Compassion

I've been learning a lot about compassion lately and it seems to me a lot of hurt happens in the world from a misguided attempt to love. So much of our collective understanding about how to care for one another comes from people and places and situations that were, if not devoid of love, at least also misguided and harmful. And so it goes, round the spiral upwards learning how to do better, one harm at a time.

This isn't an attempt to make excuses so much as it is an attempt to reflect on where it all comes from and how to do better, especially when a simple "I'm sorry" wont do or wont happen anytime soon. But forgiveness and compassion starts first and foremost inside the inner chambers of one's heart, where all things love come from. I keep learning to forgive myself for not being better at love. Or rather, love is the easy part, it's the words and conversations and dynamics surrounding love that make it all so hard. Inside my world all the actions make sense and I'm sad you can't see it that way. So then I travel back in time and I wonder why my father broke my heart and I realize that he had all his reasons and fears and I doubt he found self compassion. And so it goes, forwards and backwards in time, wondering about all the ways harm is created and obliterated. In starts in the heart. It starts with spirit.

If I told you I hurt you because I cared enough to try and not hurt you, would that make a difference? Perhaps not. But at least I can go forward and create more love in the world from the lessons I learned, and I hope you can too, because what is life but a series of moments that feel like falling until we realizing we have been taking flight the whole time. You can't fail and you will never loose your place at the table in this great mystery of life. We are bound to make mistakes if we are living but what is created from those opportunities is all that really matters. In the end we are all alone, alone and together, muddling our way through a path and I hope yours involves a God of your understanding because how the f*ck do you expect to make it otherwise?

Spirituality is not the excess glue to be wiped off an art project, it is the whole project itself. It is the return to the spiritual self that helps makes sense of the world, especially when things feel unmanageable or hard. Our connection to a higher power is what helps us embody compassion and forgiveness and love. I don't know how else we will make it as a species if we don't come back to a serious connection to spirit, the earth, and the understanding that we are in an endless stream of life that flows through each and everyone of us. What a gift it is to be alive, to hurt, to regret, to expand, to return to the god within.

I'm sorry

Please forgive me

Thank you I love you