Go to the Limits of Your Longing
When everything falls apart, how do we let go of what’s left?
Hi,
How are you this week? When do you reach your limits? And what do you do once you’re there?
These days I know much less than I thought I did.
These days I sit still and watch my life do its thing, restructuring the reality around me, bringing me to the limits, saying “Take a good look at what’s there, you’ve been avoiding it for too long — your whole life.”
These days I let myself be taught and made humbler and patient and open and hopefully more relaxed.
These days I tilt my head to the side, and think “Perhaps I can try some humour and compassion, and offer them to myself”.
„Loneliness allows us to look honestly and without aggression at our own minds. We can gradually drop our ideals of who we think we ought to be, or who we think we want to be, or who we think other people think we want to be or ought to be. We give it up and just look directly with compassion and humour at who we are. Then loneliness is no threat and heartache, no punishment.”
— Pema Chödron, When Things Fall Apart
A panicking mind
I am reading a book by Pema Chödron, which, as it happens with the right books and the right people — came to me at the right time. It lent me words which I lacked when writing my last week’s essay. I still struggle with words, but now, at least, I have the comfort of knowing that what is happening to me now is common to many, and the rest is just a matter of naming it, which, if it wasn’t for the sake of writing and sharing with you, I wouldn’t bother with too much. The book is called “When Things Fall Apart” and that’s how I’d describe where I currently stand. Although, is it still possible to stand when there’s no ground under your feet?
My mind is desperate to grasp. Something, anything. Life, as my friend jokingly put it, seems to have gotten fed up with me, deciding now to hammer its lessons into my head. For the last few weeks, if not months, whatever I tried touching and holding to find a nice comfortable place for it on the shelves of time, was immediately knocked out of my hand by life.
I wouldn’t say it did it aggressively — it’s my mind that became aggressive in response to it. Driven to the edge by the unfavourable events, it slowly, reluctantly, began to realise that whatever it tried grasping, that thing would, sooner or later, fall apart. Before, I thought it was just the case with things 'not meant for me' or a consequence of me making poor decisions. Now I see that the inherent nature of all things is to fall apart, a realisation my mind finds unsettling.
During today’s morning meditation, I caught it trying to grasp and hold onto meditation itself, for lack of better alternatives. “Okay, fine, if I can’t hold onto the place you live in, people around you, your health, lifestyle, ideas, convictions, hopes and fears, despair and joy, and your image, let me get attached to this odd empty space you enter when meditating. I don’t like it, but it will do.” It wants to make a concept out of emptiness. I can tell it’s panicking.
Relax. Relax. Relax. I repeat to myself. Take deep breaths and soften your gaze. Keep opening your heart. Then, soften into not knowing, into letting life happen the way it does. Whatever comes, is without any inherent quality. Life is neither fair nor unfair. It’s you who makes the judgment. Let things fall apart, then see what’s left, then let that fall apart also.
“Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all. (…) Life is like that. We don’t know anything. We call something bad; we call it good. But really we just don’t know. (…) Life is a good teacher and good friend. Things are always in transition, if we could only realize it.” writes Pema Chödron.
This lesson is difficult to learn. The more I automatically resist it, the more vigorously my life shakes the walls and floors of my being, forcing me to let go of even the tiniest grips—the ones I held onto in secret. Everything must be released, everything must fall apart, and that is scary. We don’t like losing what we have. Even if it was never ours, we rejoice in the idea of certain things belonging to us in a way, and we long for the comfort such a thought offers. So, naturally, when we are faced with the ephemeral reality of things, when they fall apart as soon as we touch them, over and over again, and we can no longer pretend it is not how they are meant to be, we panic.
I’m tired of panicking. It doesn’t help. We all do that, even though many of us know, deep down, and some through the teachings we’ve listened to, that it doesn’t lead to anything.
It's challenging to stop our minds from spiralling at the slightest inconvenience, overwhelmed by feelings like pain, guilt, shame, jealousy, or loneliness. As soon as these emotions come, our minds go wild, seeking shelter to save us from despair. We grasp for relief in the arms of others, in conversations, in having a little snack, in focusing on something light and pleasant instead of difficult and painful, in entertainment (yes, Substack, too), even in taking a walk into the woods or doing a workout.
Not all distractions manifest through activities typically considered unhealthy. Going for a walk or hugging a loved one are wonderful activities as and of themselves. Still, they can serve as distractions, if used to avoid facing our discomfort directly. Then, as Pema Chödron points out, they become the so-called unnecessary activities — ways of keeping ourselves busy so we don’t have to feel any pain.
