12 Feb Every moment offers us the gift of transformation
Every moment offers us the gift of transformation. We can choose to respond to life by tightening up, hardening, resisting or we can choose to soften, relax into the moment. The first doesn’t seem like a real choice. Our bodies naturally tend to tighten when a blow comes at us. It seems only natural to protect against harmful infiltration. Softening into the moment feels wrong, silly, stupid.
Dealing with trauma often seems to me the ideal training ground for personal and spiritual transformation. We are buffeted by internal and external activation every day. We have no where to flee to get away from incoming danger, Our internal world is more akin to a pinball machine than the usual image of a calm, relaxed monastic experience.
One of the people in the SEOC shared this quote from Pema Chodron who writes, “We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.”
What do you think?