Healing through the dark emotions - Miriam Greenspan

It is through surrender to the unwanted that we embrace our vulnerabilities. Our helplessness teaches us humility. When we are humbled by pain, we see our smallness in the vastness of the cosmos. The ego gives up its hold on reality, its paltry attempts to control and to dictate it terms. It lets go of its agenda. Its grandiosity thus diminished, there is an opening, and a larger vision can emerge. Amazingly, this letting go which is a kind of death, is also one of the great joys of life – an effort that is the end of all effort. When we unfurl the gnarled fist of control, letting the hand open up to receive and to give our smallness = once the source of our agony = becomes a source of comfort.

Vulnerability does not mean wallowing in passivity abdicating responsibility, or relishing being a victim. It means being fully present to what is happening and staking no claims on the outcome.

We can transform pain to joy by keeping our hearts open. Keeping an open heart in hell, we learn the art of vulnerability, the power of no protection. This is a spiritual power not an egoic conquest. To learn its secret alchemy, we must be willing to accept suffering and vulnerability as a normal part of life. Because we are vulnerable, life hurts. We are not here to be free of pain. We are here to have our hearts broken by life. To learn to live with vulnerability and to turn pain into love.

“There is nothing so whole as a broken heart”. The world breaks out hearts wide open: and it is the openness itself that makes us whole. The open heart is the doorway inviting the angels in, revealing that the world – evening the pit of hell- is charged with the sacred.

Excerpts from healing through the dark emotions by Miriam Greenspan.