Vachon Imagined

Tension and relaxation have a relationship like any other experience in life. Neither is necessarily good or bad. We interpret them through our relationship to each.

If someone is tense, we can sense it. We feel it. Tension is an energy, much like an electrical circuit, except this circuit is in the body. It moves through us, takes on intelligence, and becomes life.

This is what humans like Jesus Christ did when they took on the invisible. He did it within himself. The abandonment, the guilt, the suffering, it was experienced in himself. This gives us insight into the words, “they know not what they do,” because whatever we say, whatever we think, whatever we feel, and whatever we ultimately do with this life is happening in us first.

We are relating to ourselves. Nothing else is happening.

We can say that relaxation feels better than tension, but even that is perception. To some people, relaxation is painful because their minds will not let them relax. They can go to a spa, write out their feelings, sit in meditation, or go to a therapist, and still find it difficult to simply be with themselves.

This is why tension can become so consuming. It is not necessarily the circumstance itself that creates the suffering. It is the difficulty of being with what is happening inside us. Even when the source of the infliction is nothing more than our own mind, being with it can feel unbearable.

So what do we do when we are faced with suffering, no matter how it presents itself?

We relax.

And if we cannot relax now, we practice.

In a world that often rewards tension, goal setting, winning, dominating, and achieving, we can allow these things to be what they are without allowing them to determine what we are. We can let tension exist in us without becoming tension. We can let ambition exist without becoming ambition. We can let fear, anger, grief, disappointment, and even suffering move through us without turning against ourselves.

It wasn’t a mistake that love was equated with gentleness. Gentleness softens our perceptions. It softens our hearts. It allows us to stop fighting with what is happening long enough to actually experience it.

And in that softening, we return as little children, not ignorant of life, but immersed in it. We return to the only place where we can actually be ourselves: life as it is.

We can let everything be what it is in us, and still love.

No matter what shows up.

No matter how life presents itself.