Willingness

Not surprisingly, willingness is very much linked to our constitutions as humans. In physicality, I’ve always been rather thin boned and weak muscled. Even in the years when I was much more fit than I am now, my threshold for pain and tolerance for physical discomfort was pretty damn low. Waxing and walking, fine; electrolysis and endurance racing, no thank you. Mentally, on the other hand, I’ve always been up the challenge. In fact, I often seek it out. I like to stretch my mind in directions it doesn’t want to go. I’m willing to try on perspectives and alternate ways of looking at reality. I love layering them on top of one another to create a matrix of existence that can never quite settle into clear view. It’s fun to “see” life through my mind. Spiritually, I feel the same. It’s incredibly pleasurable for me to wonder and imagine and sense what else is at play that is out of human vision. Very rarely do I get stuck on a concept that I can’t fit into a grander plan. Where I do falter are those spiritual doorways where I am out of my element and don’t believe I have a right to be. Spirits and angels sound both wonderful and scary; still held at arms length and fear deep. Somewhere in between, for me, is the emotional world of past hurts, current feelings and future hopes. It’s a vast ocean that I was very slow to enter in my early years and only more recently willing to wade into more deeply. This is the area of my life where my own willingness is more muddied. On one hand, I’ve done a lot of work to reduce anxiety, stress and worry in my life in order to feel pleasurable emotions. As a little girl who only visited joy in select moments, I now successfully choose to live there much more regularly. Laughing, joking, finding beauty in small moments is easy and true. Lightness is finally possible. Sadness, who I’ve known well for decades, has also become more natural and mature friend in my adulthood. No longer an excuse to remain lethargic and lifeless, my relationship with it is a touchstone into the heart of suffering; the very thing we all share and are fighting to free ourselves from. Secretly, it is my greatest love affair, where joy and sadness meet. The bittersweetness of every moment, if we let it. Anger, on the other hand, and all of its associated emotions are foreigners to me. They are less invited guests in my nervous system, more sly and silent intruders. Usually, it takes me hours, if not days, to know that I am angry. And when I do realize, my body’s reaction is uncomfortable heart-bounding quickly turned to mental rumination followed by a fog-induced desire to sleep instead of feel. While I’m mentally willing to go to the mental places that trigger these emotions, it’s an incredibly difficult practice for me to find the same willingness in my body to feel the sensations associated with actually feeling anger. In many ways, this requires a particular journey into embodiment that I can imagine yet can’t quite embody. It’s a funny conundrum, knowing the necessary destination but not having a clue about the path to get there.

What I’ve found about willingness is that it’s layered, and it’s different for each person. Usually, I need to commit to something new mentally and spiritually before the rest of me opens up enough to meet the challenge emotionally and physically. For others, the body is their doorway. Through feeling and sensation, they find their capacity to meet their own resistances to mental and spiritual change. They need, even if through physical pain, to feel deeply within themselves before they can make mental space for new concepts. They are our world’s metabolism for those of us who don’t yet have that gift. This is why I love the lens of willingness so much, because it is a map of which there is always a door and always a key. When we learn what those are for ourselves, living more fully is possible. It’s as challenging, yet simple as that.