The addiction to understanding has driven me for most of my life. It was my "salvation" of choice. If I could just get it all figured out, then "my life would work and people would love and appreciate me."
It is a bankrupt strategy. No matter how sublime my understanding, many people just don't give a shit, and rightly so. They are far more interested in their own understanding.
Then too, understanding is nothing but a story about the unfolding of this unfathomable miracle called life, carried over from some past which is dead and gone.
No matter what my understanding suggests, reality is what it is; what happens is what happens. If my lover rejects me, I suppose there can be some comfort in knowing that she is still trying to resolve her issues with her alcoholic dad, and I'm a poor stand-in because I don't drink. But can I know that is the truth of it? Humans are full of cover stories. Perhaps this is her cover story because the truth is, she just doesn't want me in her life. Perhaps this is my cover story because I'd rather have another reason than she just doesn't want me.
I could spend a great deal of time, concocting the perfect story of why she left, or I could bypass the whole game by saying, she left because she left, and accept that. Either way, she is gone. I am here. Life goes on.
I used to feel that I had to explain what happened and that this would allow me to accept it. Now I see that I can often bypass the explanation and arrive at the same place, by simply accepting it.
Before you would do someone harm, consider that this person had a mother. This mother shared a great deal with your mother, in her values and what she considered precious. She loved her child and did her best to raise them to represent what is good and honorable within us. We humans get confused. We don't always live up to these ideals. None of us do. Mothers love us anyway.
Before you inflict harm, think of how your mother would feel if someone harmed you; the compassion she would request on your behalf. If you can, extend this compassion to the target of your anger. Through that, you extend compassion to the mother of this person, and through her, to the holy institution of motherhood. Your compassion is a gift to your very own mother.
Awareness is like a flashlight. It illumines what it is pointed to. Many of us are absorbed with understanding ourselves. We have the light pointed in our own face. Obviously, this is an inefficient way of seeing. We are blinded when the light is shining in our own eyes. Add to that, we are looking through the lens of our own unexamined beliefs.
What works so much better is to open to others. Allow them to shine their light on you and tell you what they see. Chances are, they can see you, more clearly than you see yourself. You can return the favor and help them to see themselves as well.
Just bear in mind that you are bigger than anyone's story of you, including your own. Accept what is offered, gratefully, as feedback. Look for where you can find truth in it, but don't believe that whatever is seen is the ultimate truth about you. At best, it is a story of how you appear to another.
Especially doubt any story of guilt. Beneath illusion, you are innocent. Guilt is a lie, but only 100% of the time. However, it is often true that this innocence can only be found, by carefully examining our stories.
When I walk into a room, I already know that everyone in there loves me, I just don't expect them to realize it yet. I can say this with confidence because I know that at the depth of my essence, what I am is love. If that is true for me, it is true for others as well, because I'm even separate, much less different.
There is a trick about mirrors. If you wait for the mirror to smile at you first, you'll be waiting a very long time. If you wait for the mirror to love you first, same thing. The world is your mirror. It can't help but reflect you. It is your projection. That's just the way that it is wired up.
I used to think that I needed to be in a fun place, or with fun people, before I could really have fun. What a crock! Now I see that I bring fun with me (or not) when I walk in the door.
So, I'm inviting you, just for the moment, to take my word for it, that others really love you, but the thing is that sometimes we can't get through to you. The limit of your ability to receive our love is your willingness/ability to believe it, and even more important, your ability to find yourself lovable. If you can't find where you are lovable, then our love just shows you that we are a bunch of liars. It can't be any other way.
I know many women find objection to how men objectify women and mentally reduce them to pretty little things which dance for our pleasure. Please try to understand. Men love women. We are just wired up that way and there isn't anything we can do to stop it. Some of us, for various reasons, have a wounded heart that is barred from much of emotional reality. Men who only value women for their bodies, are just expressing that love, in whatever way that is left to them. So, next time you see a man who is stuck there, I invite you to find your compassion. Bless his heart, that's the best he's got, in that moment. If he knew how to do it better, he would. I can tell you, as a man, sex is wonderful. It is right up there near the top of pleasurable experiences which are available, and it doesn't come anywhere close to the pleasure of loving another.
Many people have the mistaken idea that love is a forever kind of thing. News Flash: Nothing in manifest creation is a forever kind of thing. All of it is destined to end. The good news is that this does not take away from love at all. Love is actually a right-now kind of thing. Every time you have experienced anything, it has been a here and now experience. This is the ONLY place where experience actually happens. That's the reason we learn to avoid the present. This is where pain happens as well.
Love doesn't require forever; not even next year, or tomorrow, or in the morning. Love as much as you can, from wherever you are. That is the ticket to paradise, and it is safe. It is the ONLY safety. The world cried out for love. God sent you. Those aren't pink, fluffy, words. It is the literal truth. The mirror is just waiting to love you with everything it has. It is patient that way. It loves you that much.
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I knew of a man who felt certain that he'd had an experience, connecting with his deceased mother in a post mortem conversation, so to speak. He spoke to her of his regret for the times they didn't get along. He took responsibility for his part in that. He reported that she looked at him, a little puzzled and said, "Huh, all I remember is the love."
Recently a friend of mine expressed that she hadn't always been easy for me to get along with. I responded "All I remember is the love" and in that moment I literally dropped the memory of anything else. I could have found it if I was willing to look. I noticed I had no interest in looking.
Every mistake anyone has ever made is in the past, and the thing I love about the past? It’s over. You want people to notice that you are loving and lovable? Notice that they are loving and lovable. You want to live with happy, loving, spontaneous, self-expressed people? It is easier than we have been led to believe. Just give up any story of their guilt. Granted, just because you stop believing in it, doesn't guarantee they will, but it is a start.
This may be hard to swallow, but I'm suggesting the possibility that there is no external enemy. What a thing to believe? What if another's guilt was never, actually the truth of the matter, but a story, a story that someone made up, and someone else believed in? What if you there were only one story teller, and it was you? What if an external enemy never really existed? If this world truly is a projection, as many wisdom teachers promise, then the only one who owes anyone an apology is me. Could I be that humble, to fully own that?
And, please, don't believe me. I'm not saying this is the truth. I am suggesting these are worthwhile questions for you, to ask you. I’m inviting you to try this on, see how the world looks from here. See how life looks from here. You may find something valuable.
The addiction to understanding has driven me for most of my life. It was my "salvation" of choice. If I could just get it all figured out, then "my life would work and people would love and appreciate me."
