined them to be, do they? And isn’t that the actual beauty of it??
As you look over the past year and envision what you’re creating in the coming months, I encourage you to bow to the challenges you’ve surmounted, to the hardships, and even those things you may still be grappling with.
Try not to rush the growth, the stepping into the life that you’re creating, because the truth is that even though the calendar may be flipping into the new year, the winter months are just setting in. You can keep ruminating in the lessons for as long as you need, so that the fertile soil of your wisdom may sprout healthy new growth for your happiness in the longterm.
What was your intention for this past year—did you choose a word or phrase?
Is there a part of you that's ready and willing to bow down to all that was, to come to a place of acceptance around all that is?
Thank you for coming along and supporting me on this journey — I couldn’t do it without you.
With deep bows,
SATYA
– 444 –