Field Notes: After the Ecstasy, The Laundry

The hellebores have finally bloomed in the front bed. {hooray!}

I love the sessions I get to facilitate for my clients — the chance to glimpse into the uniqueness of their soul...to see the beautiful spiritual support that is streaming love around them...to pass along messages filled with abundant encouragment...to connect with loved ones "on the other side" and feel a love that is so big it never fails to bring tears to my eyes.

Being in a session with a client feels to me like touching Heaven. It opens my heart, fills me with joy, and makes me feel incredibly grateful that this is the work I do.

It's such a sweet blissful feeling that it can sometimes feel like a let-down to return to ordinary life and to ordinary me.

Especially when I don't carry that heart-wide-open feeling into my everyday life.

Like when I'm weeding the garden and feeling overwhelmed. Or helping to clean out my daughter's rat cage. Or wiping down the streak on the bathroom door mirror for the second (or third) time that day. Or when I'm up against the mess and realness of myself at my most anxious, petty and fearful.

There is a book by the Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield — After the Ecstasy, The Laundry. I have yet to read it; still several times a week, the title pops into my head.

I have begun to use the phrase as my cue to see the Heaven in the right here, right now, present-time messiness of life as it is.

To experience the full spectrum of my life — from the mundane to the sublime — as equally good and necessary.

To remind me that, yes, just 15 minutes ago, I had the profound sweetness of touching deeply into the mystical, and now, I need to get out the laundry detergent and throw in the next load. 

The phrase, "After the Ecstasy, The Laundry," helps me to remember that sublime moments of spiritual connection are inevitably balanced by times of disconnection and forgetting. To know that the amazing spiritual me is yoked with a beautiful real, striving human me, too.

In an excerpt from the book, Kornfield writes:

For almost everyone who practices, cycles of awakening and openness are followed by periods of fear and contraction. Times of profound peace and newfound love are often overtaken by periods of loss, by closing up, fear, or the discovery of betrayal, only to be followed again by equanimity or joy. In mysterious ways the heart reveals itself to be like a flower that opens and closes. This is our nature.

For almost everyone who practices, cycles of awakening and openness are followed by periods of fear and contraction. Times of profound peace and newfound love are often overtaken by periods of loss, by closing up, fear, or the discovery of betrayal, only to be followed again by equanimity or joy. In mysterious ways the heart reveals itself to be like a flower that opens and closes. This is our nature.
Read more at http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Buddhism/2000/06/After-The-Ecstasy-The-Laundry.aspx?p=1#LWD7Cjfd5SoEWi4s.99

For almost everyone who practices, cycles of awakening and openness are followed by periods of fear and contraction. Times of profound peace and newfound love are often overtaken by periods of loss, by closing up, fear, or the discovery of betrayal, only to be followed again by equanimity or joy. In mysterious ways the heart reveals itself to be like a flower that opens and closes. This is our nature.
Read more at http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Buddhism/2000/06/After-The-Ecstasy-The-Laundry.aspx?p=1#LWD7Cjfd5SoEWi4s.99

For almost everyone who practices, cycles of awakening and openness are followed by periods of fear and contraction. Times of profound peace and newfound love are often overtaken by periods of loss, by closing up, fear, or the discovery of betrayal, only to be followed again by equanimity or joy. In mysterious ways the heart reveals itself to be like a flower that opens and closes. This is our nature.
Read more at http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Buddhism/2000/06/After-The-Ecstasy-The-Laundry.aspx?p=1#LWD7Cjfd5SoEWi4s.99

It's like the Zen saying, "Before Enlightenment chop wood carry water, after Enlightenment, chop wood carry water."

By recalling the phrase, I am reminded to love and celebrate the all of life. Especially those parts of life that are the "laundry."

And paradoxically, when I can see everything with equanimity — not just the the sweet joys of sessions and the moments of profound grace, but also the laundry, the weeds, and the parts of me that go all Chicken Little sometimes — I can begin to experience the Heaven in all of it, too.

Tell me, what helps you to stay centered and present to your life? What helps you to notice Heaven on Earth?

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Addendum: For almost two years, I had a feature on this blog every Friday — Flowering Fridays. The photos and blog posts from this series became the basis for my book, Flowering Wisdom: Inspiring Thoughts on Life, Love, and Blooming Big. I still love flowers, and they are usually what my camera is focused on, but what I most want to share regularly in this space now are in-the-moment reflections on what I'm noticing from my own journey. So, starting today, I'm starting a new feature — Field Notes. My hope is that there will be something helpful or inspring for you out of these reflections. Thank you so much for taking the time to stop by and read — so very grateful! Big love, Shannon

Comments

[amanda anne]

This is awesome shannon. I love the laundry of life. It makes us stronger!

[Shannon Jackson Arnold]

Thanks, Amanda. Love your comment. ox