Nine days ago I woke up happy. I was hitting a level of self acceptance that made my living simple and joyful. Later I walked on Bernal Hill with my puppy Molly and looked far out to sea. Followed my nose through the day. Went to bed and slept well.
I woke up the next day to dark clouds outside. I was sad. I was actually depressed. Didn’t want to move. Didn’t want to meditate. Started and couldn’t finish. (It was only to be for 15 minutes.) Finally ate and dragged myself with Molly up the hill. Hardly looked at the view. Then this voice inside me said, “Open your heart to THIS day.” Yes. The whole upper right side of my chest opened up and I felt free and could look out to ranges of landscape and ocean.
Soon the sad came back. On and on it was and I kept fighting it. Trying to figure out why I was sad. Feeling I couldn’t hold on to “open heart”. Finally I let myself DO NOTHING. Just simply began reading a romance novel. Getting nothing done. Afraid I was wasting my time and I was avoiding. Towards bedtime a voice said, “Feeling sad is part of open heart.” I realized: feeling sad is part of who you are. Heart includes it all. Heart includes all of you.
I kept reading my novel and started letting myself feel this big sad lump inside of me. I began trusting myself to follow the needs of down times: needing to be alone, reading lighter novels, giving more room to simply feel: I felt lighter.