The Story Is the Heavy Part

What does it mean to feel light? What does it mean to feel heavy?

That was the question circle sat with this week — the second of three guideposts I've been building out slowly, one Monday at a time. Last week was open-heartedness. This week, light-heartedness.

When I have a topic in mind, I like to open circle with a meditation that gently orients us there before we start talking. Mostly that means bringing awareness to the body — grounding, arriving, noticing rather than investigating. What do you see, taste, smell, hear, feel? Then we move to thoughts. I like to imagine myself sitting on the bank of a river, watching thoughts go by like boats. Some big, some small, some fast, some slow. One of them is usually going in a circle. All good. The invitation is just to notice the boat, not to jump on and ride it downstream.

From there we widen out to the citta — the heart-mind — and ask whether it's open or closed, as we explored last week, or light or heavy, as we explored this week.

The Story Is the Heavy Part

I brought my own moment of heaviness into circle this week. I've been navigating some things with my brothers, and there have been real moments of density in it — the kind that sits in the chest and doesn't move. What I've been noticing, though, is that I don't need to carry a story about it. I don't need to write one.

The story is the heavy part. Not the situation. The story I build on top of it.

That's the choice, I think — not whether heaviness shows up, but whether we notice it and choose to orient back toward light.

The Guidepost

Here's the precept I read to the circle:

Aware of the heaviness in the world and of the freedom that arrives with genuine laughter, I stand in the presence of all who came before and all who are yet to arrive, and vow to cultivate the lightness that plays, imagines, and refuses to treat every moment as an emergency.

Old Hat, and the Breadth Underneath It

Up until recently, when I talked about light-heartedness, I meant laughter, playfulness, childlike wonder, innocence, imagination. Everything sacred and silly. The cosmic giggle. Having fun along the way. That's old hat to me at this point.

But this week, through the circle conversation and through what I'm living with my brothers right now, I'm seeing more of the breadth of what it actually means to be light-hearted, and to refuse to treat every moment as an emergency.

Not Cultivated. Uncovered.

Our natural state is to rise up. To bubble up. I don't think light-heartedness is something we cultivate so much as something we uncover, by letting go of the heaviness, letting go of the patterns that trap us in weight and density.

Lightness isn't the absence of sadness. Sadness itself isn't heavy, not in and of itself. Any emotion can become heavy, even joy, once we start carrying it. Light-hearted, light-minded, is a state of non-grasping and non-clinging to whatever arises. It's an openness where even when things are dark, the light can still get in.

What It Feels Like in the Body

In circle, I described it this way: a heavy heart feels heavy. It's in the chest, in the limbs, in the arms and legs. The head gets congested. There's a density, an inability to move, less swiftness of thought or feeling, because it's all so dense.

A light heart, a light mind, is the opposite. Open. Spacious. A brightness, a freeness. It's illuminating possibilities, rather than carrying the weight of choices and their consequences.

What Heaviness Actually Is

I define heavy as a density to energy that constricts movement and thought. It weighs down our capacity to be present. It's a draw on resources. It makes our energy lethargic. Anxiety is a good example — it can create a paralyzing kind of density.

None of this is good or bad, right or wrong. It's information. A noticing of what's happening in the field: how the body's moving, how the emotions are moving, how the thoughts are moving, how quickly we can adjust and adapt.

Is heaviness ever skillful? Sometimes. Heaviness builds thick walls. It grows roots to avoid being toppled by the first thing that comes along. That's not good or bad. It's just heavier to carry. It takes more energy, more effort, more time, to move a body, a heart, a mind that's protecting itself that way. The goal isn't to eliminate heaviness. It's to give the citta the widest possible path of allowance to be human. Room to move. Room to play.

Dark, or Heavy?

We debated for a while whether "dark" might be the better word than "heavy."

We landed here: dark is simply the absence of light, though some people hear a moral judgment folded into it. (Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so — thank you, Shakespeare.) Heavy is different. It's about density; of energy, of body, of mind, of heart.

All Who Are Yet to Arrive

One of the lines in the precept — "all who came before and all who are yet to arrive" — opened something for a member of our circle this week. Their read: it isn't only about people who haven't been born yet. It's also about the people around us right now who haven't yet arrived into their own consciousness, their own presence, their own awareness. And when they do arrive, in whatever moment that is, we get to choose how we meet them. Welcoming, or not.

I hadn't thought of it that way before. It's a lovely addition.

It also connects to something the Lakota Nation holds: all our relations, seven generations back and seven generations forward. We're standing in the middle of that line, carrying and cultivating the energy for both directions at once. We build the future with what we practice today.

That's a lot of responsibility to hold. But many hands make light work. Many hearts, focused on lightheartedness, make light work too.

The Practice

There are a lot of avenues into light-heartedness. Here's one: notice what you're carrying, and see if there's anything you can set down.

Think of a hot air balloon. Every bit of sand released from the bags is weight it no longer has to carry — and with each release, it rises. New experiences. New adventures. New perspective.

Laughter is another entry point. It shakes the crud off our energy field; physically, mentally, emotionally. One of my teachers, Lee Harris, has a line I can't improve on: open the heart with a "ha!"

Notice what you're carrying today. See what happens when you set even a little of it down.

This post is part of Echoes from the Circle — reflections, teachings, and practices drawn from the Humanity Recalibrated community. If something here resonated, there's more waiting for you at HumanityRecalibrated.org

I'd love to hear from you:

What's one piece of sand you could release from your bags this week — and what might get lighter once you do? Drop it in the comments.