Navigating life’s difficulties can sometimes seem impossible. Reactions are sometimes quick and unfeeling as one is hurt or angered. Such reactions are the necessary letting go of steam and frustration yet not necessarily right. If one holds back, however, anger builds like steam under pressure and will seek eventual release in another way. Holding in and holding on to anger or hurt feelings is never a good idea. Between the two extremes there is a middle way and the middle way allows for both release and contemplation that will lead to right action.
The middle way offers a little bit of everything, as all is accepted as necessary, and yet the goal of the middle way is really to navigate life taking in all that it offers and all that it challenges yet learning detachment from it as well. To walk the middle way is to walk a path with heart, in true balance with all that is and all that will be.
Truths are revealed all the time. Arguments reveal truths. Disappointments do too. Even joy brings truths. Are you ready for them? Are you ready to understand the deeper meanings that are being revealed to you every day? The universe has a habit of finding a way to show us what we need to know and when. You can probably point out the truths that are being revealed to you like stars in the night sky, like birds flying past, like pebbles on the ground. So many. To ignore them is an option of course, but pretty soon something has to give, for in the end the truth will find its way, ready or not. Today, like any other day, will be filled with truths. What will you decide to do?
We’re all just trying to figure out the tangled mess of existence… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
They say that to truly experience something we should walk in the shoes of another. To fully experience another’s pain and another’s joy, to weather the good times and the bad, to be discriminated against, to be judged, to be turned away for some reason, hated for some reason, or despised because of who we are is the road to compassion.
Compassion however begins at home, within the self. If we never turn inward and never gain insight into what makes us tick we will never be able to truly experience compassion. We might say we are compassionate beings, but compassion is without borders, without restriction, and compassion does not discriminate.
Compassion takes the view that we are all the same, souls on evolutionary journeys, that we are all beings of light and energy, with endlessly infinite possibility. To find out if we are truly compassionate beings, we must ask ourselves: Do I truly see everyone that way, as beings of light and energy? And then we must be honest with what arises from deep within.
Today, as I read the news of the great migrations into Europe, I see a microcosm of what is to come, the same energy on the move that is happening on an environmental level. Things are being destroyed in one form or another and living beings, evolutionarily keyed to survival, are moving to better, higher, cooler ground. It’s happening all over the planet; species are dying; extinctions are happening.
I do believe that people, on the whole, are compassionate, caring beings. But at the same time they are afraid of change, of anything that might impose on their stable existence. Let others suffer, but don’t bring any of your personal problems into my backyard. Well, I think we all have to get used to the fact that the problems belong to all of us and this world is all one big backyard now. We’ve all made it that way. And just as true compassion is without borders, we have to have a world without borders too, if we are to truly be the compassionate beings we say we are.
So many people are fearful of others, fearful of their differences, perceived ideas of things they know nothing about, perpetuating stories and lies that have circulated the globe like folktales, harbingers of hate and discrimination. In the end we are all flesh and blood, with emotions and feelings, as mixed up and confused as the next person, and we are all facing death at the end of our time here. There is nothing that makes us different there.
Fear keeps us isolated and contained. But fear is usually something inside us, something that has been festering and brewing since childhood, things we were taught that may not be true at all. When we face our own personal fears in the right way, with compassion for ourselves and those who hurt, discriminate, or cause us pain, we access our fearlessness. And true compassion is fearless too. In facing our fears and our pain with compassion we release ourselves of all that keeps us locked in and locked out of the truly compassionate world we all wish for.
Compassion is in the simple beauties all around us… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Perhaps the new world we all wish for will have a new name, no longer called Earth, it will be called Compassion. To become ready to walk down the road toward Compassion, we must first walk down our personal road of fear, and meet head on all that confronts us as we migrate through the borders and fears within. It is the only way to reach Compassion.
One at a time, if we take the trip we can make the world truly compassionate, fearless, without borders, nobody excluded, anywhere. That is the new world of Compassion.
Level with the self each day. The truth must be faced. Sometimes it is only right to let go and move on. At other times it is appropriate to stay put, focused on the goal at hand. Sometimes both moves are appropriate simultaneously, for often there is something that must go for something else to flourish. To let go of that which inhibits so that growth may happen is like weeding a garden that has been overtaken by rogue plants, its beauty choked. To allow room for beauty one must remove the unruly, that which has gotten out of hand. Sometimes it’s just time to call it like it is. Restore the beauty that it may bloom and grow. Begin within and soon find it flourishing without.
Learn to pay attention to your body’s speak as much as you pay attention to your mind’s speak, for it communicates more truths in its own way than your busy mind ever will. The body has its own intelligence, its own center of knowledge, and its own means of relaying its truths. Pay attention to what it says and how it says it. It will tell you what is most important for you to hear on any given day. Its energy will tell you what you need to do or not do.
Once you begin listening to your own body, as you learn its language, you will find that it speaks very clearly and you will wonder how you never heard it before. Your life may change as you get into alignment with all that you most naturally are, as natural as the earth around you, your human body environment needing as much tending as the planet you reside upon. To neglect either is to be out of synch with the Tao, the Tao of nature and the Tao of self.
Listening is as important as doing in the Tao of all that is. Listen carefully to the Tao of you and the Tao of you will speak words of wisdom. Are you ready to hear them?
