When I was a kid, my friends and I played hide and seek. One time, I ran into a room to hide and I accidentally stepped on a sewing needle that was sticking up in the carpet. It stung and I slowly pulled out the needle from my foot. Half of it slithered out while the other half got stuck into the bone, which I didn’t realize at the time. I just knew that a pain remained in my step.
I limped around quietly for 3 months like a wounded soldier. It felt heroic to be carrying a pain, like a badge of honor. Also, I was a shy kid and getting attention usually meant getting the evil eye from my older sister. In Iran, the evil eye was a death stare that, without words, shouted, “what’s wrong with you?!”
Finally, my grandfather noticed the constant limp, so he took me to get X-rays at the hospital. Seeing that half a needle was wedged into the bone, I went into surgery and out came a black needle. Apparently, the metal had turned black because of some chemical reaction.
The story is a constant reminder to not bury pain. The Persian poet Rumi once said, “light enters through the wound.” The body is a guesthouse and emotions are visitors that want to be heard with compassion, not blocked from the light of awareness.
The guesthouse metaphor is powerful because it suggests that we don’t have to be stuck as our feelings and that we can step outside of them and listen to the messages they carry. Listening is a lifelong practice that involves the many dimensions of the heart. An open and lucid heart is less disturbed than one that is stiff or unconscious.
Sometimes we play hide and seek with our feelings which prolongs the pain and blocks out the light from entering. It has become my life’s work to normalize emotions so that people can live wholeheartedly beyond fear.
No need to dodge uncomfortable feelings because emotions are not inherently negative. It’s ok to be afraid, to feel sad, regret, angry, confused, relief and everything in between. It’s okay to not be okay sometimes. This is the attitude of compassionate living and the shift begins within.