|
In our culture, when we talk about love, we
typically talk about loving another person: I
love Sonia. I love my grandfather.
When we love others, we treat them with
compassion, kindness, and patience.
We perceive their gifts and beauties and power.
We champion and affirm what is best in them.
We support and nurture and care for them.
We forgive them, and we do so regularly.
We give up the false idea that there is
something wrong with the people in our lives,
and liberate them to be exactly as they are.
In every situation, we focus our attention on
our part: our reaction to others, our choices,
the places where we have agency.
When we love ourselves, we do the same actions,
we take up the same attitude, but in relation to
ourselves.
We treat ourselves with compassion, kindness,
and patience.
We perceive the gifts and beauties and power in
ourselves.
We support and nurture and care for ourselves.
We forgive ourselves, and we do so regularly.
We give up the false idea that there is
something wrong with the truth of ourselves, and
we liberate ourselves to be exactly as we are.
In every situation, we focus our attention on
our part: our reaction to our own thinking,
emotions, and challenges; our choices, the
places where we have agency.
Less frequently in our culture, we speak of
loving a particular thing or activity. When we
speak of that, we usually mean that:
We deeply enjoy it, we draw great pleasure from
it.
As a result, we want to experience it, to be
near it.
We perceive its gifts, beauties, and power.
We have a mysterious and inexplicable special
connection to that thing.
Let’s take everything we know about what it
means to love ourselves, to love other people,
or to love an activity or thing, and ask
ourselves, what would it mean then, to love
reality itself? To love the way things are, the
way they happen, the way they will happen?
To love reality itself.
To treat reality with compassion, kindness and
patience.
To perceiving the gifts, beauties and powers of
reality. To champion and affirm them.
To support, nurture and care for reality.
To forgive reality and forgive it regularly.
To give up the false idea that there is
something wrong with reality, and liberate it to
be exactly as it is.
To deeply enjoying reality, and as a result,
want to experience reality, to be near it.
To posses a mysterious and inexplicable special
connection to reality.
Loving reality. What would that be like?
For this lifetime, reality is our home. You can
experience your home as a small tent on a
violent battlefield, or you can experience your
home as a soft sun-streamed ocean full of myriad
delights. You can experience your home as rocky
and dangerous shore where at every moment sharp
cliffs, strong waves, or hungry predators
threaten your life. You can experience your home
as a playground, created for your delight. You
can experience your home as a warm embrace,
knowing that you are carried by the universe as
you were carried by a loved on in the first few
days of life.
Most of us live our lives trying to shield
ourselves from the dangerous parts of reality,
working to game the system, control the
outcomes. We have all kinds of expectations
about how reality should be. We believe that we
have to struggle to get what we want and fight
to prevent what we hope to avoid. We live in a
rather adversarial, fearful relationship to
reality. You could say that underneath it all,
the real sources of stress in our lives are our
underlying beliefs about reality itself.
What if we lived in a entirely different kind of
relationship to reality? A relationship without
that sense of needing to control, without fear?
What if were able, somehow, to lean into
reality, to trust it fully? What about taking a
stance of curiosity to reality- an interest in
following it, studying it, to see how it
unfolds? What about loving reality?
An essential part of living a juicier, more
fulfilling lives in relating to reality in this
more open, pliant, trusting way, because reality
is our guide on the journey. If we are open and
willing, reality will provide the perfect
curriculum for us to grow, and create a life of
greater joy. It will supply all the sustenance
and aid needed to get us through each step on
the journey.
What does this mean in my own life? For me, it
means that when things don’t work, I try to get
curious, not upset. In all situations, I trust
that what is happening – though it may not meet
my expectations or hopes- is happening within
the context of an order and set of principles
that is ultimately wise, ultimately live-giving.
Through becoming a student and lover of reality,
reality has opened up its complex mysteries to
me, more and more. Like a crystal with a million
faces, a new facet is revealed to me every time
I meet reality as a reverent disciple. As I seek
to understand reality, I find more gifts, more
grace, more support from reality itself.
By trusting reality, by being a curious student
of it, I’ve come to experience the universe
itself is a loving support, but I understand
that it doesn’t feel that way from “the
outside.”
To find the reality that is a support, that is
overflowing blessings, that is a stream of love
and compassion flowing to you, you have to seek
what is hidden. For us, at this stage of human
evolution, given our level of consciousness, the
wisdom and compassion of reality is a kind of
buried treasure. You won’t find it in the
newspaper’s headlines or the voice of our
culture. You must put a different lens onto your
sight. You have to ask new questions. You have
to be willing to become a humble student of
reality, let go of control, and turn inward.
Just begin to listen to reality, to trust its
rhythms, to get curious. Suspend your labels for
a while. Suspend the evaluation. See what is
revealed.
Love,
Tara
© Copyright 2010
Tara Sophia Mohr. All rights
reserved. |
|
|
