Actually checking in.
Practicing letting the "spiritual sandpaper" of hard times demand my attention, shape me, transform me.
I’ve been meditating a lot lately. Or rather, I’ve been listening to guided meditations any time I’m driving in the car (with my eyes open, of course), which in my job is a lot. I open Insight Timer, a subscription gifted to me by my dear friend Alison, and I choose a track. It’s usually led by my favorite teacher, Sarah Blondin, who always says the exact right thing that finds its way into my heart and cracks it open in just the right way.
This is what I need to do, sometimes. I’ve been known to go through stretches of very hard times and suddenly start meditating two, three, four times a day. Which is not an accomplishment, but rather an indication of how desperate I’ve felt for a life raft, for something to cling to while the storm swirls around me. Pressing play on a guide who will speak to me the words I’m yearning to hear from myself, letting me pause for a moment and thrust open a window.
Lately I’ve been finding myself in one of those stretches of hard times, for a variety of reasons. When I look back on it, it seems that life has thrown me challenge after challenge for the past few years. (Perhaps even as far back as when I returned from traveling in 2018?) Not to say that life has been without bright spots, to be sure — it certainly has. But keeping my head above water has taken an incredible amount of hard work, which can be exhausting.
During one of the many above-mentioned meditation sessions, Sarah Blondin quoted words from Ram Dass which have stayed with me:
“Suffering is the sandpaper of our incarnation. It does its work of shaping us.” Ram Dass
I can’t help but think of hard times as “spiritual sandpaper” now. I later read more of Sarah’s words about this (here on Substack!) and she wrote, “The sharp grit has the potential to awaken, inspire, and invoke the deeper you living dormant inside you.”
After being raised radically Catholic, I’m very resistant to any idea that may suggest that suffering is good for you, but this feels different. This feels more like: Suffering can be a place of curiosity and acceptance and openness and, ultimately, transformation. A fertile place.
If you let it. If you are open to awakening and inspiring and making space for what’s dormant inside you.
And so I meditate. And write in my journal. And go for walks under the trees, on days where that feels possible. I try to stay in this breath only, and then the next one, and the next one. I call a friend and ask if she has space to hear how I truly am doing, and then I tell her.
I’m trying to be open to the sandpaper. Let it rub me raw, let it demand my attention, let it shape me, let it transform me. Let it heal me.
I called this Substack “Checking In” because I wanted it to be a genuine place where I could be honest and real and write about the things that felt too vulnerable to write about on social media. I wanted it to be a space where I could take stock of my inner world and invite you to do the same. Where I could actually check in.
When my inner world feels dark and murky, I don’t always feel capable of stringing words together for others to read on the internet. But there are now over 100 of you subscribing here, and that feels like an extraordinary gift. And other important words written by Sarah Blondin (yes, I am obsessed) are these:
The most important thing you must hear from this is: you must be disciplined. You must tend to yourself even when feeling like you can’t. Even when you can not lift your body from your bed. Even when you are numb to the bone. Lay on the floor, name the ache. Ask for help. Pray. Release. Make space around yourself. You will be warmed dear one, I promise you…with time and sometimes only briefly, you will connect with the breath of love inside of you. Make sure you create space to release and listen, this is where the purpose is born. This may even be the one true purpose of our lives: to connect with and know ourselves intimately.
And so I write. And meditate and journal and walk and breathe and share, creating space to release and listen.
And so the purpose is born.
I love Sarah Blondin, she is my go-to as well!