Today I learned that an alternative health practitioner who, for decades, has supported and encouraged my body to heal, is going to give up her practice. If I had received this news even a couple of years ago, I would have worried, whined, obsessed, and suffered about the loss, imagining I would never find another practitioner as skilled. My internal focus would have been on me, not on the news she had just shared. But I experienced no emotional lurch, not even surprise.

This lack of emotional opposition on my part is a big internal shift. Instead of reacting, which is a form of resistance, there was space to respond—with happiness that she gets to rest and explore new avenues. She’s been in service to this work for forty years.

Like many of the changes that have come through the teaching, it happened gradually, and I didn’t notice until after the chunk of unlearning was done. I’m grateful when, rather than getting clobbered, transformation shows up in a gentle way. I’ve experienced both! Most likely I get thwacked when the shell is too resistant to crack with softer reminders. Still, whether cuffed or invited, I find waking up is preferable to slumber anytime. What is cloaked to look like loss, when fully released, always turns out to be ease or joy–an opening, an offering, gratitude to life itself.

© Amrita Skye Blaine, 2014
photo credit: Panhala Poetry