How many more have to die before we realize compassion is the only true religion? Through contemplation, we see everything is connected. And we get connected ourselves – to what is really going on, way down at the bottom of everything. First, you must remove the structures you have brought around you that are giving you the illusion of safety. Those structures have also kept you separate. Let those structures fall away, one by one, so you can become connected with real life.
The path to loving and healing EVERYTHING is to pay close attention – to what is inside yourself and everything else around. Contemplation is learning how all things work together. You are in relationship with everything. You just don’t always remember that. I know it is overwhelming to try to pay attention to everything. As soon as you start paying attention to one thing, another thing gets neglected. But slowly, over time, you will be able to see everything and how it is all moving together. That’s what all your sensitivity is for. You have a powerful perceptual system that can be trained to pay attention to all things all at once.
And you must become open. You are used to separating everything – into things you love and things you hate. You welcome some and push away others. We are taught that is what we are supposed to do, and some never grow out of it. Contemplation is tenderly welcoming in the things you hate, one by one: jazz music, your belly, spiders, someone who does not share your beliefs. If you can think of one more thing you hate, you still have work to do.
The things you tend and care for are the things that will grow. Everything you touch and develop some kind of recursive relationship with turns to life. If you are not paying attention to and trying to love everything, you will still be holding some things in contempt – some because you really do hate them and some because you were just not paying attention and trying to give them a chance at life.
Our only lot is to tend the things around us, keep them alive as long as possible and help them grow. When they die, we lay them to rest purposefully, and not without heavy grief. Then it is time to turn over the soil and cultivate a fertile environment for something new to spring forth. We do not welcome death because we want to or we are forced to. We welcome death because it is precious and it is a portal.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash