Would you rather feel deeply, or not feel a thing…?
To suppress the heart… is to miss out on the experience and totality of what it is to be human, and alive.
Only dead things do not feel, move, experience or grow. Yet so many of us are hesitant to fully embrace life and grow.
Yet growth, by it’s very nature is a pushing, driving, strengthening process. Think of a tree which endures all seasons and weathers… and yet how strong, sturdy, flexible, yielding and far-reaching it becomes. Trees have the right idea… they always have done.
(We could learn a lot from trees… seriously.)
To have felt hurt, grief, loss or sadness simply means you have traveled deeply into the nature of the human heart.
You chose to explore what it feels to love to the depth, breadth and core of your human experience… you chose to grow!
To have touched such depth within, means you have stretched your awareness and concept of the universe… and your own soul. And how beautiful is that?
To experience the full spectrum of life’s emotions, trails and teachings means you have traveled very far. You have lived a full adventure.
After all, you did not come here to sit on the sidelines and watch. You came to explore what it is, to be alive.
Ultimately all our experiences are just a playground for the exploration of one question… What is God? God is for you to experience and you to find.
That is the gift of your Life. But if we do not remain open to feeling… how can you know? How can you even know when God comes-a-knocking at your door if you are too afraid to open it, because there is a risk you may ‘feel’ something deeper, than you have ever felt before.
It is not the depth we fear – it is the loss of control. For when great love comes into our life… when we feel deeply from the heart – it kills our ego.
Love causes our ego to loose it’s grip on our life… this is why many are so afraid to feel. For to feel, is to loose control.
Now what has all this to do with a porcupine you may ask?
Well that depth, that experience – the life, lessons and love you have lived, are what makes your soul grow, stronger, bigger – just like a porcupine who is prodded with a stick!
I love Rumi and when I read his words, I can imagine a bright, smiling twinkle in his eye.
The following poem is called ‘Check Mate’ by Rumi… and in it, he it explains a little more about the ‘porcupine theory’. ;)
Check Mate ~ by Rumi
Borrow the beloved’s eyes.
Look through them and you’ll see the beloved’s face
everywhere. No tiredness, no jaded boredom.
“I shall be your eye and your hand and your loving.”
Let that happen, and things
you have hated will become helpers.
A certain preacher always prays long and with enthusiasm
for thieves and muggers that attack people
on the street. “Let your mercy, O Lord,
cover their insolence.”
He doesn’t pray for the good,
but only for the blatantly cruel.
Why is this? his congregation asks.
“Because they have done me such generous favors.
Every time I turn back toward the things they want,
I run into them, they beat me, and leave me nearly dead
in the road, and I understand, again, that what they want
is not what I want. They keep me on the spiritual path.
That’s why I honor them and pray for them.”
Those that make you return, for whatever reason,
to God’s solitude, be grateful to them.
Worry about the others, who give you
delicious comforts that keep you from prayer.
Friends are enemies sometimes,
and enemies friends.
There is an animal called an ushghur, a porcupine.
If you hit it with a stick, it extends its quills
and gets bigger. The soul is a porcupine,
made strong by stick-beating.
So a prophet’s soul is especially afflicted,
because it has to become so powerful.
A hide is soaked in tanning liquor and becomes leather.
If the tanner did not rub in the acid,
the hide would get foul-smelling and rotten.
The soul is a newly skinned hide, bloody and gross.
Work on it with manual discipline,
and the bitter tanning acid of grief,
and you’ll become lovely, and very strong.
If you can’t do this work yourself, don’t worry.
You don’t even have to make a decision,
one way or another. The Friend, who knows
a lot more than you do, will bring difficulties,
and grief, and sickness,
as medicine, as happiness,
as the essence of the moment when you’re beaten,
when you hear Checkmate, and can finally say,
with Hallaj’s voice,
I trust you to kill me.
