Whole Experience

I am thinking of the moment something dies, and how we instinctively know it, and of how we try not to know what we know, because we do not yet understand how we are to negotiate change.

-From Alice Walker’s, Now is the Time to Open Your Heart

Here, the main character from Walker’s novel is speaking with her friend and reflecting on the end of her first marriage. This begins a larger discussion—which Walker explores throughout her book—of the peace of connecting to our wholeness and the pain of being disconnected from it.

I have a friend who is a psychotherapist, and she begins each session by asking her clients where in the body they feel their emotions. What a beautiful way of connecting with our felt experience. But so often, although we know the truth instinctively, and we feel it in our bodies—we deny it, because as Walker’s character says we do not yet understand how we are to negotiate change. We fear the unknown, and we ask ourselves—how will I cope if this thing happens?

But here’s another question—how much longer can I live disconnected from my wholeness?

Wholeness is; it does not have to be created cultivated. Our loved ones, our lives, our environment, our bodies are speaking to us all the time and inviting us into a direct relationship with reality—that is wholeness.

If there is anything to do, it is to be better listeners—to ourselves, to our bodies, to others, to our environment and to begin to dialogue with and honor what arises. No judgment; no shame—just acknowledgement. And this is the best gift we could give ourselves and others—the gift of acknowledging the truth of our whole experience.