This weekend, while sewing away on a quilt, I listened to Pema Chodron. It is something I like to do, a sort of movement meditation, my fingers cutting, pinning, and stitching her words into my very own mental quilt. One that will warm, comfort, and protect. Something beautiful and flawed, too.

She was talking about a time in her life where she felt a kind of anxiety and terror without a storyline, and no matter what she did or thought, it stayed with her, this heavy presence. Then she spoke to her teacher about it, and he came to recognize it as the Dakini Bliss, where it had seemed like such a burden to Pema. She made it bad, and upon the realization and her desire to actually sit with it and feel it as bliss, it went away.

I have had a similar anxiety for the past few weeks, also without a storyline, also something that I have demonized. Then I heard Pema’s words and realized that it doesn’t have to be a burden or an indication of yet another of my failings. What if I allow myself to be curious, lean into it, as Pema says, not label it, and see what happens? What if I just let it be and not relinquish my power and self esteem to it? What if I let it be bliss?

At that moment something opened in me, and I laughed, an exquisite rain of gratitude falling over me, tender and warm. I’m okay and whatever I am feeling is, too. It might even be bliss!