Soft Spot

I've been listening to Pema Chodron CD's my sisters Val and Cindy sent to me, and Pema talks about a "soft spot." Listening, it begins to dawn on me that maybe I've been running away from and trying to plaster over this soft place I feel in my heart, and maybe I've been going in the wrong direction. It's odd when the very spot I've been trying to escape may turn out to be the doorway to where I want to be.

I googled "Trungpa Rinpoche soft spot" and this is what came up:

"Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world."
Trungpa Rinpoche, The Sacred Path of the Warrior

"Without realizing it we continually shield ourselves from this pain because it scares us. ... These walls are further fortified by emotions of all kinds: anger, craving, indifference, jealousy and envy, arrogance and pride. But fortunately for us, the soft spot - our innate ability to love and to care about things - is like a crack in these walls we erect. It's a natural opening in the barriers we create when we're afraid. With practice we can learn to find this opening. We can seize the vulnerable moment - love, gratitude, loneliness, embarrassment, inadequacy - to awaken bodhichitta."
Pema Chodron

This soft spot is something visceral, it can be directly felt beneath the armor of the mind. I'm feeling into it quietly, letting it guide me silently past the barriers, to more intimate contact with the actual presence of life in this moment. It's the soft things, like water, like the green leaf through the sidewalk, that tremble with real power. Thank you Val and Cindy for sending these CD's and helping me find the way back to myself.