Breaking Open

Breaking down. Breaking open. They're only one word apart, and yet there meanings are worlds apart. Emotions apart. Experiences apart.

Breaking down means letting the suffering of the world get you "down." It means being the victim, being the tragedy. When the world gives you a load just a little too heavy, breaking down means letting that load leave you a smaller person, a lesser person.

Breaking open means letting the suffering of the world get you to "open." Suddenly, the cracks aren't where the darkness crawls, but where the sunlight shines. The person who breaks open is alive to the possibilites of what Is, not what might or should have been. The person who breaks open is alive, is awake, is receptive.

That's not to say that breaking open doesn't involve crying, or anger-ing, or denying. It involves all those things. Emotions, positive or negative, are healthy, useful, and a fully necessary part of human life. Without these emotions, where would we be? Dead: emotionally, pyshically, and spiritually. But breaking open moves beyond these emotions, beyond the hurt, beyond the imagined pain, and finds an opening where everything, EVERYTHING, may radically coexist.

Breaking down is easy. Breaking open is hard. But in the end, all you can do is break open. Whether now, or years, or lifetimes from now. Because openness is the very nature of reality. Love is the very nature of reality.

I love you. I love. Love. That is the final truth.

Namaste.