The Great Unbrace

on accepting the cup and embodying the Easter Mystery

All week I’ve been talking about unbracing, to my clients and my Work Partner and very much to myself. A Work Partner is someone you’re anonymously paired with who is also committed to learning and practicing The Fourth Way – you agree to daily check-ins to report on your self-observations and whether you’re meeting your spiritual aims. This week, my partner really needed to hear the word “unbrace” as it connotes the particular, opposite gesture of tension and constriction she often carries in her body. One of my clients resonated strongly with this word too, recognizing in herself a pattern of being “chronically tight.”  

I was first introduced to this language in The Wisdom Way of Knowing by Cynthia Bourgeault. In a chapter on “Freedom and Surrender” she tells a story about one of her students who is a potter, traveling a long stretch of rural highway with her entire winter inventory, headed to one of the biggest tradeshows of the year. Then her car breaks down. As a student and practitioner of Wisdom, the potter finds herself with a choice. She can default into anxiety and despair, bracing against the breakdown, or she can relax, become exquisitely present, and notice the buzzing of insects in the early April grass.

Bourgeault writes that, “…in any situation in life, confronted by an outer threat or opportunity, you can notice yourself responding inwardly in one of two ways. Either you will brace, harden, and resist, or you will soften, open, and yield. If you go with the former gesture, you will be catapulted immediately into your smaller self, with its animal instincts and survival response. If you stay with the latter gesture regardless of the outer conditions, you will remain in alignment with your innermost being, and through it, divine being can reach you. Spiritual practice at its no-frills simplest is a moment-by-moment learning not to do anything in a state of internal brace. Bracing is never worth the cost.”

In the story of the broken-down potter, her yieldingness to her situation results in the quick and synchronous appearance of a tow-truck headed to the exact town she is bound for. Her unbrace appears effortless and light, the resolution clean and swift. Sometimes, perhaps very often, it happens like that.

But sometimes it’s downright agonizing. This week, for instance, we commemorate Jesus on his face in the Garden of Gethsemane.

“Then He said to them, ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.’ Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will…’

Jesus went away a second time and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.’

Last week, I drew on the metaphor of the cup as representative of any hard thing we are invited to receive, any arising in our field of awareness we would rather refuse: a broken truck, a whining child, a sink full of dishes, a pain in the back, an allergy attack, or, greater yet, a diagnosis, a lost dream, death itself.

A reader and sister-friend responded to my reflections with this beautiful seeing: “The cup metaphor strikes home, as I had a prayer experience last fall when I ‘saw’ Jesus and the Father’s hands intimately holding the cup together, the cup a gift of intimacy not just suffering; and in a subsequent prayer time this developed into a realization that it was God’s entire Self being poured into Jesus as he drank the cup.”

It’s my sense that our anniversary celebration of the Easter Mystery has only gotten us so far – we have merely remembered it, rather than embodied it.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it feels important that we memorialize the historical significance of the paschal events and acknowledge the quantum leap accomplished by Jesus’ willingness to completely enter life and completely enter death and permeate the cosmos with a new potentiality for the realization of agape love on earth. In a certain sense, the Easter Mystery is a singular occurrence stapled in time.

But with eyes to see, we recognize how Jesus’ consent to the cup is not only a singularity, but also a moment-by-moment roadmap for our conscious and radical acceptance of life in a body.

Every second manifesting is a cup pressed against our lips, dribbling God’s-entire-Self down our chins. And yet, how often do we thirst?

How often do we shove away the drink, believing it poison?

For me, Jesus drinking is The Greatest Unbrace. The wonder is that as he drinks, he himself becomes the cup. Into him flows the very loveblood of the universe, only hours later cataclysmically poured out upon the earth. Notice that, at a certain point in the unbracing, all appears lost. We see only the flaccid body, limp on a cross. But what we cannot yet imagine is a softness so crystalline it needs no bones.

Bracing is never worth the cost. Jesus’ resurrection embodies the promise that every conscious undoing is a completion in another dimension.

What becomes possible when we, in our small and ordinary ways, stay open-mouthed to the cup? Unhinge our jaw, relax our throat, soften our bellies… collectively unbrace this tense, constricted, and chronically tight body that the loveblood of the universe might freely flow.

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ACTUALLY PRACTICE IT:

The cosmic yes uttered in Jesus is not so much an anomaly as it is an ongoing opportunity. An ever-present, on-the-ground reverberation open to you right now. Can you notice where in your body you’ve gathered tension and gently release it? You might begin at the crown of your head and work to your toes. As we make a practice of relaxing physically when there is no threat, we strengthen our ability to soften when something difficult or painful arises. As my personal practice, I work to stay conscious of tension throughout my day, often checking in with myself and considering whether there’s anywhere I can unbrace. It’s not unusual for me to find a clenched left fist, furrowed brow, creeping-up shoulder, or sucked-in belly.

It helps me to consider how every personal unbrace ripples and resounds, just like Jesus’ gesture for over two thousand years. I try to believe that a mass unbrace is possible. I comfort myself imagining a long, planetary sigh after which all humanity has a good laugh and a cup of tea.

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THE UNBRACE IN DAILY LIFE:

Lastly, I offer a concrete example of how unbracing once worked holy magic on my small child. At five years old, my son was having an absolute fit crying and yelling and could not regulate. I felt my stiff, constricted responses of frustration and helplessness start to turn on. By God’s grace, I came to consciousness and realized I had a choice. I let my shoulders fall down my back, loosened my jaw, and decided I would transmit love instead of negativity. I prayed for help and noticed little janes in me doubtful it would work. “Conley,” I said, “come here and look at me.” I locked eyes with him and had only one thought, one sensation in my whole being: love. Wet-eyed and red, he stared back at me as though he could not look away, then I saw something in him give way, release. He crumpled into my arms, quiet and longing to be held.

My inner experience as the event unfolded was that something else entered. I simply offered a willingness to become the cup; loveblood filled me up and poured out over my little one.

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Happy Easter beloved people! May you encounter the mystery anew.

Read the companion piece: