The only reason that we don’t open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don’t feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else’s eyes.
Then this experience of opening to the world begins to benefit ourselves and others simultaneously. The more we relate with others, the more quickly we discover where we are blocked, where we are unkind, afraid, shut down. Seeing this is helpful, but it is also painful. Often the only way we know how to react is to use it as ammunition against ourselves. We aren’t kind. We aren’t honest. We aren’t brave, and we might as well give up right now.
That’s the beginning of growing up. As long as we don’t want to be honest and kind with ourselves, then we are always going to be infants. When we begin just to try to accept ourselves, the ancient burden of self-importance lightens up considerably. Finally there’s room for genuine inquisitiveness, and we find we have an appetite for what’s out there..
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
It’s hard when you’re in a confidential relationship with someone - when you know their demons and their hurts. Even though we know it’s “wrong” - we want them to be over all that, past their past, healed from the hurts of yesterday, and off to a new and trouble-free life. But healing hardly ever looks like that. It’s more mysterious, more equivocal. We all have our high moments, our moments when it is a miracle and the past no longer holds us or hurts us. But then, it’s another day, and we’re again caught, we’re returned to life’s myriad battles and tests, and we wonder if we are again , at the foot of the mountain....
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