•  In conversation with a friend or loved one, describe the evidence and rhythm of your own health returning to you. When do you notice a balanced warmth appearing in your heart? When do you notice your senses growing more acute? When do you notice your own movements growing stronger? When do you begin to feel quiet and peaceful after a moment of pain?

•  In your journal, describe your history of feeling the tyranny of rejection, what being rejected has done to you, and the tyranny of acceptance, what you’ve done in order to be accepted. How do these experiences affect how you take risks?

•  In conversation with a friend or loved one, describe a time when you could hold your heart open to the truth of what someone else was going through, regardless of how they treated you. Then discuss the challenge in being compassionate to yourself and to others at the same time.

•  In the poem “Finding a Way Out” there is the line: “And tripping through the days, we mirror each other’s sleeping angel.” In your journal, explore what this means to you and, if you can, describe a personal example of such a moment. When the time feels right, discuss this with a friend.

•  In your journal, tell the story of someone who models healthy endurance. What are three traits they demonstrate about endurance that you would like to be more skillful at?

Approaching Wholeness

APPROACHING WHOLENESS

The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it (is) long. It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself, and that training is the most intricate which leads to utter simplicity. The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.

RABINDRANATH TAGORE

How much we taste of life depends on the integrity of our relationships. I’ve been blessed to have good friends. They’ve taught me that the heart of relationship is tested when life undoes us, when we’re forced by love to step from the confines of what we know in order to hold each other in the rough sea where nothing makes sense. It’s love that leads us closer to wholeness.

The truth is that once turned inside out by experience, we’re opened to the life of others and challenged to enter the endless river of feeling. Those who think they can skip over life by never showing their insides take a different road. Wholeness demands opening up and feeling. With those who won’t accept this, there is less and less to share.