Like an animal

I have learned so much from animals and nature. There's is a world only ruined by association. This means it functions much closer to perfection and where the affects of ruination are felt they are handled more like they would be handled in a perfect state.

Right now, I'm thinking of how animals and even plants (which are far more responsive than people think, only on a much slower time scale) do not judge. If they form opinions, they do not affect behavior in any large degree. They take each action or event as it comes, they tolerate massive amounts of wrong, and they are slow to learn fear or hate while being quick to forgive.

I wonder if I can learn to live like this. Can I not expect, not interpret, not figure? Can I learn to simply be and watch and react appropriately? I've spent years thinking about things in hopes of reaching peace through ultimate understanding. If I could see how things all work, I'd be able to rest in that just like when you understand your surgery or illness you feel less anxious about it. Not that I ever thought I would get to the end, but it was the distant goal that defined a paradigm.

But now I'm starting to realize that this may not be the answer. Like Solomon returning to rest in meaninglessness, I'm finding that understanding brings no peace.

No matter what I learn, I feel like I've done all this before. Had these realizations, cycled around, and nothing has really changed.

I recognized the cycles before, but I envisioned them spiraling upward where each cycle was a little closer to truth. But I doubt that now.

Now I want to get off the train. I want to watch it draw away from me and take all it's energy and activity with it. I want to look and simply see what is there, not be preoccupied with things that aren't there. Wars and rumors of wars, a chasing after the wind, trying to capture shadows. I want to see feel what is there without having to analyze, systematize and categorize. I just want to feel and let the feeling go into the next, good, bad, sad, or indifferent.

I want a simple and gentle yet unabashed honesty, like animals, to the greatest degree I can.

Pain

Pain is an incredible teacher.  For one thing, you can't ignore it.  If you think you can, then you don't know the capacity a human has to feel pain.  I'm talking about physical pain.

I was recently knocked down by something I didn't even know could happen and which is so painful, I've only experienced one thing more so.  I have hurt so bad from one particular ailment that I come very close to blacking out, which would be a blessing, let me tell you.  This is not as bad as that, but nearly so.

Thank God there are specialists who can relieve this pain in a simple procedure.  The procedure itself hurts and continues to for a while, but the cured hurt is different and more bearable.

I'm not going into details because pain is a very relative phenomenon.  If I were to tell you what it was, some of you would think it's no big deal.  Perhaps you may have even experienced the same and it didn't bother you as much.  This would lead you to judge me, even if in a very small way.

But this is exactly what I wanted to write about.  I tend to be, and used to be much more so, ascetic and willful.  I tend to believe we can endure, not be weak, so forth.  After experiencing such pain, internal, external, physical and emotional, I am becoming much softer and genuinely compassionate.  This time, I have learned to be more understanding of the relative nature of pain.  What hurts each of us is different and we can't know how much it hurts another.  What we may disregard may be excruciating to another.

I have often been guilty of silently and openly judging, belittling, and even mocking other people's pain.  Most people would not call me a monster, but I know myself and I am seeing this aspect more clearly now.

I hope to never experience these pains again.  I will take precautions to avoid it.  But I pray I will NEVER in ANY case make light of what another feels again.

I may not know how to respond.  It may even seem silly to me.  But I hope I can keep this experience as a reminder that I am not as tough as I like to think.  That I can, at any moment, be taken out by the smallest and most sudden thing.  And that there is no objectivity to pain--what someone feels is real to them.

They may actually feel it stronger than I do.  They may just not know how to cope with it and therefore it feels worse to them.  Fear may intensify the actual physical sensations.  But regardless, the person feeling it is the only one who can judge.  I now understand even more deeply the meaning of mercy and sympathy.

I have also been helped in this time in a humbling and genuine way by someone who does not have to.  It has not been pleasant or easy for them.  It is a pure act of love.  Experiencing this has crushed my pride and roused such a deep, deeper love in return.

There are huge universal truths at work here that my words can't even approach.  But then that's why we must experience rather than just talk about things.  It's the only way to learn.

To the one who helped me, I will love you forever.  There are no words to express my gratitude.

To the doctors who can and did help in such short order, and who followed up with me just to see if I was ok, you are what medicine is about. Thank God for you and I hope you will share that perspective with a thousand other doctors.

And to anyone I have wronged by belittling, downplaying, or misunderstanding your pain, I am truly sorry.  I can't go back.  But I will pay it forward...or to use the archaic phrase, I have repented.  I will make right the wrongs I've done and honor the good done to me by doing 10 times better for whoever I cross paths with, God help me.

And if you are in pain, know you are not alone.  I will ease it in whatever way I can.  If you know me in person, I will not turn you away.   If this blog is our only interaction, know that each word is fortified with intention and love for you.  I trust that the Source of all goodness, who is at this moment and always making right every wrong, will provide what you need most in this very moment...now.

Grown

I think I am being grown.  I feel stretched.  It's not terrible, but not great either.  Many things are changing.  I had dreams about dragons again, which seem to precede big changes for me that require growth.  I also had deja vu today, which is another sign that something is happening.

I don't mean this in the way the words might sound to many people.  It's not some spooky or flighty thing where I think of these things as special powers or whatever.  I don't even know if it's real.  But I know my experience.  And dragons are sometimes a symbol of wisdom and reptiles can indicate change in dreams.

The deja vu is just a distinct impression that I've done something before.  I don't know if I dreamed it in advance, or maybe it's just a feeling that occurs when I'm in a state of confusion and growth.

But it doesn't really matter, does it?  The point is the significance to me.  They are markers of something I should pay attention to.

Changes are immanent in work and life, and I've noticed a tendency toward less control and more dependence on God, which comes in the form of independence from other things.  Hence it feels good and bad at the same time.

This may be an answer to prayer...in reality everything is an answer to prayer, isn't it though.  In this case, I did pray for God to move me and for him to teach me to trust him more.  So here goes.

The cool thing to me is that I am not so nervous as I once would have been about things like this.  I'm hoping to find out if Uncle George's ideas that we have to move to see the results are true.  That only in obedience to the requirements can we see the results, the lack of which we claim as disproof.

He also said that when we ask of God and it seems like no answer, it may be that God has answered immediately, but it is taking time, maybe years, for us to grow to the point that we can understand the answer.  This seems consistent with my understanding of God.  He would rather have us right and thoroughly good and so would not give us a half answer or no answer, as we sometimes think, but rather immediately begins the process of growing us, finishing us, to the point that we can hear.  And hearing, can understand what he says.  But we are not going unanswered.

To me, this is powerful.  I always thought that we might be ignored for our own good sometimes, like a good parent will ignore their petulant child until they relent. But what if it isn't that at all?!  What if God is a better parent than us?  ...as if there is any question.  Of course he'd be better.  Necessarily better.  To understand that way is to confirm my infantile perspective.

Or perhaps, I would think, we just couldn't understand so he doesn't explain, like a parent who resorts to, "because I said so." to the whining kid that won't accept the answer.

Or perhaps that's it: that we are just whining so he won't answer.


But just imagine instead, what it would mean to have a God who answers so immediately and powerfully that he would grow and shape a whole world of space and matter and experience around us in order that our hearing would begin developing to the point that we could first hear the answer and then our minds would be capable of understanding it.

It's supra-language, dark cloud, behind the veil stuff.

The thoughts are coming too fast now for my fingers to keep up.  So I have to stop.