A Different Kind Of Love
Break Downs and Break Throughs
Dear Friend
If I try and see it from the outside, as impartially as any one of us can be when delving into memory, it might have looked like this. A young man is walking towards you.
You’d be lost in the stream of thoughts in your head. You could be in your forties, responsibilities and cares preoccupying you. This boy is looking at you as you approach each other on the street. It’s South London, the end of the 90’s. He doesn’t look like a threat, but maybe he wants something from you. At any rate you increase your pace. Avoiding eye contact you plough on through the din of the traffic.
You forget him. Nothing much to say about the encounter.
The young man thinks he’s losing his mind.
“I know you”
“I know you”
Shocks of recognition are hitting him like waves on a lake, one after another each following the next.
Some faces distrustful, others kindly amused, others simply surprised. People he’s never seen before have become friends, family and neighbours.
He’s almost going to say something, but there are no names and he stops himself, over and over. This continues for who knows how long.
Overwhelmed he ducks into a newsagent to get a sugar fix. Eventually the noise in his head returns and he’s walking through crowds of strangers. For a time he forgets it ever happens. It could only be madness, there’s no other context for it.
Decades later, he’s as old as his grandparents when the foundations of his world were laid. He understands. In cultures where wisdom prevails these experiences would signal the birth of a teacher, not a descent into mental illness.
It’s a different kind of love.
One that does not discriminate or bargain. It’s a love that knows no loss. It grounds us in the real world. It sees beyond surface appearances.
I don’t live in that state, although my false self is less in control these days. It’s here all the same. We live with our reactivity, our tendency to judge but there’s a gap.
The tiny gap where you see your what your false self is doing and you have space to choose something different. Less afraid, kinder, more accepting of the messiness of life here on the planet’s surface.
Slowly the picture gets clearer.
We are all sisters and brothers. All around us, an ocean of love.
Each of us are in our own little bubble. We are the ones with the power to choose how we fill our bubbles, now that we are grown.
Fill your bubble with compassion.
For yourself and all beings.
Imagine how it will be when other people mean safety, not threat.
Practice letting go of self judgement. Judging the world.
Who knows when our bubbles will pop?
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey