dailydatewithgod

The world is going to wound us.  It is going to beat us up from time to time.  It is going to get muddy and messy.  But as the Buddhist, “Thich Nhat Hanh says, “No Mud, No Lotus.” Our inclination would be to insulate ourselves from the wounding, the beating, and the mud.  While our intentions are good when we go into heart protection mode we unintentionally shut out the healing, the victory, and the pure beauty present in the world.  Like most addicts, when I was active in my addiction, adding layers of insulation around my heart I was not thinking about the side effects other than the safety it would procure.  The irony, of course, is I never quite managed to insulate myself completely.  Because I am alive and my heart is pumping, I was still affected by the dark and light of life. The best I was able to accomplish through the insulation was numbing life’s experiences.  Just as I literally wore down my taste buds from all the sugar I was ingesting, I numbed my heart to feeling things completely in any direction.  The insulation I put in place was based on the premise of a child way of thinking it must be one or the other.  As someone in recovery,  I have learned how to be open to feeling whatever it is with needing the insulation.  Sometimes it means life hurts really bad. Sometimes it means experiencing an overflow of joy and excitement in my heart I can barely remember to breathe.  I have the courage to trust my heart today and a willingness to navigate without so much insulation.  I am not perfect and so sometimes I get creative about how I insulate my heart.  Those are the moments when I reach for God’s hand which encourages me to take a breath, put my attention on my heart, and be open to seeing the beauty of the mud being as beautiful as the lotus that grows from it.