The Guest House
“The pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.”
“When will you begin that long journey into yourself?” Rumi (both quotes)
Our friends have an amazing guest house in the southern United States and my family has been lucky enough to be their guests on a couple of occasions. I am not exaggerating when I say they treat their visitors like royalty, stocking the fridge with food and beverages, leaving out special treats and creating a space that is oozing with warmth and the invitation to relax and stay awhile. They search out all the local restaurants and activities they think we would enjoy and serve us with their ever present southern hospitality. They are the kind of hosts who make us feel welcome and special for the entire time we visit and I always leave wishing we could stay even longer. There really is nothing that compares to feeling like treasured company!
One of my all time favourite poems is “The Guest House” by Jalaluddin Rumi, who was a prolific poet in 13th century Persia. His metaphors are not only eloquent and insightful but they prompt deeper thought and application in our lives, even 800 years later. Pretty amazing if you ask me. “The Guest House” deals with themes that I have found to be valuable in my wellness journey and I have come back to it repeatedly. I think it is worth a read.
————————————————————————
The Guest House
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 Rumi’s writing, the guest house serves as a metaphor for living a life filled with awareness and openness to ALL that it means to be human. I like to think of the house itself as my spiritual core or my heartspace, where my emotional “parts” are knocking on the door, waiting to be invited into my system with interest, curiosity and care. As Rumi says, they desire to be treated as honoured guests at my table.
Although it is easy to write about, it can be supremely difficult to walk up to the door “laughing” when you know that the visitor is grief, terror, rage or some other part bearing intense levels of suffering. It is quite a human reflex to want to spare ourselves pain and move as far away from these experiences as we possibly can. And yet, there is really no task in life that can reap such amazing rewards as moving towards the entryway.
For those of us with chronic health issues, there are often a myriad of emotions which have been shutdown in our nervous systems for a very long time. Some could be from as far back as childhood and perhaps others are more recent. The very experience of living with dis-ease in the system is enough to warrant some serious internal response and it makes sense that a person could have a lot of trauma, sadness, anger, and fear around it. We often learn that in order to survive, we have to bury those feelings DEEP down inside where there is no light and air and we hope that in doing so we might suffocate them and make them disappear permanently. In reality, however, that is not how our systems work. Anything that is pushed away is always buried alive and busy replicating in our cellular structures, where we are unaware of its potency. If those feelings can’t get out in one way, they ALWAYS find another. Think of an angry person who can’t stop being passive aggressive with their partner or someone who experienced tremendous loss and plunged into a lifelong depression. These are signs that there is stuck energy, unable to move, forced to release its fire and zeal in destructive ways as the pressure builds up and has nowhere else to go. Rumi is not unaware of the challenges of this welcoming approach. He specifically talks about these particular guests being rather destructive and violent as they tear apart the spaces I have so carefully constructed in my home to try and keep me safe.
But what if we chose a different path and followed the advice of a wise poet that is some 8 centuries in the making? What if we attempted to treat all parts of ourselves the way that my Southern friends treated me, with hospitality, grace and honour? What if we stood at the front door to our respective souls, with smiles on our faces, and called out a welcome to everyone who could listen? No minimizing here; it is an onerous task! There might be some panic and dread creeping up for you and there may also be curiosity and interest. It is quite normal to have some of both. Just sit with the idea for awhile, long enough to let the initial nerves settle down and see what comes up. Often there is a natural pull towards what we KNOW is right, but deeply fear at the same time. That is just fine. We don’t need to know how we will get to the front door, or what we will do when we open it. We can start with a desire to consider the possibility that maybe, we might, kind of, sort of, a tiny bit, want to try. Even wishing we wanted to is enough to begin.
Reading Rumi makes me feel like he knows my internal state just a wee bit too well. “Momentary” awareness that I try and ignore? All the time. Depression? Yes. Sorrows? Oh yeah. Meanness? Absolutely. Dark thoughts, shame, malice…. check, check, check! Even the recognition that joy can be a rather unfamiliar and uneasy houseguest for those of us with mounds of pain in our systems. And yet somehow all my ticked boxes give me a tinge of hope. There is a reason that Rumi is still being quoted today, near a millennia after he wrote his poems. If, centuries ago, he could pen what has remained relatable in our time, then my experiences of being human must be just that, very typically human. I am not the only one who can be mean and cruel to others, who carries sorrow in my heart or who is afraid of welcoming long dismissed grief and sadness, who struggles to let joy in. I think every owner of an emotional guest house (and that’s all of us who are living and breathing) feels the same way. We let visitors come not knowing how long they will stay or if they will leave at all. We trust that these pilgrims will hunker down for awhile and eventually want to find a new space in the system to call home. This journey may be a road less travelled but it is not one that has had no previous tourists. We can know that others have walked the path before us and that can give us both hope and courage.
The last point that Rumi makes is perhaps the most important as it reminds us that we are to appreciate every single part that wants to grace our entryways. Although we often confront (or avoid) these emotions as painful and challenging, in reality each one is a guide towards living a more authentic life. Every time we welcome in guests that we have previously kept locked out, we experience more richness and nuance in our emotional lives. The more we can allow and encourage, the more we can grow. I have often heard it said that we can only experience the good stuff to the same degree in which we have met the difficult. A hard truth, but accurate none the less. When my feelings of love, joy, creativity, passion and purpose feel stunted, I need to look no further than the guests that I have been shoving away from my front door. Have I been welcoming and entertaining everyone who wants to come in? Am I meeting visitors at the door with a great big grin? Am I grateful for each part that is wanting to come back home?
This kind of work is challenging and nuanced. We must undertake it with gentleness, pacing and a sense of calm and we often need to be in relationship with others who can help moderate our experiences. Starting with something smaller and easier is always a good idea since our systems need time to grow into a feeling of internal safety in order to allow more complex parts to come knocking. Having professional support can be invaluable as a kind of structure for your guest house, a way of putting reinforcements into the foundation and having a well travelled companion beside you to lean on when you open the front gateway the first few times. There are many different ways one could do this type of work. I personally love to do creative visualizations, but it could also be through journalling, discussion, body based experiences like yoga or Feldenkrais and/or spiritual work. It may be bits and pieces of all of the above. The great thing about a metaphor is the openness to interpretation from the one who is doing the application.
I have fantastic memories of our visits to the Southern guest house and I hope we will get a chance to visit again soon. I know with 100% certainty, we will be met at the door with smiles, hugs and greetings as much treasured friends. There is always room for us at their table. Until that time, I follow their example when I am hospitable, accepting and generous for whichever company wishes to pay me a visit in my own guest house. I will meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Shout out to Troy and Gisela… amazing hosts and lovely friends :)
The Guest House, by Jalaluddin Rumi, Translated by Coleman Barks. Scottish Poetry Library. www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/guest-house