… EVEN WHEN IT CONFLICTS WITH MY PREFERRED SELF-IMAGE OF A LOVING HUMAN

Life constantly reminds me to be observant of what’s happening within, and honest, absolutely real about owning my experience.

Whenever I get pulled into the right-wrong game, it is sufficiently painful to slow me down, like life saying, take it down a notch, sweetheart. That was one of the last things Kenny said to me, something he often said during the last six months of his life: Just slow down.

I have spent a lifetime pretending, making believe that I was okay when I wasn’t, that I was happy when I’d yet to understand what happiness is, that I loved when I didn’t have a clue what real love was. I wasn’t okay, but in order to see that, I had to slow down. The slower I go, the more I see, like the recognition that slow isn’t what I once thought it was.

When I am busy doing, in my head or otherwise, it is hard to see what is beneath the busyness, what fears are in play. Not seeing what is going on below the surface, it is impossible to be honest about what’s happening within, let alone to be real.

So, this seems to be my exquisite penance for speed, to be unable to look away, to be compelled to look within, to leave no thought in the cobwebs of mind undusted.

At times I feel schizophrenic. It’s fascinating to see dissonant ideas clamoring for the top of the internal pecking order, to watch the ways that I censor my thoughts rather than simply allowing them to be, to feel them and not need to make one right and another wrong.

This week I’ve felt, I’ve deeply sensed, relief in the passing of an embodied expression of hate while experiencing profound sadness for the way it unraveled, sadness for all concerned, the principles, their loved ones, for the society in which this is tolerated and, in some circles, invoked. Initially I made one wrong (you know which one) and the other right.

That passed.

Both thoughts are thoughts passing through awareness, and neither is right or wrong. They are both valid even though they rub up against each other. I don’t have to discount or drape the seemingly uncaring thought in garbs of grief. It has a right to exist, simply because it does. It is genuine. It is real. It appeared.

Some have called it karma. I wouldn’t call it karmic any more than every movement of life is the outpicturing of all that has come before, but I would call it demonstrative, a mirror shining brightly in consciousness.

For all of us, this week has highlighted our collective canary struggling to breathe what may be its last breaths. Is this how we want to live? How long can this continue before we finally run out of air?

Left to its own natural inclinations, hate, which is an expression of fear, multiplies. Ideologies, which are nothing but thin air, take on a density and choke the life, the living light out of whatever, whoever, breathes it in. It is the ultimate dog chasing its tail, only this dog has caught that tail and is consuming it, consuming itself.

Perhaps it is time to see this divisiveness for what it is, to slow down enough to see which personal demons live within. Only then can we step out of the fog of hate, our resistance to life as it is appearing and remember what this really is, what we truly are. Letting life be as it is, rather than trying to push camels through the eyes of needles, changes everything, if for no other reason than we are no longer adding more struggle, more dissonance to the dance.

Love too, bends towards a greater love. That is its natural movement, to embrace all that is open to its embrace. Hate, which is born of fear, simply signals love to pass on by, to bypass this expression for the time being, that fear is currently in charge.

These avatars, the world and its inhabitants, are made of darklight, the yin yang, the entirety of the spectrum. Until we are willing to disbelieve the appearance we will be trapped in the appearance. This is no shortage of reasons to be outraged. There never will be in this dance of duality. See through one and another will pop into view. It will appear within and without, but when I stop for just a moment and slow down to the speed of love, the appearances are seen for what they are. They lose their power to woo, to entice, to pull me into the fear, the hate.

It’s okay to have dissonant thoughts. That seems to be what we are, the ‘we’ that is the appearance in duality. It can’t be avoided. Thoughts arise, but just because we see them, doesn’t mean we need to believe them.

If we truly want a more loving world, we have to be the caring, the compassion, the acceptance and love we want to see in this world and it is nearly impossible to do that while mired in our own muck.

Image: DeviantArt, girl stuck in mud

Amaya Gayle is the author of 6 books, the latest Actuality; infinity at play, published by New Saram Press. https://amzn.to/3Rd4CTY