The basement full of ugliness
As it turns out, we do all of that because we believe those uncomfortable emotional states are problems to be solved, not something completely natural, and even neutral, if looked at closely and properly. “The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. (…) Suffering is part of life, and we don’t have to feel it’s happening because we personally made the wrong move,” she explains.
And yet, like many, I was taught to always fend off these unpleasant feelings and seek out the culprits. When such feelings appeared, it must've meant that something needed fixing—either the situation, the person causing it, or me. I wouldn’t allow those states because they weren’t pretty, and, of course, who wants to lead an ugly life? And who wants to be an ugly person? Nobody. This is not what we were promised, what is advertised to us, what we dream of at night.
We all want to appear pretty inside out, joyous, full of life, and busy with exciting plans. We want to be accomplished and respected; we want to be loved, cherished, and celebrated. We want to be praised, and we definitely don’t want anyone to see that underneath it all, we, just like anyone else, keep a haunted basement full of uncomfortable ugliness. We have it there, hidden, because there’s no room for feelings such as loneliness, guilt, shame, or disappointment in this artful design of ours.
No wonder these ugly feelings repeatedly swell up and overwhelm us. And then we despair. We forget it’s their full right to be seen, which we’ve denied them for as long as we live. They belong to our hearts, just as love and joy do. And since it’s their rightful home, we can try to relax and let them live there, without trying to dress them up in ribbons and sequins, so they’re less of an eyesore.
I find it helpful to remind myself that, as the teaching says, there’s nothing wrong with feeling sad, confused, uninteresting, let down, lonely, not good enough, left behind, and so on. They are not problems to be solved. Rather, they, as any other feeling, are simply products of our individual interpretation of the world and the events that happen in it. “We carry around a subjective reality that is continually triggering our emotional reactions.” writes Pema Chödron. What for one person is a neutral event, for another might be the end of the world. Our perception of it rarely has anything to do with an event itself.
The problem is that “most of us don’t take these situations as teachings. We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape — all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can’t stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain.”
Chödron continues to clarify that reaching our limit is not some kind of punishment. In fact, when we feel fear and confusion in those moments, it’s a sign of health. She encourages us to try and not get undone by this fear, but take it as a message that it’s time to stop struggling and look directly at what’s threatening us. Things like disappointment and anxiety are, as she explains, messengers telling us that we’re about to go into unknown territory.
This is the essence of the spiritual journey: moving beyond hope and fear into the unknown.
Big and open heart
What if, next time we are faced with all of this life’s ugliness (and most likely, we won’t need to wait long), we were to try something a little different? What if we attempted to understand what is stirring us rather than desperately trying to reject it and run away as soon as it crops up? What if we allowed ourselves to settle down in the middle — neither rejecting nor endorsing what’s happening, simply allowing it to be as it is, and reminding ourselves that nothing needs fixing, there’s no problem to be solved?
Following Pema Chödron’s advice: “When we reach our limit, if we aspire to know that place fully — which is to say that we aspire to neither indulge or repress — a hardness in us will dissolve. (…) This is the discovery of egolessness. It’s when all our usual schemes fall apart. Reaching our limit is like finding a doorway to sanity and the unconditional goodness of humanity, rather than meeting an obstacle or a punishment.”
When an ugly ghost of loneliness or pain emerges from the basement of our being, what if we gathered all our courage, gusto, and perhaps even some curiosity (and a flashlight) and faced it bare? What if we tried to notice all the erratic ways in which our minds try to look away from this discomfort, coming up with all kinds of distractions, and just let them run loose, until it’s emptied out of fuel and settled into peaceful not-knowing?
It’s a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately filling up the space. So I sit and face my fear. I sensed it creeping up from behind. What do you need from me? I ask. It says nothing because it doesn’t know anymore, now that I look at it, and it can’t manipulate me anymore. It didn’t expect to be respected and welcomed. It’s used to me running away from it. I let it stay as long as it needs to, and if I keep looking at it, it soon fades away, unsure and a little abashed. “We might feel that somehow we should try to eradicate these feelings (...). A more practical approach would be to get to know them, see how they hook us, see how they color our perception of reality, see how they aren’t all that solid,” writes Pema Chödron.
And so, the question is not how to get rid of these uncomfortable emotions, since they’re not going anywhere anyway, but a wholly different one: how to keep opening our hearts wider? How to let all these feelings and thoughts in, without being picky?
In a little prayer, which I say after each meditation session, the last line goes, “May I have a big and open heart that encompasses the whole world.”
When I first learned it, I thought it meant homing within it people and animals and plants and clouds and sun, all their moods and troubles, their loveliness and charm. But now, I've come to understand that it also, or most importantly, means embracing the entirety and ephemerality of life just as it is, just as it comes, without panicking when it’s not the way I imagined, and without desperately grasping and hoping for it to remain the same when it’s just the way I imagined.
Opening my heart wider means relinquishing the hope for things to be better according to my narrow definitions and instead, allowing them to just be as they are, for once. This doesn’t mean adopting a pessimistic outlook on life—that would be moving toward the opposite extreme. Such an approach is neither positive nor negative—it’s all-encompassing, sweet and relaxing even.
When I take a closer look, I’d say it’s the feeling of coming home, back to oneself, to one’s own heart from which we were also banished, alongside all other perceived ugliness—and then, growing wiser and more spacious to truly home it all.
“How we stay in the middle between indulging and repressing is by acknowledging whatever arises without judgment, letting the thoughts simply dissolve, and then going back to the openness of this very moment.” And even though I knew it in theory, from books and lectures, I am letting myself be humbled and release the grip of pride that was standing in the way. It’s easy to forget many helpful things, especially if they go against our ancestral instincts.
With humour and compassion, slowly — and not without resistance — I gently reorient my focus and let it fall right where it itches or hurts, where I’d rather not look. I have to do it a million times; it’s a hard-earned lesson. As in the little prayer, I make my heart big and open. That means open to every kind of experience, not just the pleasant ones. I let them all come back home. And I let myself return there too.
"(…) there is nothing anywhere to hold on to. Moreover, this is not a problem. In fact, it allows us to finally discover a completely unfabricated state of being. Our habitual assumptions — all of our ideas about how things are — keep us from seeing anything in a fresh, open way." To be honest, I’m growing ready to let that made-up reality fall apart, too. It’s been long enough; I saw it for what it is, and I have no more use for it. Will it be better without it? Probably not. It won’t be worse, either. Hopefully, it will just be.
Go to the limits of your longing
As many of you may have already experienced, dear readers, gentleness doesn’t come without pain. For hardship and softness enable one another and they sustain this cycle until we’re softened enough to embrace all the happening.
When there’s no resistance in us, we are ready to let everything happen to us, as Rainer Maria Rilke advices, and we don’t hold preference towards neither beauty nor terror, but we understand their nature and essential role each of them has to play in pushing us to our limit, and help us step beyond it, into the unknown.
"Go to the Limits of Your Longing"
Written by Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Joanna Macy
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
— Book of Hours, I 59
![1. A dog in a backpack. 2. A person wearing a backpack with a dog inside of it. 3. A dog in a backpack on the train.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F18335781-bac8-4ead-a146-63bdaf420806_3024x4032.jpeg)
![1. A dog in a backpack. 2. A person wearing a backpack with a dog inside of it. 3. A dog in a backpack on the train.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F94f6042a-1494-4c76-a763-31887542086b_3024x4032.jpeg)
![1. A dog in a backpack. 2. A person wearing a backpack with a dog inside of it. 3. A dog in a backpack on the train.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffa9d140b-27f9-4650-b99c-23908fdec21a_3024x4032.jpeg)
Question to you, dear reader:
What greets you when you reach the shoreline of your longing?
dear justyna,
a belated thanks for this piece!
i love it all, and here are some specifics i love:
this beautiful opening: "These days I know much less than I thought I did."
this resonant wisdom: "We don’t like losing what we have. Even if it was never ours, we rejoice in the idea of certain things belonging to us in a way, and we long for the comfort such a thought offers"
this question: "is it still possible to stand when there’s no ground under your feet?" which reminds me of the chogyam trungpa quote "The bad news is you're falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there's no ground.”
THIS question: "What if we tried to notice all the erratic ways in which our minds try to look away from this discomfort, coming up with all kinds of distractions, and just let them run loose, until it’s emptied out of fuel and settled into peaceful not-knowing?"
this prayer: “May I have a big and open heart that encompasses the whole world.”
thank you for all of these offerings!
love
myq
The stumbling. The noticing. And the wisdom. Keep on walking with such kind heart.