Change is not a requirement

My friend Scott sent this Rainer Maria Rilke poem in his newsletter, and I want to include it here because it reminds me of my latest "aha!"

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring
clear without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.

As I've worked with Mary O'Malley, one thing she's taught me is that I don't have to change how I feel. I just need to acknowledge it, and then it can float on down the river. As I sit at the computer, and my thighs press together, I think "yuck! I don't want to feel this way," and I want to scurry on to another experience, another emotion. But I can't leave here, I can't move on. What's being asked of me is to just experience what's here. Breath in, breath out. It's not my job to shift the feeling right now. Aha, I think. No, Mary would say, let go of the thinking, too. Okay. Breath in, breath out.

The irony that I'm discovering is that by being present to the "I'm stuck" or "I'm sad" or "I'm lonely" experiences allow them to move on. Instead of wrestling these yuckies, I let them drift by like a cloud on the wind. By not forcing them out, they leave more readily. And I wave goodbye, strangely grateful now for their presence.