By now you’ll have heard or read this phrase a few times, in this blog or from another teacher, in a book or through a podcast. I remember the exact moment when, 12 years ago in San Francisco, I heard it for the first time. There were 22 of us that day — nurses, chaplains, physicians. social workers, volunteers — about to dive into a year-long curriculum on mindful and compassionate care of the dying.
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“Welcome everything,” Frank Ostaseski began, “Push away nothing.” Pithy instructions, I thought then, must add to my repertoire. But . . . ever since . . . each time I say or hear it, a wispy layer of ignorance dissappears and in its place, for the duration of half a breath, a sense of clarity arises..
“Welcome everything. Push away nothing,” Frank writes*, “is the opposite of rejecting. Denial breeds ignorance and fear. I cannot be free if I am rejecting any part of my experience. The rejected experience will keep showing up like a bad penny. It will come back again and again, finding new ways to express itself. Until I know it and see through it, it always will be the bane of my existence. It always will be a cause of my suffering. We must let go of our opposition to the experiences we are trying to avoid, whatever they may be.”
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*Ostaseksi, Frank. (2017). The five invitations: Discovering what death can teach us about living fully. Flatiron, p. 80. Image credit.
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