Since January, I’ve been engaged in an experiment. Dr. Jeffery Martin’s work on Fundamental Wellbeing has inspired me to approach wellbeing in a conscious and deliberate way. So, each month, I’ve taken on a new practice to explore.
This month, August 26, is my mother’s birthday. She died 2 ½ years ago and it was only recently that I felt a profound depth of appreciation, love and gratitude for her and for her giving me life. I felt her pain in birthing me, the umbilical cord being cut – symbolizing the separation of mother and child that goes forward that moment onwards.
How is it that it took me years after she died to truly feel that gratitude? It’s with a heavy heart that I realize I never properly expressed my gratitude to her for being my mother. There were many “I love yous” for sure – she and I both let the words of love flow between us. She was also very physically loving – lots of touches, strokes of my hair and face. I knew she loved me.
But did I really express my deep love for her, the kind that goes beyond obligation and expectation of any return? Not really, not beyond my innocent expressions of love as a child. Because she was an immigrant with a limited education, I allowed my own higher and higher education to close my heart towards her. That’s painful to admit, but I want to share this as perhaps you can relate.
Are there people in your life that, if they were gone tomorrow, and you were sitting forward in 2 or 3 years from now, you might feel a more profound and fundamental love and gratitude for? Are there are any blocks in your heart, places you might feel a closed heart towards someone that, if you could imagine them dead and gone, you could see and feel towards them differently?
That’s an important litmus test. We all die and the moment of death often comes swiftly and unexpectedly. It takes a concentrated effort of imagination to stretch into this place, but it is the place of your own heart.
For this month, between full moons, I invite you to walk with me, with your heart more open than it was a moment ago. No matter what that might mean for you, just intend it. No matter what someone else says or does to you or for you or against you, can you say in response to all circumstances: “I love you, I do.” Can you trust love?
I love you for reading and feeling with me. I do.
Cultivating an open heart coupled with continuous gratitude has to be the Path of Fundamental Wellbeing.
What say you?
“The ego searches for shortcomings and weaknesses. Love watches for any sign of strength. It sees how far each one has come and not how far he has to go.” … Gerald Jampolsky