When I look around me, it's hard not to react with snap-judgments to the tendency of others to focus only on those aspects of reality that are glamourous and exciting when it's obvious there are things happening behind the scenes in their lives that they are ignoring.
It's hard to say that this is purely intentional, as I imagine many people, including myself, tend to cover up the bad with the good, or throw another layer of paint on the old wall to make it look new.
So why do we do it?
I think the answer is simple: the truth hurts.
If we can accept this, then the question becomes, can we stand up to the challenge of facing reality from moment to moment, even if what we see is ugly?
Sometimes, the truth is easy to see, but hard to accept. If what you see is ugly, what will you do next?
The practice for me lately has been to keep watching, and more often than not, it just gets uglier. There are so many layers to whack through, wouldn't it just be easier to going back to the ignorance is bliss theory?
Yeah, probably, but at this point, I just can't let that happen. My strength has become my weakness, and although giving up now would appear to be easier, I know that suffering would surely prevail.
So for now, I will keep watching, and continue to unveil the ugliness that the layers of time has covered my true self with, in hopes that by shining the light of awareness on them, they will lose their power over me and start to dissolve.
No, I don't blame others, nor myself for this condition we all find ourselves in. It's simply that: conditioning. Sure, we can paint life to be whatever picture we want, but life isn't a picture, and it isn't a show. There's so much more happening here, behind the scenes, that we can choose to be aware of if we wish.
Just as if you were to catch a back-stage glimpse of a flawless Broadway show, becoming aware of our own flaws may too cause us to view the whole production differently. But don't be alarmed, no productions are without their flaws and when you take away all the costumes, make-up, lights, sound, and scenery, what your left with is a group of people that are just doing the best they can with what they have.
So maybe I can't help but to have reactions to all of this, and to my own fallacies, but like a fisherman choosing between a bobber and sinker, I can decide how much weight to attach to the end of line. We are all just doing our best in this crazy thing we call life, and the only thing left to do is keep watching and develop compassion.
No one said it was going to be easy, and if we can take the stress away from feeling like we have to put on a performance, we just might stumble into something beautiful here in our own shortcomings, something so real that it has to be magic.
When we can accept our imperfections without casting judgment upon ourselves, there is a space that opens up there, and from that space we can take a step back and sort of laugh about the whole thing.
There's no show, there's no performers, and there's no audience. It's just a spinning sphere hurling itself through space. Why take it so personally?
I guess what it comes down to is that we have so much riding on the whole thing, so much dependent on all these outcomes. But, in the end, everything will be stripped away from us anyway, so we might as well enjoy what we have while we have it.
To me, life isn't just about having as much fun as possible, or finding the one we love and never letting go. It's aslo about accepting those moments of pain, agony, and suffering, for without those moments, we would cease to know what it is to be humans in this life.
If we can truly understand our own suffering, we will understanding the suffering of all, and only then can we unite as one human family and experience peace on earth.
May All Beings Be Happy
May All Beings Be Peaceful
May All Beings Be Free From Suffering
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