A quick note:
The process of learning to love well by the above “standard” is not a step program. You do not perfect one ability and then move onto the next. Rather, these are interrelated, each strengthening the foothold of the other. These skills work together as all limbs must do when the climber attempts to scale a mountain.
The path toward loving well is also the work of persistence. Elise Boulding once wrote, “Every human being that comes into the world is capable of that love, but how to give expression to that love has to be learned.” We are all born with the capacity to love fully, but we must be taught how to love well. Saint Teresa of Avila spent twenty years perfecting her ability to love. So must we all accept our human-ness, our need for practice. This is a great struggle of my own. I have not yet lacked persistence, but I have treated myself abominably in pursuit of almost every goal until a few short years ago. Expecting perfection from yourself or others is corrosive. It will eat away at your ability to live joyfully and lovingly. We must be firm with ourselves—that is true—but also gentle and forgiving. Once you are able to be so with yourself, you will be able to extend these gifts to others.
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Stay With Truth
If all the other parts of this path are the limbs of the mountain climber, Stay with Truth is the blood. Each of the other qualities is nurtured and fed by Truth. Seeing life, others and ourselves as they are keeps the path toward love straight even if our feet stray from it once in awhile. When truth is abandoned through self-deception, justification and denial, the progress of all the other developing practices is halted; we wander blindly in search of true and abiding love.
So what is staying with the Truth? To stay with Truth is to be in the moment. In most of the moments of our lives and certainly in our relationships to others, we are bound by attachments--heavy chains of desire, fear, expectation and the like. These attachments skew our perception of reality in simple and complex ways. This is particularly true of fear, perhaps the strongest of attachments. Think of how many people report “suspicious activity” during airline travel simply because the person appears Middle Eastern. Fear is quickly able to overthrow sensibility and stand like a mighty roadblock in the course of loving.
To stay with the Truth we have to keep asking ourselves difficult questions in the moment. Am I seeing things this way because I am trying to convince myself that I am right? What is my motivation here? What do I want out of this situation? Is my energy invested here in an unhealthy way? What am I afraid of? Is my happiness at the expense of another’s? As states arise where there is conflict, suffering or pain on either side, we must be willing to answer these questions honestly. When you can look at yourself, others and circumstances as they are you will be able to make more loving decisions and recognize points for improvement.
Practical Practice:
Honesty needn’t be unkind. Just because you think s/he looks hideous in purple, doesn’t mean you have to say it. However, if you are asked, you can kindly say that you do not care for it. Nor does honesty necessitate compulsion. You do not have to search desperately through your history for every lie you’ve told and then find a way to right it. But you do have to look at yourself and your past with truth in mind. And certainly if you carry a painful lie into each day with you, by all means expunge it with a word of truth. You also do not have to tell everyone everything. You are still free to say “No its not such a great day, but I would rather not talk about it right now.”
This may seem scary, and to be quite honest, it can be. But I found that the path to living authentically and truthfully begins with changing small habits. Step one for me involved not adding any new lies or misrepresentations to my life. Begin in the present. Like in scrapbooking, if you won’t work on today until you have your past organized you might never catch up to life now. Also, changing small habits is so much easier than changing big ones. For instance, I resolved over a decade ago that I would never say I had heard of a song, album, movie, etc. unless I actually had. (This was a bad habit of mine.) My next resolution was to honestly state my opinion when asked for it. “No I don’t care for it.” “It’s not my favorite.” “I wouldn’t choose it for myself.” You can come up with a million ways to say you don’t like something in a non-offensive way. The same is true of what you do like or enjoy.
If you begin small like this you will gradually begin to hear your own inner voice of Truth because you are not trying to deceive yourself or others. Soon you will see that others still like you, still love you, still want to spend time with you. However now it’s so much better because you are the real you. This is confidence inspiring. Once you are in the practice of telling the Truth, you will be able to begin the deeper investigation into your attachments.
With love,
T
1 comment:
The first part reminded me of the meditation where you imagine something that makes you feel loved, and then you focus on extending that to other people in your life that you don't have the best relationships with.
Fear is certainly a big obstacle in intimacy and human relationships. We want to maintain a certain measure of control in how we interact with people. We don't want to risk being pushed outside our comfort zone. We want to maintain a certain image of ourselves as healthy, productive, well-intentioned people. But all of that can get in the way of being open. And if you stay closed off I think it is very difficult to grow and develop really strong, healthy relationships.
That is why I said all those awful things to you in high school, because I had to be open and honest in order for our relationship to grow. :-)
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