How to embrace a well-lived life when life is falling apart

How do you embrace a well-lived life when your life seems to be falling apart, when it feels like the Universe betrayed you by snatching away your dreams just you stepped up to receive them with open arms?

First of all, by choosing to recognize that it isn’t possible for the Universe to betray you, rather, a sea change is occurring.

From Shakespeare’s The Tempest:

“Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange”…

Sometimes Life comes in like a tempest at sea; waves crashing over, wind sweeping wildly, our bearings lost and the belongings we were clinging to scattered to the depths.

But this isn’t done to destroy us, it is to bring about a change most beautiful; the way pounding waves can polish solid rock or shift the shape of a coastline.

In the same way, when our securities are ripped away and precious illusions shattered, the detritus of our former selves is washed away and underneath is revealed a previously unknown visage, of something rich and strange.

As beautiful as the end result is, the process is neither easy nor pleasant.

I have recently been undergoing such a sea change myself. Not for the first time, and undoubtedly not for the last.

A job situation changed suddenly in a way I did not want or intend on, leaving me financially unstable and completely uncertain of what to do next, and the relationship I thought was the answer to my heart’s deepest prayer ended soon after, leaving me reeling from the tumult and struggling to breathe.

So, my broken heart whispered, how do we make a well-lived life out of this?

By feeling however you do, sweet one, I whispered back, and knowing that you are held and loved in this moment, even in your darkness, despair, and heartache.

While the temptation can be strong in such a situation to bypass such painful emotions or prematurely declare that “all is well, Life has a greater plan”, the deeper call is to be here. Now. In each wave. With each tremulous breath. And to remember that in the vastness of the ocean of who I truly am, as the wonderful Jeff Foster says, each wave is deeply allowed.

If you have spent any time at all in the spiritual self-help world, you have likely come up against the ideas of life mirroring back what’s inside you, that our thoughts somehow created this, or the need to change our vibration so that we can manifest something different.

Though I do believe that we have great powers of co-creation, I think that in the new paradigm of heart-centered consciousness, the real invitation is to come home to our heart and body, to befriend every feeling, sensation, and aspect of our experience, even the most dark, painful, and unlovable aspects.

Especially the dark, painful, and unlovable aspects.

There is no feeling, thought, or emotion that I am experiencing or could ever experience, that is a threat to who I truly am.

What a massive relief that is, to release the struggle to try and think positive, shift my feeling state, or raise my frequency so that I can get what I want.

The feelings of confusion, hopelessness, and heartbreak; the thoughts of anger, fear, and despair; none of these are in any way a threat or obstacle to getting the life I truly want- the fulfilling work, ease, financial abundance; the great Love who won’t leave.

These things are an inevitability.

And so my attention can be brought gently, lovingly, to every wave. Because there is no separation.

The ocean that brings the waves of joy, bliss, and happiness, is the same ocean in which the waves of sadness, grief, and longing are also deeply allowed. Even resistance to allowing any of this, is also very much allowed. Because the One who I am, has already allowed all of it.

For me, to see and experience painful life situations in this way, is an enormous relief, after years of trying frantically to micro-manage how I think or feel or express myself, in order to respond the way I “should”. The giant and ultimately unreachable goal of “accepting and allowing” becomes obsolete in the knowing that allowing has already happened, because these experiences are already here.

Yes, I can choose my response- I can choose to be bitter, to say life is not fair, or I could choose to try to be positive as a tactic to escape painful feelings.

But I choose to see that there is as much Divinity in the anger and anguish as there is in the joy and peace.

That whatever is being polished, removed, or shifted, is only to beautify me into something rich and strange.

And to know that will happen whether I am serenely accepting that all is well and working in my favor, or curled up in a ball on the floor crying my eyes out and declaring that my world has ended and I will never recover.

There is great peace in not needing to be peaceful.

Powerful strength in being completely weak.

And true freedom in realizing that I don’t need to be free from any of the feelings or emotions that are a part of this sea change; I can be free with them, for they are all waves in the beautiful expansive ocean of me. They are all deeply allowed to be here.

I leave you with one of my very favorite poems-

Serene, I fold my hands and wait,

Nor care for wind nor tide nor sea;

I rave no more ‘gainst time or fate,

For lo! my own shall come to me.

I stay my haste, I make delays-

For what avails this eager pace?

I stand amid the eternal ways

And what is mine shall know my face.

Asleep, awake, by night or day,

The friends I seek are seeking me,

No wind can drive my bark astray

Nor change the tide of destiny.

What matter if I stand alone?

I wait with joy the coming years;

My heart shall reap where it has sown,

And garner up its fruit of tears.

The waters know their own, and draw

The brook that springs in yonder height;

So flows the good with equal law

Unto the soul of pure delight.

The stars come nightly to the sky;

The tidal wave unto the sea;

Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,

Can keep my own away from me.

Waiting. -John Borroughs.