Everything and everyone can fall apart or be driven to extremes, which means everything and everyone needs the kindness of containment.
When part of me explodes into pieces, other parts of me kindly hold the shattered part of me together, gather up the pieces and sing me back together. I contain myself.
When my thoughts or feelings get too active, too fierce, too complex, some part of me that is beyond my dramas, wraps my soul in stillness, softness and simplicity. I contain myself.
But sometimes, when it is all too much, too intense, too big an explosion, too many pieces, I need a little help from a friend or the gods or art, or nature or my sense of a different future. I seek the kindness of containment.
When I am containing, I don’t become a container like a jar or a chest used for storage…I am a force for
containment. This force is a dynamic balance both tender and powerful like the balance between a parachute and gravity when you leap from a plane. Containment slows and grounds a process. How wonderful to ask yourself if what is going on needs the slowing power of a parachute or the grounding power of gravity.
What in your thinking, feeling or will, if not contained, would be destructive,
dangerous, chaotic, or out of control. What in your sense of self would become egotism if not contained? Can you see what needs to be contained in others and are you able to contain them kindly?
Containment offers the right space, the right span of time, the right mood, the right organization, the right meaning, the right purpose. Containment allows for focus and creativity.
Containment does not condemn, reject or repress. It is not an indifferent or isolating cave, closet, or cage. It is not confinement or an off switch.
Like cultivation, containment often appears as the right question, the right observation, the right admonition. Containment is beautiful and harmonious.
We never stop needing the kindness of containment. We always need to feel that beyond our own boundaries, there is something of extraordinary kindness that cools, soothes, orders, and encompasses.
Tonight let your soul contemplate your relationship to the kindness of containment, to being contained and to containing.
