Your point of view and my point of view are equally “right” and equally insignificant facets in the dazzling holographic diamond of inter-radiant opposites.
Whatever is, the opposite also is, simultaneously arising. Yet neither of these little flickers of local light is Truth. Truth is what illuminates the entire jewel.
If we spent as much energy expanding into the Whole as we spend constricting ourselves to a point, each of us could illuminate the wide world with one silent glance, one gentle touch.
This is the breathing of grace: to expand into wholeness, then to exhale, fall, and break into bodies, incarnating All in each photon of joy, each tear of pain, each trembling seed of beauty. It is effortless. It is not an intention but a happening. It has already happened.
As knowings, we are very very small. As Beings, we are vast beyond imagining. We include each other. This is my New Year’s prayer. It has already happened.
~ Fred LaMotte
https://newrepublicoftheheart.org/person/fred-lamotte/
I recently experienced a “break up” with a close friend.
It doesn’t matter what the issue was. There was plenty of baggage on both sides behind the trigger. And we both got caught up in playing the “other” game—one side against the other, one truth against another, one point of view against another. And from that place there were no solutions. Just more crappola and hurt.
I couldn’t see a way out of the trap … until at 3 a.m. on a sleepless night, I let go.
I let go needing to respond and be justified in my position and “seen.” And because there had been a long-standing, unacknowledged, inequitable dynamic between us … and because I could see no possibility of an authentic conversation and genuine healing … I let go the relationship.
The relief was immediate … sweet and terribly sad and … shocking.
I’m bringing this up because the corrosion of divisiveness is upon all of us nowadays—individually and collectively. And I’m bringing it up because when I ran across this exquisite poem by my friend Fred LaMotte, it brought the whole thing to a head.
How do we get to the Truth of our Oneness that “illuminates the entire jewel”?
How do we work together when our individual selves are so broken? How do we get beyond the wounded inner scream “But I’m right!!!”? What does it take to go beyond the desperately insecure need to be seen and heard, understood and agreed with?
It’s easy to say, “Well, just love.” Yeah. Okay. But what does that really mean?
Does it mean agreeing with the other all the time so there’s no argument? Does it mean tolerance, even though you still think (i.e. judge) the “other” is being ________ (stupid, mean, crazy, unconscious, immature, blah blah, fill in the blank).
No. It means something much greater than that.
It means steadfastly holding the vision of Who We Really Are—non-physical Beings of Love whose true nature is Oneness—and acting from that vision no matter what.
This is nothing less than a complete reworking of self-identity. A stripping away of self-limiting ideas of separation like lack, competition, survival, and right and wrong.
I don’t always do it well. But I do my best to face my old self-identity—my personal wounds and crap—acknowledging but not indulging it. I do my best to let go judgment. I do my best to follow intuition and act from the vision of Who/What I Really Am.
Perhaps this is what it means to love.
Coming from the old self-identity as a limited, separate, issue-ridden human being, my choice to let go, not just the issue but the relationship, could be viewed in many ways. It could be seen as an act of cowardice. A “fuck you” act of cancel culture. An act of indifference. An act of short-sightedness and judgment.
It was none of those things. It was an act expressing a wider vision coming from a deep intuition that letting go was the right thing to do to give both me and my friend a chance to grow.A chance to perhaps connect on a more mature and honest level someday.
But back to love for a moment.
For self-identity to shift, I think we must first and foremost come from the love of—and forgiveness for—our beautiful selves.
It was through love for myself—both the limited human me and that Greater Self that includes my friend—that I released a relationship that had mutually-toxic elements holding both of us back. It was through love for myself that I let go the need to argue and be right. It was through love for myself that I let go the chronic pain accompanying the need to be understood and agreed with—all the “equally insignificant facets in the dazzling holographic diamond of inter-radiant opposites.”
Love for self … the one thing we’re taught from infancy onwards to avoid … the most difficult love of all and the sole foundation for loving the illusion called “other.”
We don’t heal divisiveness from the outside in. We heal it from the inside out. “And if we spent as much energy expanding into the Whole as we spend constricting ourselves to a point, each of us could illuminate the wide world with one silent glance, one gentle touch.”