safety is a practice

Fall really brings on the feels. It’s like the twilight of the whole year.  And even though we technically have a few more weeks of summer left, even though morning air is still steamy and buzzing with cicadas, I can already sense it coming.  

Every evening, the sun sets just a tad bit earlier.. The waning day, irrefutable evidence that things are changing, changing, changing, and that we are moving into the dark part of the year.  

It didn’t notice just how emo that transition from day to night is until I got sober, over a decade ago now.  Before that, sunset was a welcome sign that it was socially acceptable to check out. I’ve worked so hard, my subconscious mind whispered with the fading of the light. I’ve been through so much.  I deserve this.  

In Buddhism we talk about the “second arrow,” the secondary suffering we add on to a primary emotional pain.  Like the judgment or shame we add on to the feelings of loneliness and anxious uncertainty that can arise in the evening hours.

Avoidance is a kind second arrow – albeit a more subtle one.  It’s the mind’s attempt to delay an experience of discomfort as long as possible, and the childlike hope that if it can string together enough pleasant (or numbing) experiences, it can protect us from dealing with unpleasant emotions indefinitely.  

Avoidance is most often deployed when there’s a perceived lack of safety.  When big, shadowy emotions feel dangerous, we avoid them.  Eventually, that avoidance takes a bigger toll on us than the feelings themselves.  It spirals us into an ever-deepening fear of whatever it is we’re avoiding.

Maybe one of the most valuable lessons for me on this spiritual path, the insight that has opened the door to every other kind of healing, is this:

It is safe for us to feel our feelings.   

Emotions themselves are not unsafe.  

They can, however, lead to unsafe behaviors if we’re unable to tolerate them. 

Evenings, and autumns, and transitions in general, can awaken in us everything from nostalgia and longing to deep existential dread.  These feelings are sometimes echoes of difficult past experiences, and sometimes just evidence of the ordinary, quivery tenderness of being a human being.  

Which brings me back to nights...  Since my kiddo was born, I've basically been forced into an evening meditation practice.   Mornings with a baby are unpredictable, and the most reliable time I have to myself is in the early evening hours, just after I put my child (who is now a toddler) down to sleep.

So, despite my preferences and quivery feelings, that’s when I roll out my yoga mat and fluff my meditation cushion.  

I stretch out across my unfinished to do list.  

I exhale my irritation at the audacity of the day, ending once again without my permission. 

 I’m not ready to let go, and sundown feels like a cascade of everything that is beyond my control.  

I chant in the middle of the loneliness and grief that always surprise me, and as I do they feel less like mine and more like ours.  

I bow to the holy bigness of it all.

I meet my shadowy night time feelings, and I let them be with me as I practice in stillness.  

There is beauty in those shadows, and a depth of wisdom, and when I slow down and get patient I can see it.  

Every time I show up like this, I change my relationship with the night, and with endings, and with change.  

And that changes everything.

Every time we sit or lie down to practice, we let go of avoidance.   

And in the practice itself, we get the opportunity to leave some of our suffering behind as well.

Safety is a practice.   

Or really, it's a spectrum of practices.  There’s the grounding practices we can do in a moment of trigger or anxiety, the emotional first aid work of returning to the zone of tolerance.  For me, in the context of formal practice, this looks like restorative movement, breathwork, chanting, and/or tapping…  sometimes rotating between them until I feel like I’m in my capacity again.  

And then there’s the practices we engage to build, or rebuild, a foundational sense of internal safety over time.  This is the role of a regular meditation practice for me. Sitting or lying down, tending and befriending my nervous system.  When I’m steady, opening to my thoughts and emotions as they arise, and caring for them.  Not just once, but repeatedly.  Until my body, heart, and mind know they can trust me.

I believe that liberation is a safe place.  

The world is not always safe, but our minds, hearts, bodies and relationships can be.  

You deserve to be safe and protected from inner, as well as outer harm.

Your practice can offer such a protection.

Sending candle-lit, peaceful evening wishes in all your directions,

And every blessing that the turning of the seasons can bring.

Kate