I don't know about others. I can't speak for you. I can be sure that I rarely actually fit in with people specifically. There seems to be always some difference difficult to swallow. I am required, I believe to overlook, rise above, find a path of coexistence. I am certain it is required. I suspect it is necessary to the exact extent it seems to be.
This, I think is why the most mature spiritual walks on the planet emphasize forgiveness and mercy, compassion and love. These are the indispensible states of being precisely because we are so fractious. The Judaeo-Christian traditions viewed from the Christian perspective is in one way precisely this message, that the Jewish heritage was a working out of the Law, a clarity with God's perfect justice, and within that structure the revelation of love and mercy abides, embedded, obvious in its way, but still subservient. This is Old Testament as the Christians say. Christ comes to fulfill the Law, to transcend it, to show how natural and in place justice is when Love ascends to its rightful position. Love is the new Law.
That vision of Judaism makes sense to Christians but not to sophisticated Jews who will maintain that the ongoing Jewish experience also reveals Love and reveals it in all its importance.
Muslims will agree from their own perspective that Christians do not monopolize the Law of Love. My mentor Hafiz, a Sufi mystic, a Dervish, just beams with the light of Love, Compassion, Mercy, Forgiveness. In fact he claims these are highly intoxicating and God's House is a Tavern where the Holy Drunkenness is dispensed. Herein is the Dervish Joyful Dance.
And Mahayana leads to the Buddhist Ideal of Bodhisattva. Infinite compassion embodied in Buddha to the benefit of all sentient beings deliberately and deeply present immediately and permanently, not to disappear from the planet until all sentient beings are free. Turn and look. Then become. Hindu Tantra is the practical application of Love as manifest energy (sex is quite a small part of this).
I could go on. But the reality we experience is different for most of us most of the time.
What We Were Like
My family was chancy,
all technicolor critters
hanging together
despite different
destinies in inner space.
"I hate them all, all!"
I've said that before.
Like a few other
places on this old planet,
here we stay even
though otherwise we
would never willingly mix,
no, would not ever.
January 30, 2009 9:56 AM
First Posted July 22, 2009
I actually have no idea if that is really Dracula's Castle. That's what the photographer named his photo.
ReplyDelete"God's House is a Tavern where the Holy Drunkenness is dispensed"
ReplyDeleteI like that. And love as manifest energy. Sex is not love. It can be an expression of, but I'm certain it does not fall within my description, if I could pen one.
Surely it is the similarities with others which irk us more?
ReplyDeletei'm all about infinite compassion in a kind of shallow, narcissistic way....
ReplyDeleteAnnie, it is truly a difference between men and women, how easy it is for women to leave sex behind as a part of love. They will say as you do, sex is one smallish expression of love. I believe what men mean when they agree to that wordage, sex as an expression of love, is that love must express and sex is essential in that expression. Men will not often sever sex from love willingly. That is one reason that they can have trouble with inappropriate sex.
ReplyDeleteOf course, it is not fair to claim that no woman views love and sex the same way because some women do.
Luce, thank you for your comment. I think it is common wisdom that we want to criticize in others what we deny in ourselves. It is not only that the criticized thing is in us, but that we don't like it enough to hide it if we can. Often others easily see what we do and we find ourselves judged as we judge.
Ghost, you come up with the strangest music sometimes, but I don't guess we all would agree on which music is strange. Thanks for staying in the neighborhood. I hope it's not because you know something's coming...