As we enter the month of Av this week, our spiritual task in this period is to grow in awareness of the brokenness in ourselves, our people, and our world – to allow the walls of our own hearts to crack open, allowing ourselves to become vulnerable to pain.

The Hasidic master Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlov contended that rather than avoiding or shutting out that which is painful, we must truly face and enter into it (Likutei Moharan I, 65). “Sometimes, when people don’t want to suffer a little,” Rabbi Nachman taught, “they end up suffering a lot.” (Siach Sarfey Kodesh I, 6). 

Rabbi Nachman notes that when experiencing pain, our natural human reflex is to close our eyes, which enables us to avoid external distractions and witness more clearly the underlying interconnectedness of life, thereby transcending one’s finite selfhood. The poet Robert Frost expressed this succinctly: “The best way out is through” (a line from his poem “A Servant to Servants,” in North of Boston, 1914).

In “The Guest House,” the Sufi poet Rumi similarly advises us to set an intention to accept everything that arises as ultimately serving a role in a larger purpose, if we allow it to pass fully through our “system” and “do its work:”

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

In mindfulness practice, we observe aversion to unpleasant thoughts, feelings, and sensations – and welcome them all as honored “guests.” As we wake up, we see more clearly the option of holding our broken heart with tenderness, rather than fleeing from unpleasant or painful thoughts and feelings. In that moment, we are better able to choose to bear that which seemed unbearable, freeing the energy in our brokenness to flow towards healing and wholeness.

A simple meditation practice for entering the month of Av:

• Pause and receive three deep breaths into your belly, allowing the breath to arise and fall away at its own pace, with as little effort as possible.
• Place one (or both) hands over your heart-space.
• Consider: 
  • What heartbreak is present for you right now, behind the inner walls protecting you from pain and grief?
• Holding your heart tenderly, with love and support:
  • Can you lower the walls enough to allow the pain of your broken heart to be present and move through you? 
  • Can you feel the presence of others who similarly are holding their own heartbreak with compassion and tenderness?
• Allow the pain and grief to move through you – to “check out” of your inner “guest house.”
• Come back to the breath. Hold your heart with strength and love. 
• Call to mind or whisper to yourself the words of Psalm 147:3:

 
הָרֹפֵא לִשְׁבוּרֵי לֵב וּמְחַבֵּשׁ לְעַצְּבוֹת
HaRofeh Lish’vurei Lev, um’chbesh l’atzvotam
God heals the broken-hearted, and binds up their wounds