Life is full of contradictions. So I hope you will please forgive me while I make several now.
The human tendency is to organize and categorize our behavior and beliefs into nice tidy packages with labels. I suppose it is the necessary nature of civilized society. But life is not tidy. It is messy. It is contradictory.
Life is paradoxical. It is enormously vast, yet wrought with minutia. It is simple and straightforward, yet complex and difficult to navigate. It is predictable and it is slippery. It bores and it thrills. It is profound and it is all smoke and mirrors.
Starring up at the darkened sky, I am reminded how quickly things change, how they so certainly begin one place and then move to something else entirely. When I began this entry the sky was blue and cloudless, and as I finish, night's cloak has ascended and the air has turned thick and heavy.
How mysterious life is in its extremities. And what can we be certain of in a world marked with such inconsistency and disparity? How can we see our way through the muddied water to our "true north?" We have to find our unwavering god within - the center, our compass, the anchor that lives between the contradiction. Between the simplicity and complexity. Between the predictability and the mystery. Behind the smoke and mirrors and underneath the perilous roller coaster of life.
Because underneath it all there is really only one true north. One unnamable, uncategorizable truth which all feelings, all beliefs, all behaviors know as home. It is the cool, calm, steady seat of the soul and it is immune to life's discrepancies. It is within each of us. But it is beneath the flesh and blood that feels and is affected; this makes us human.
Despite our efforts to manipulate our situations, we are still on this ride that is life. Despite our efforts to be happy and not sad, to be calm and not anxious, to be clear and not confused - despite all the ways we carve up our reactions to living, it is only feeling each one of them all the way through that lands us in the vibrant ache that overrides the contradiction and underrides the beauty of being alive.
Sunday, September 16
Tuesday, September 4
What You Want
Here is the question on the table: What do you want?
And I don’t mean for dinner tonight, or even what you want to be or do or have. I mean what do you really want, at the quiet crux of the day’s end, from your life. What do you breathe for? Yearn for? What turns you on? Lights you up?
I don’t know the answer, but I do think it is likely the same for me as it is for you. Because no matter what adversities you face, I face too. We like to think our experiences – our struggles, our victories – are unique. But they are not. No individual exists in their own nature, independent of all other factors of life. Each of us has the totality of the Universe at our base. Each of us has the whole Universe as our common ground; the entire nature of this world is rooted in the nature of who we are.
The essence of every living thing is embedded – dormantly potent – in the energy of the universal heart that waits beneath the skin of our very own hearts.
We think that we know so much. We try to use our brains to understand what only our hearts can. It is not enough to simply think what we know. We must live it. And only by living it will love show itself as the deepest sort of gravity.
Love – our most significant activity. Love is what brings us to the truth. Love is what we want. To move and be moved by another human being. To be touched by the magnificence of the setting sun, the rain, the moon, the ocean. To feel your insides swell and glow with gratitude for being alive. To love another. To love life. There is nothing more beautiful – nothing more meaningful. Nothing more powerful or gratifying or thrilling. Everything else is just dust and tinkling symbols.
Love is the life blood of our universal heart. It feeds us. If you can master the art of love, love in the purest most honest sense of the word – not in a way that “completes” you or possesses you or defines you; not with desperation or attachment; not in a way that fills a void; not as something you “fall” into or lose yourself in – if you are able to tap into that eternal current of love that connects each one of us together, you will find yourself.
And you will find, you want for nothing.
And I don’t mean for dinner tonight, or even what you want to be or do or have. I mean what do you really want, at the quiet crux of the day’s end, from your life. What do you breathe for? Yearn for? What turns you on? Lights you up?
I don’t know the answer, but I do think it is likely the same for me as it is for you. Because no matter what adversities you face, I face too. We like to think our experiences – our struggles, our victories – are unique. But they are not. No individual exists in their own nature, independent of all other factors of life. Each of us has the totality of the Universe at our base. Each of us has the whole Universe as our common ground; the entire nature of this world is rooted in the nature of who we are.
The essence of every living thing is embedded – dormantly potent – in the energy of the universal heart that waits beneath the skin of our very own hearts.
We think that we know so much. We try to use our brains to understand what only our hearts can. It is not enough to simply think what we know. We must live it. And only by living it will love show itself as the deepest sort of gravity.
Love – our most significant activity. Love is what brings us to the truth. Love is what we want. To move and be moved by another human being. To be touched by the magnificence of the setting sun, the rain, the moon, the ocean. To feel your insides swell and glow with gratitude for being alive. To love another. To love life. There is nothing more beautiful – nothing more meaningful. Nothing more powerful or gratifying or thrilling. Everything else is just dust and tinkling symbols.
Love is the life blood of our universal heart. It feeds us. If you can master the art of love, love in the purest most honest sense of the word – not in a way that “completes” you or possesses you or defines you; not with desperation or attachment; not in a way that fills a void; not as something you “fall” into or lose yourself in – if you are able to tap into that eternal current of love that connects each one of us together, you will find yourself.
And you will find, you want for nothing.
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