Eating Bears: Notes on How to Go About It (Jocelyn del Rio)

Transformation on many levels is what living things are designed for by the creation. We are embodied souls, on earth to experience, learn, and develop through the body. Nothing is static. We don’t know how systems work until we start looking. In the system we are in, everything is a form of food. We have an obligation to serve the system and pay for our existence through what we take in and give out. We can take in more if we are “empty.” Creation can take care of its own transformation when we get out of our own way and allow the universe to move through us. The last act of life will be exhalation. We can learn to trust the process and exhale. A principle of ayurvedic medicine is to never inhibit natural discharges of the body. If we push down emotional “bears,” we will have trouble with them later. We can be addicted to our activities, emotions, and thoughts. Overabundance can lead to addiction if we define freedom as unlimited gratification. On the path, we have to relate to the bears in our lives, to all that we see as threatening. Relationship is part of the necessary blueprint to grow; we give and we receive. Sharing good company with a bear may be the best way to eat it. Our interaction with suffering can be useful or not depending on our strength of practice. We can transform suffering into compassion. Rare beings have offered unconditional love, teaching, and a way through life that we can aim for. The deeper the sorrow, the more joy we can contain. Our experiences send emotions as messengers. We do not accomplish transformation and the timing is not up to us, but we can allow ourselves to align with it. We can learn to live “full out” by meeting life openly. Jocelyn is a spiritual student, artist, therapist, mother, gardener, and builder whose main interest in life is growth, development, evolution, observing in awe and participating in the cyclic nature of life.