Birth is concrete, Birth is Abstract

“The opposite of death is not life. The opposite of death is birth. Life has no opposite, life is eternal.” –Eckhart Tolle

To practice the dance of awareness with a dedication of love and relentless presence that we have observed/known before — It is challenging and an ongoing process ‘to be’. Practicing to continue awareness reminds me of the waves rushing in and out where the ocean meets land. Ironically, that is how I experience grief as well, those waves amazingly keep rolling in and out.

I came to a place of new freedom for a while, in the present moment, in meditation. With that freedom came uncomfortable feelings in the body. I realized how tied into thoughts I have been in life…how restricted and held I have remained. This realization does not diminish countless successes in presence/awareness though.

Nevertheless, as I breathed through the thoughts and feelings, I accepted the sensations of freedom and release in my body. I accepted that I have not been present in this way enough to find it familiar or comfortable. I gave myself room of gentleness and kindness in cooperation with the unfamiliar sensations. And as I breathed and observed further, I let go and did not engage the fear or worries as they passed by. I was able to dance a little better today.

I acknowledge here, my practice of meditation and mindfulness has been re-invigorated in the reading of Eckhart Tolle’s new book, “A New Earth”. I am grateful for his gift of “untangling” and presenting truths we have known in an ever clearer, brilliant translation. He has given a remarkable tool for us.

So, today’s meditation, in the end, after observing my breath and letting go, brought me to contemplate my birth. I know the story of my birth because my mother told me what she observed that day and some of what she experienced. Birth is such a firmly concrete and profoundly abstract event. The birth is understood as a new life emerging. It is a good contemplation for phases and cycles within life as well.

The day I was born, mother wanted to comfort a woman next door to her at the hospital, who lost her baby. Two years before this day, mother had lost her own child. As she moved to go to the woman, she felt a hand on her shoulder, stopping her. No one was there, and she felt comfort and a loving presence. She accepted this sensation as the presence of an angel. She did not go to the woman then, as she felt she shouldn’t.

Labor had never been an extremely difficult or long process for mother. I was the fourth child to be born from her. My father was there as I was being born. He was a man of pain and suffering. Reflecting on his life I see everywhere he turned he made more suffering. As I was emerging into life, my father pushed his dominance of anger and pain onto the doctor who was helping mother to birth me. As my head emerged, father bullied the doctor into pushing my head back into my mother’s laboring form.

His reasons are unknown and mother’s pain still evident as she told the memory. She cannot remember how long exactly it took for me to be allowed to emerge into this life, after having been pushed back in, twenty minutes? a half hour? Maybe. In contemplation I look at the moment with sorrow and compassion for the insane pain bearer father, for the laboring mother–vulnerable and hard-working, for the doctor–seemingly overwhelmed by the power-hold of the father, and for the child not knowing why the natural flow/urge to being was at first denied.

Allowing compassion for the moment in memory releases former judgements by the emotions (–so subjective and volatile at times), allows room for me to be present to myself in a new way. This gives room for Sacred Mystery beyond mother’s memory and mine. The birth was only delayed.

So I was pushed back. And, I was born. I am. I am.

I am here now.