If you send out goodness from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, it will all come back to you multiplied ten thousand times. In the kingdom of love there is no competition; there is no possessiveness or control. The more love you give away, the more love you will have.
John O’Donoghue
Another post on working with the past. Typically, after tidying the garden over the weekend, the wind rose last night and scattered bins, leaves, twigs and nests, reminding us – and the birds – that it is not quite Summer, despite the warm temperatures. And coincidentally, the reading for today in Mark Nepo’s lovely book The Book of Awakening is about damage and hurt in our lives, so I thought I would share it here. Dealing with the past sometimes means moving on and letting go and at other times means healing what has been wounded or repairing what has been broken:
Stones loosened by storms cover paths, and uprooted trees break newly formed nests, and crisis after crisis throws us into each other. It is inevitable. Stay alive and you will be hurt, and you will also hurt others. Unintended hurt is as common as branches snapped in wind. But it is the unacknowledged hurt that becomes a wound.
Being human, we are subject to many ancient and powerful opposites found in life. Among those that impact us constantly are light and dark, yes and no, and especially fear and peace. For it is out of fear that we feel the need to isolate ourselves or to control others, and it is often in the act of elevating ourselves that we hurt one another, not to mention ourselves.
Still, as no one in daily life is exempt from both sleeping and waking, no one can escape feeling both fear and peace, and so, no one can escape being both hurtful and loving. But the world is kept whole by those who can overcome their fear, however briefly. The blood of life itself is kept vital by those who can simply and bravely repair their separations, time and time again.
Meditation is one of the keys
to unlocking the natural generosity of the heart.
Underneath the greedy and selfish thoughts and feelings that are part of the human condition lies a pure desire to help.
We experience this in our mindfulness practice.
When we let go there is a natural acceptance
and feeling of care.
Noah Levine
The very basis of fear itself is doubting ourselves, not trusting ourselves. You could also say it is not loving ourselves, not respecting ourselves. In a nutshell, you feel bad about who you are. So the very first step, and perhaps the hardest, is developing an unconditional friendship with oneself. Developing unconditional friendship means taking the very scary step of getting to know yourself. It means being willing to look at yourself clearly and to stay with yourself when you want to shut down. It means keeping your heart open when you feel that what you see in yourself is just too embarrassing, too painful, too unpleasant, too hateful.
If you do stay present with what you see when you look at yourself again and again, you begin to develop a deeper friendship with yourself. It’s a complete friendship, because you are not leaving out the parts that are painful to be with. It’s the same way you would develop a complete friendship with another person. You include all that they are. When you develop this complete friendship with yourself, the parts you’re embarrassed about—as well as the parts you’re proud of—manifest as genuineness. A genuine person is a person who is not hiding anything, who is not conning themselves. A genuine person doesn’t put up masks and shields.
Pema Chodron
To be a part, that is fulfillment for us:
to be integrated with our solitude into a state that can be shared.
Rilke
Knowing ourselves, in our aloneness and weakness, is the foundation for loving others. It saves us from the false belief that our identity comes from what we are in other people’s eyes or from what we can do. It also helps us get beyond the caution that can sometimes accompany reaching out. You know the instinctive fear: if we show our weaknesses and vulnerabilities, then we will get trampled on and hurt. However it is not our strength that is the foundation of community, friendship and love, but a true confidence in who we are, including our failings.
Forgiveness is the name for love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.
Henri Nouwen
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