Discomfort

There is this life in a body. Pulling around consciousness. Sometimes entering consciousness, awareness. Definitions of these things? Maybe I’ll come to that.

My body is a breathing, walking, bloody, fleshy, boney, liquidy, ligamental, organy thing. Somehow what I consider me, I, is this thing and also electrical impulses of memory and thought that have no visible form except as expressed through movement in my body. Eyes blinking back tears, staring into space, darting around. Stomach clenching. Lips and face rising up into a smile. Muscles trembling. Voice loud or soft. All reflections of invisible activity of thought and emotion.

I have written a lot about the pleasures of presence. But I have not written about the discomfort of presence. How being uncomfortable can create a sharp edged presence.

I wonder if this is allowed. Presence is where we are healed. Yes, but it is also where we come into contact with the forgotten, left behind, abandoned thoughts, emotions, experiences. Is it possible to be so very present with pressure, constriction, illness, panic that the experience serves a purpose? Or is it so difficult that all measures are taken, by any means necessary, to escape all of that.

One of my many teachers this summer, K.J. Holmes, talked about how resistance and pushing against is what makes us strong. Our relationship with gravity, our pushing away from it is what gives us structure and strength. I think, though, of how much time I spend trying to sidestep resistance or struggle of any kind. I think of how I try to take things as easily as possible. I think of how when things become a struggle I believe I am doing something wrong. What if I am doing exactly right? The struggle is the important thing, the growing thing, the expanding thing.

At what level is discomfort and struggle too much? How many times do we step into it? What is the right balance of discomfort and ease that creates a solid beautiful yet structurally beneficial life? Too much struggle and we collapse, give up. Too much ease and we stay down and can’t get up. Balance. The in-breath. The out-breath. One is action. The other is allowing. One is muscle contracting, acting, moving against bone and flesh and air and gravity. The other is just letting go.

It is funny and sweet and amazing to me that so much comes back to the breath. Presence is the breath. Breath is presence. It is strength and ease. Doing and being. Together. Action and allowing. In between it is always now. Now. Now.