My quest is to be fully authentic, not so much for other people, although this will be an outcome presumably, but to myself. I want to stop lying to myself about anything. If there is a sign above the gate to Hell that says “Abandon all Hope Ye who Enter”, there is one, perhaps, above the gate to Heaven which says “Abandon all False Hope, Ye who Enter”.
And what I realize is that if you have pain in you, learning to feel it is part and parcel of the path. Some pains, like that of feeling unloved as a small child, cross the sky. They are so vast that I don’t know how anyone copes with them without drugs or alcohol. Most people don’t, of course. Perhaps no people do, not the pain I am talking about. Most people pull back. They don’t walk into the thing undiluted.
It is the pain of contracting your whole being into a tall post, and feeling someone chopping at its base. It is terror and pain and hopelessness all bound into one and amplified a hundredfold.
But this pain passes. I think most pains you only have to feel fully once.
That’s my sunny two cents for today.