Wednesday, March 1, 2017

The Rainfall's Misty Ponds (Suffering, Acceptance, and The Role Compassion)


For a long time, self-love and positive focus have been the hallmarks of a spiritual, awakened, and happy life. And for good reason. There are amazing stories of people getting back on their feet after periods of depression and bouts of anxiety. It is influential, powerful, and transforming to realize that Love is the Truth of the universe.



Ironically, it is in the wake of these realizations, we understand the role that suffering plays. When we can see clearly enough through the eyes of love, suffering is a beautiful gift. It is suffering that gives such deep understanding of love. It might be confusing, and ironic, to look at suffering as beautiful... After all, when we are in our suffering, the last thing we want to hear is it's benefits. In the same way, when we have experienced devastation or loss, we do not want to hear of it's potential benefits. This feels like abuse, and unloving. We look at the universe as if it's punishing us out of "goodness" which makes us feel like we can't trust it and it's not on our side. It's similar to when someone does something that hurts us only to say, "It's for your own good." This kind of abuse from others or self-abuse can be confusing especially when we start to confuse love with things that punish and hurt us.

Simultaneously, we do not want to hear from other's to "pull ourselves together" or that we "just need to love ourselves" or that we "just need to empower ourselves". In our lowest of low, these just deepen the chasm within us. If we hate ourselves, we hate ourselves more for feeling powerless and incapable to complete these tasks. Our self-hate makes us see ourselves as less because we're not feeling that self-love.

It's time for us to understand that universal understanding and Truth can be used in different ways. When we are in our pain, we are stunted. It makes us emotionally, and often mentally, blind to the highest and loving perspectives. So maybe, the question is not about how we can get ourselves to the highest of perspectives. It's not a "race" or "more spiritual" to be or feel a certain way. Maybe the question is, what is loving from where I am right now? What is the next loving step? Or, if pertaining to a fellow human being, what is most loving to this person's current reality?

An answer to these grueling times might be... Love is gentle. Love is soft, and love really cares for you, always and forever. Love doesn't want you to suffer.

Love can think that suffering is beautiful, and love can also not want you to suffer! This is love because love... takes many forms. We might call the first acceptance love, and the second compassion love.

If you continue to develop oneness you experience only light and love, this much is true. That is the whole of all things. Darkness is only the lack of light, not a real and separate thing. It is a perspective, and just as valid, just not the ultimate truth of our being. I've been recently reading A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson, and there's a part of it I love:

"'The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.' When we think with love, we are literally co-creating with God. And when we're not thinking with love, since only love is real, then we're actually not thinking at all. We're hallucinating. And that's what this world is: a mass hallucination, where fear seems more real that love. Fear is an illusion. Our craziness, paranoia, anxiety and trauma are literally all imagined. That is not to say they don't exist for us as human beings. They do. But our fear is not our ultimate reality and it does not replace the truth of who we really are. Our love, which is our real self, doesn't die, but simply goes underground."

However, while in the 3rd dimension often we have little or no access to that which is beyond the veil. When we integrate into Source perspective, we integrate our 3rd dimensional perspective with other universal truths that we cannot see from that level of reality. And thus, we realize and feel deep unconditional love, which relieves our human perspectives of pain and suffering. Accepting this higher reality helps us accept our suffering--acceptance love.

Simultaneously, when we come into Source perspective, we become inclusive to the whole through love as well... which is exhibited by our capacity for deep compassion for the suffering of others. Compassion is a form of love, and perhaps the one most needed in our or other's darkest times. Compassion love, like acceptance love, still sees beyond the painful 3D realities. But compassion love recognizes the need to comfort the disturbed from the wildest and most heartbreaking illusions developed in this world. Compassion love knows the steps to take, if you let it. In this form, it is known what is needed by Source (be it within you, the person next to you, or non-tangible energy) because the love of the universe within them speaks out for their own understanding and desires. This form of love, compassion, is not a teacher telling you to be grateful for your suffering. It understands that they are in no position for this truth, but not because they feel the person's suffering. Love cannot suffer, because it's love! We feel compassion because we know how real our or their pain must feel, even if it is not. Compassion is to understand the heaviness of our or another's experience, and a desire to relieve it. But this is not through the eyes of suffering. This is not through the eyes of sadness, or fear, or an anxiety to change it. Thus, it is often that compassion precedes acceptance love.

All love is beyond positive and negative realities. Suffering and pain, and feeling suffering and pain is not love. Nor is resistance to feeling pain or suffering, because love does not run. It is everywhere in every moment.

As self-love deepens, you cannot love yourself deeply without also deeply loving the world around you. People who are self-loving who appear to isolate any form of negativity in their reality aren't loving either. It's not that we have to suffer with people. Instead, true and profound love is exhibited through compassion. Compassion is a hand to hold, a loving touch or embrace. Compassion also shows us the better paths, and paths to change.

Some nights, I feel grateful. Because I know that no matter what befalls me, the world, or others, everything will always be ok. Or even if I don't, I have my own words to help me remember. Because through the eyes of love, suffering is no longer suffering. Because just as the sun evaporates the rainfall's misty ponds, love evaporates suffering as it transforms into love. It transforms it into its highest form--the teacher.

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