Riding with the Feelings

~by Fred Kluth

It’s easy to be removed from my feelings.  It’s not easy for me to access the currents of emotion that are constantly coursing through me.  I sit on a bridge and watch them flow underneath me. I can poke at them, analyze their temperature and their flows, all without sticking a toe in the water to experience them.

It’s safe on the bridge.  Removed from the things, there I can analyze, examine, measure.  But not flowing with it. Not allowing myself to get caught up in the currents and the passions of my life force.  Watching it all go by day after day...

But it’s not really safe; it’s not experiencing life.  It’s waiting. It’s always waiting ... for the winter thaw, when the rivers rise, when the tidal wave comes and crashes down upon me, sweeping me away and destroying everything in its path. All the ancient repressed rage and despair.

I can sit on the bridge and see that I’m not accessing my feelings, creating a bridge over the bridge.  Analyzing the fact that I am analyzing.

My mind's eye can see the walls my partner puts up as I try to touch her with my hands being controlled by the man who sits on the bridge above the bridge.

But then I kiss her and I am in the river and my heart is open and life and love flows through me and she smiles and welcomes me inside her heart and body.  

I kiss her without intention or expectation but in the moment feeling my love bursting through my heart and in my hara and she opens up as if she is a rose opening to the sun.  

After, she asks me where I was?  What was the journey I was on? And I am back on the bridge over the bridge.  I have to climb down to be in the flow of life.  She wonders hopefully, when will there ever be a time when she doesn’t have to draw these feelings out of me?  And I am aware that I have to descend these great heights within myself to even find a safe place to allow myself to just feel and also to feel safe enough to talk about what I am feeling.

I am learning everyday that I operate best in this world when I am in the flow of the river.  I can watch the bridges go by and I can be responsive and aware of what I am feeling. I can navigate and I can feel alive.  It’s much easier than having my eyes on the river and waiting for the onslaught to hit me from behind.
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I open my heart, and then open my heart again.