A Different Way of Meeting Life

Part 3 of The Shock Field Series

Presence, Wonder & Being Safe Enough to Stay

In Part 1, When I Could No Longer Hold Myself, I wrote about helplessness, self-reliance and what became visible when I could no longer hold myself in the ways I always had.

In Part 2, The Shock Field, I explored shock, fragmentation and the strange doorway this experience seemed to open within my nervous system.

As the intensity of the experience began to settle, I found myself becoming curious about something else.

Not so much the pain or the shock themselves, but my relationship to what was happening.

One of the things that struck me most in the weeks afterwards was how many different emotional frequencies seemed to be present at the same time. Gratitude, vulnerability, relief, tenderness, sadness and wonder all seemed to move through me, sometimes within the same day and sometimes within the same moment.

Feeling many things at once was not new for me. If anything, it has been a familiar part of my experience all my life and at times something that has felt deeply overwhelming.

What felt different was that I was not immediately identifying around a particular emotion and wanting to change it, come out of it or move into something else.

Instead, I found myself becoming increasingly curious about the experience itself and what it had to offer.

Seeing What Happens When We Stay

Presence has been a central thread of my life for many years. But this experience seemed to deepen something in a way that felt less conceptual and more lived.

I could feel how easily the mind wants to close experience down. To move into narrative, story and meaning-making. To decide what something means, why it is happening and what it says about us.

Yet what I noticed through this experience was a growing willingness to stay with the experience a little longer before deciding what it meant.

Instead, I found myself wondering what becomes possible when we stay with an experience a little longer before deciding what it means.

Not because understanding has no value, but because I could sense there was often more here than I could immediately see, more to feel, more to understand and more to sense if I remained open to the experience.

And perhaps sometimes there was nothing to understand at all. Sometimes the invitation was simply to be present with what was already here and let it just move through.

Wonder

As I sat with all of this, I found myself thinking about wonder.

Not in the way I might once have understood it. Not as excitement or positivity. But as a willingness to remain open to the mystery of an experience and to the possibility that there may be more here than I can currently see.

Perhaps wonder is what allows us to meet life with curiosity rather than certainty. To remain available to what is unfolding rather than assuming we already know what it is.

Perhaps it is what allows us to welcome even painful and difficult experiences with openness rather than immediately judging them as wrong or trying to get rid of them, remaining curious about what they may be revealing.

As I reflected on this, I could see just how different this felt from the way I had met life for much of my life.

For much of my life, I had a highly sensitive nervous system that could be easily pulled into vigilance, anticipation and bracing. A great deal of energy was spent scanning for what might go wrong, preparing for what might happen and trying to stay one step ahead of life.

Looking back, it is difficult to be fully present when so much of your attention is organised around the future, or around the past repeating itself in the future. There is very little space left for what is actually here.

One of the greatest gifts of my inner work has been developing a much more intimate relationship with my nervous system and helping it discover a deeper sense of safety. Not because life is always safe, but because there is now enough safety within me, most of the time, to remain present with what life brings.

And perhaps this experience reminded me of that in a very direct way.

The shock was real.

The pain was real.

The vulnerability was real.

And yet alongside all of that there was also groundedness, presence and wonder.

Not because one replaced the other, but because all of it belonged.

Safe Enough to Stay

What this experience seems to have deepened in me is the capacity to be with whatever comes my way without immediately needing it to be different.

Not because I have become detached from my experience.

Not because difficult emotions no longer move through me.

But because I find myself less likely to identify around a particular feeling, less likely to rush towards meaning and less likely to immediately try to change what is happening.

What continues to surprise me is that, in that presence, I can sometimes find wonder and even a kind of joy within the experience itself, even when on the surface it might be judged as difficult, painful or challenging.

Not because I enjoy pain.

Not because I want difficult experiences.

But because there was a time when experiences like this would have felt overwhelmingly unsafe. My nervous system would have been pulled much more quickly into fear, bracing and the urgency to make the feeling stop.

What feels different now is knowing that I am safe in myself even when difficult emotions, uncertainty or vulnerability are moving through me. There is something profoundly freeing about no longer needing an experience to end before I can be okay.

I can stay with it. I can feel it. I can remain present with it and trust that it will move in its own way and in its own time.

Perhaps some of the joy comes from that.

Not joy because life is always comfortable, but joy in discovering a growing capacity to meet life exactly as it is. Joy in knowing that I no longer need to organise myself entirely around avoiding discomfort or seeking safety. Joy in discovering that wonder remains available even in experiences that, on the surface, appear difficult or challenging.

For me, that feels like a very different way of meeting life.

As I look back now, what I am left with most strongly is a deep gratitude and blessing for the whole experience, and surprisingly, I would not take it away.

It offered so many opportunities to experience directly.

To stay close to life.

To stay close to myself.

And to discover again that not every experience needs to be immediately understood, fixed or resolved.

Some experiences seem to ask something different of us. They ask us to remain open, to stay curious and to trust that if we can hold space for what is moving through us, it will move in its own way and in its own time and, if grace is willing, perhaps leave wisdom in its path.

When I connect to my favourite saying “strong back, soft front, wild heart” now, they carry a different meaning than they once did.

A strong back that does not need to brace.

A soft front that does not need to close.

A wild heart that remains open to the full spectrum of being human.

Perhaps that is what this experience has ultimately been inviting me into.

Not an answer.

But a deeper experience of presence.