It’s easy for me to write because I put no effort into it. I let the words roll off the keyboard and soon the essay is done. Today it is about loving unconditionally. It is easy to love unconditionally. What is hard is loving real people that live under your roof, including yourself.
We tend to think of them as challenges to our comfort. And of course, they think of us in the same way. So we have to live two ways. We have to live in this world but not of it. We know we aggravate our housemates because they let us know if we upset them. All households have their emotional sign language —the sigh, the shrug, the sudden tears. The others in the world are invisible to us, by necessity.
I love the Kwan Yin vow: I vow to relieve the suffering of all sentient beings. That includes political candidates, the country’s enemies, everyone who is suffering. Compassion for all. But we know we are not compassionate to those we love the most. So our inner work is seeing how we fall short of loving our family and friends unconditionally. We criticize, gossip and tear people to shreds when we are driving. So our job is to watch ourselves behaving crazily. That was one teaching of Vernon Howard. His talks were about that.
When I first began to study Vernon’s teachings, I became very hard to live with. I saw the faults of my family up close and personal and let them know it. Not because he told me to, but because I was going through the first stage of the path, trying to change everyone but myself.
Years passed and nothing had really changed inside of me. And I felt guilty for pushing people away. I did not know that I would have to leave the world, both inside and outside of me. Yet it happened without my having any control over it. Social life was not possible for me. I tried but it just didn’t work.
I speak the truth when I write but not necessarily when I am living my life. Why? Because no one is perfect. But the path is all there is for some of us. We stumble on. We cry. We resist, but it does no good. But sometimes out of the blue, someone reads something I write and realizes they are not alone. There are a handful of us that are alone because we are at that stage of the journey. We have to accept who and where we are. And then we begin to enjoy the way conscious love makes us feel. And heaven smiles and we stumble on.
Vicki Woodyard
We all stumble, and may we all realize that we’ve done it before, we’re doing it now and we’ll do it tomorrow. We can all forgive and love ourselves and others and remember daily (moment by moment) —- if we didn’t stumble, we wouldn’t need forgiveness. One of the most wonderful gifts of your writing is that you give us pictures of ourselves that we can easily see. I remember many a car trip home after a holiday gathering…. criticizing, gossiping and tearing apart individuals no better and no worse than myself. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Ruth. We are all imperfect and we keep forgetting that the beam is in our own eye.
So very true, Vicki. I try so hard to practice unconditional love and love the Kwan Yin vow, yet find myself criticizing and judging those I’m closest too. It’s nice to step back and realize we are all in this life together and we must lift each other up. This being human is not a piece of cake!