I drive home and see a hawk perched on the wrong way sign. I’ve seen three of them this week, and last week they spoke to me. They looked at me deeply, dead in the eyes, and said:
"What kind of pain is it? Is it your body or your heart?"
They asked me if the pain is even mine. The hawks said that either way, I should breathe through it and try
to relax into it. To never deny the experience of it. I cry out as I drive past. I say:
"Haven't I held this for too long?"
I want to let it go. I want to let it go, please, I tell the hawks.
The hawks say it will go when it pleases, that I should take some Advil, and that I act like a baby. They ask me why I don't like this part of myself, when this part demands a certain presence, when this part demands to speak. I yell back:
"I don't love it because I want to let it go!"
I just want it to leave me be.
The hawks just sighed and argued that maybe if I loved it a little more, then it would finally go away for good. Letting go doesn't have to come all at once; it can be soft and gradual, compounded from actions, and interactions, and energies going forward. Just don't grip so tight, let things play out as they're meant to. The hawks say that the funny thing about letting go is that we often aren't holding anything to begin with.
The hawks say maybe this is my karma, to be in this frustrating position. They can't tell me why, because they don't know why. They say perhaps my past actions, perhaps in another life, have created this current condition in which I am unable to move from an uncomfortable situation. In a way, this is fortunate because I am burning through my negative karma. The hawks laugh:
"There are a lot of worse ways to burn through karma, right?."
This is a different perspective than being without it, a whole different experience, a whole different being. It is a sort of frequency that every living being faces of this life and body. It is a consequence and a blessing that we each have been rightfully left with. When we are in pain we are within a universal experience. It is not supposed to be enjoyable but it also must not be considered a consequence. The point of pain is not the animalistic cue to relieve it.
There are times in life when we are meant to comes to term with this. This is often difficult, but this is when you can easily find a catalyst for change. This dynamic evokes all sorts of vulnerabilities and discomforts within, and those are worth seeing clearly.
Pain presents a lot of opportunity for investigation, more than other kinds of relationships we have with emotions because everything in pain is stirred up. It's a very distilled exchange of energy. Still, it's never good to do anything from a place of unwillingness or resentment. But discomfort shows you exactly where the heart can open, that all of the good and bad is true and true is okay. We do not always have the space and the pause to take a step back and really parse through things. I can't, and you cannot. Sometimes the mind can veer into black and white in order to swallow what it doesn't understand.
That is an always essential part of the human existence, surely there are plenty of other moments to consider as well. Pleasure follows pain. Good times follow bad times. You wear hats in the winter and so on. I try to answer, but I cannot argue with all these hawks. You can never argue with three whole hawks on the wrong way sign.
They just say: "One last thing, I don't think the absence of pain fills the void. I think you're operating from a false premise. Have you called your brother lately?"
And then they fly away.