When Your Heart Skips A Beat
Before I continue, I shall preface this with an assignment K has given me for some time now. A prescription of sorts, actually; and that is to really experience my emotions. Somehow I managed to write this down in my "notebook" just this afternoon:
- How does it feel? (Give it a name.)
- Where do you feel it?
- What's the (your) story?
- When was the first time you've felt this way?
I've been advancing in the naming-it stage, but keep getting stuck in the where. I think I need to hone into the now better; be able to isolate everything else and focus on one thing -
... if only.
Most of the time, I can't afford to do that (car insurance gets expensive). But the thing is, these opportunities are endless. Perhaps I need to stop focusing on only dissecting the negative emotions, and do some of this work with positive or even neutral ones, too. Meditation would surely help (click link for best tips!).
How about we didn't bring the entire gym bag into this, and just get down to it? I watched "The Little Matchgirl," and although the ending gave a vague sense of redemption, it was still heartbreaking. Heartbreak. Yes. That has got to be an easy one. Stress could manifest in so many ways in so many areas of your body: head, jaw, shoulder, back, skin, etc, etc. But heartbreak, for its namesake, pointed straight to the heart. And who here hasn't experienced a heartache at some point or another? (If you haven't, you might want to verify that you were a cyborg.) So it's a no-brainer, right? Heartaches were ails of the heart. Not exactly. Surely the heart wretched, like it was being squeezed a little too tight in one direction and then another. But that's not it. When the heart felt squeezed, my lungs felt compressed, too. I literally couldn't breath for a second. As if all the air had gotten sucked out, oxygen was depleted, and the space around me was a vacuum. Generally at this time if I were to tear up, my nose would get a little sour (there is a saying for this in Chinese: 鼻酸). That's when the tear ducts were charged. It's like operating a little steam engine almost, there's a little conductor or teams of little spirits who work together to produce every function and every sensation.
It is not the first time I've learned of the dull pain of the heart, or the soured nose bringing the tears. But it is the first time I've acknowledged my holding my breathe. And it became more apparent because another short came on, "Paperman," which I've seen before and knew it was very sweet and romantic. It was beautiful, almost bitter. And I wasn't sure if it was simply the sweetness of it, or the bitterness from my longing of a great romance, but I felt it again - I couldn't breath for a second. But surely this wasn't my heart sinking; it was almost like my heart skipped a beat.
Pitter patter goes my heart. I have been practicing heartache. I thought I knew it so well. What I haven't noticed was that this achy sensation I have found so unbearable half the time, was the very sensation that also brought me to tears when something moved me deeply. Be they tears of sorrow or joy, my heart, my lungs and my nose have all pitched in for the effort to help express myself.
As soon as we open our mouth to say “suffering,” we know that the opposite of suffering is already there as well. Where there is suffering, there is happiness.
- Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh
No Vicks Vapor for the eyeballs necessary. I was born an introvert and a cry baby. I am simply returning to my true self here. I am just amazed that I have only begun to see how this all really feels. I've always known that the goal of all this heart training is to ultimately become the Zen Master. I was told the point was not to reach the level of the Zen Master, but to be in the journey.
I am totally becoming Zen Master.
Comments