But what does this mean? Not that we can live forever, but that the way to stay closest to the pulse of life, the way to stay in the presence of that Divine Reality which informs everything is to be willing to change. Still, change what? To change whatever has ceased to function within us. To shed whatever we’re carrying that’s no longer alive. To cast off our dead skin. Why? Because dead skin can’t feel. Dead eyes can’t see. Dead ears can’t hear. And, as we’ve said, without feeling there’s no chance of wholeness, and wholeness remains our best chance to survive the pain of breaking.

Of course, for human beings, dead skin takes many forms, the most significant of which remain intangible but suffocating, such as a dead way of thinking, a dead way of seeing, a dead way of relating, a dead way of believing, or a dead way of experiencing.

Even so, we must be clear that shedding always has a pain of its own. There is no escaping the underside of feeling. I do not advocate pain, nor do I sacralize suffering. I simply acknowledge the reality of it all. As Buddha says: “All life is sorrowful.” But life is much more as well.

It’s like saying all time is dark, which is true, but all time is light as well. Is life one stream of darkness interspersed with days of light? Or is life one stream of light interspersed with nights of dark? Likewise, is life one long painful breaking interspersed with moments of wonder? Or is life one long miracle of feeling interspersed with moments of breaking? Obviously, there are times we feel it’s one and times we’re certain it’s the other. Another paradox for us to integrate. For it is both and how we allow for both determines the personal alchemy of our hope and despair, our optimism and pessimism, our belief and doubt.

Indeed, all life is sorrowful, if we can’t move our center of living off the pain of that terrible knowledge. For pain and uncertainty alone, as real as they are, are parts of the Whole, and their counterpoints, wonder and peace, are parts as well. Together they move us toward an experience of unity that lubricates the harshness of our pain, while the pain itself can’t help but make the wonder and peace all the more precious.

Trying to inhabit the paradox of feeling, the Sufi poet Ghalib confesses to a friend:

I do not fear (Life’s) cruelty.

But my friend, your heart

which beats so proudly

is the first thing She will take.