Inviting Our Suffering Onto the Dancefloor

The below excerpt is from the Masters Center for Transformation. It is written by Robert Masters.

Another beautiful piece that was very popular on this blog by Robert Masters was Don’t give fear a thought.

INVITING OUR SUFFERING ONTO THE DANCEFLOOR

When we no longer ostracize, condemn, or neglect our suffering, but invite it onto the dancefloor with us, we are on track, however stumbling or sloppy our steps may be. Then we are relating to, instead of from, our suffering; we are apart from yet not cut off from it. Then it’s no longer just another unpretty face, but something that we can communicate with, touch, penetrate, gaze into, bring closer.

When we move onto the dancefloor with our suffering, we begin to recognize in it many fractured or distorted countenances, the long-ago yet nonetheless still present faces of our distressed or injured selves. As our heart breaks — that is, breaks free of its “protective” encasing — the faces are no longer cracked or deformed, no longer held in poisonously framed cameo.

However slightly, we are then broken enough to be whole — and empty enough to be open — making more and more room in ourselves for our pain. And, eventually, others’ pain. The dance continues, and we notice we are stumbling less, and that an appealing warmth is slowly arising, a fledgling feeling of well-being. There’s more room now, more courage, more love. And such rich intimations of a love beyond love.

Dancing with our suffering allows a sobering joy to bloom, and bloom fully. Flowers of love, flowers of disappointment, flowers of death, flowers of no-big-deal arrival. Compassion, and a deeper compassion. We start to taste the nirvanic peace that is at the heart of real acceptance…read more here

Also by Robert Masters —  Don’t give fear a thought.

Books by Masters:

●  Spiritual Bypassing: When Spirituality Disconnects Us from What Really Matters

●  Meeting The Dragon: Ending Our Suffering By Entering Our Pain

●  Transformation through Intimacy, Revised Edition: The Journey toward Awakened Monogamy