I woke this morning knowing that there is no end to suffering ... not as long as I'm human, not as long as I want things to go the way I think they should go. Given that I want certain outcomes i.e. you'll love me, I'll be well, you won't suffer, democracy will prevail ... and given that the trump cards are nothing lasts no matter how much I need them to and I can't control life anyway ... I will continue to suffer. I do suffer.
There is so much I dont want. I dont want the taliban. I dont want the natural world that keeps me sane to go up in flames and yet, for all my wishing there are men with beards claiming victory and the flames come closer. Since not wanting has arisen how to meet it? How to see that pushing away what's already here is such a weird and pointless thing to do and the surest sign that ignorance (I dont understand) is alive and well.
How to interrupt the long story of wanting things to be this way and not that way? How to pull out this habit by the root? How to stop creating the not wanted in the first place?! How to be receptive, not to the old stories that life 'must' go this way, but to the endless stream of lessons that life offers in each and every moment? Such gifts are in abundance, probably in oue personal lives but also socially, politically and environmentally. There is a meteor shower of chances to explore acceptance right now.
I suppose that's what my life has been about, opening up to joy and working with suffering, and lately, interrupting the old stories and habits long enough to see that the answer is right in front of me in any and every moment. I know if I sit with these lessons long enough without blaming (no easy thing) I can tease out, begin to see more clearly the threads that make the cloth, the threads of taliban, human superiority, fear that live in me, in all of us. I can come to see that 'my' landscape is projected outward and I call it 'the world'. I see that I have lived as if there was a standard, single 'reality' out there that I assumed we all agreed on, an indisputable fact that can I could (eventually, hopefully) sort.
I've looked long and hard for a decent refuge ... in people and places and approaches. I just didnt get it. While I relied on thought, on that rudimentary intelligence, I couldn't fully see the plain truth, that the most reliable refuge is acceptance of whatever is now. That simple.
Colette Power August 2021.
