The Perfection Of What Is

A compassionate body/breath practitioner said to me today that she felt the common definition of "perfection" was very constrained. I had been a recipient of her work as we shared some observations and questions about the nature of perfection.

What had come up for me a few minutes earlier as I lay on her table was a deep anxiety at "not knowing" -- a fear of uncertainty, to be sure.

In truth, we can never know what's coming. Try as we may to control our future, we just never know what's next. There are times, like today for me, that the raw contact with that fact is very unnerving. I felt a helplessness and a vulnerability that reached deep inside. A fear of chaos and loss lingered at the edges of my mind. But as the practitioner continued to work, and as I continued to make room for that raw contact, I had another thought. "Do you think," I asked,"that unde
eath all the things I don't want to be but are, and all the things that I want to be so but aren't -- that under all these things there is a perfection in simply the way things are? That perfection is as simple as the way things are?"

"It's possible," she answered.

Somehow this idea was very quieting. It acted as a sort of compassionate witness to my anxiety. It didn't offer to fix it, but it offered a resting place of non-resistance to what is now -- anchoring me in that now instead of an imagined future which I feared. And that perfect, now moment was full of breath and softness and a distinct contentment.