Post a Comment On: Inner Pearls

Do you look about you in life and wonder how it is that some people can seem to live such blessed lives, with happy and stable childhoods, ample provision of educational opportunities, an interesting and fulfilling career path, loving companionship and so on? This is not to say that their path has been lined with flowers all the way, but that the turbulent waves of crisis and alienation seem to have been less prevalent and more gentle with them than others.

It is indisputable that there are many people who have very challenging childhoods and who will know the nature of abandonment and abuse from first hand experience, who will struggle with self esteem and authentic expression, of being able to enter into healthy and nurturing relationships and where it is an ongoing challenge for them to move into a sense of well-being and acceptance of what they have experienced.

Throughout time, this diversity of life experience has been attributed to being in the hands of fate, of having bad blood, of unresolved karma and lessons to be learned. It may have been with a huge sigh of relief, a sense of aversion and a somewhat guilty experience of gratitude that many people have expressed a phrase such as "there but for the Grace of God go I".

Looking upon such a landscape of suffering as is evident in human life, it might seem very natural to endeavor to manipulate and control the variety of opportunities and experiences of life to bring about the greatest probability of stability, personal enrichment and success. 'Nurturing an aspiration to better oneself' can be a very effective cloak for disguising a fear that comes with being human as when challenged, an individual can always attribute a presence of aspiration to being something that we are all born with, in order to be of service to the greater good, rather than what might be a more truthful representation, to do with securing their own personal sense of well-being, possibly at the expense of others.

Humanity has been very adept at building great structures and mechanisms which seductively and powerfully feeds into its underlying assumptions about how life is and must work, which is why so many people toil away throughout their lifetimes to keep this mammoth creation in existence and functioning. It is not a co-incidence that as communication systems have become global and instantaneous, many people have begun to take a better look at and to question many of the institutional assumptions of how life is and should function. They have been awakening to just how many of the mechanisms and networks to which, knowingly or not, they have been contributing to, are causing unrelenting and exacerbating waves of adversity, poverty and hardship for many.

It could be said that humanity is moving through a great phase of transparency and illumination, with the speed of technology and communication seeming to play a key role in this. The darkest of corners are being revealed and to be seen for what they are. Just as an individual who chooses to devote themselves to living a religious and spiritual life will see the fruits of their labor being revealed to them through their experience of life, it would appear as if a collective human will has been turning towards aligning itself with more of an authentic expression of well-being and even fulfillment of a higher purpose.

To reflect for a moment, on the diversity of life circumstance, the human experience and presence of suffering in the world, it can put a whole new spin on understanding and of questions such as "why did this happen to me or to so and so", or "why do bad things happen to good people?" to think beyond a box of whether an individual is 'deserving' of their lot in life, as this so often shapes human understanding and relatedness with one another.

There exists an opportunity always to be willing to see, to intuit and to accept that an individual's presence in life, although it can appear on the surface as something small and insignificant, is a vital and integral part of a great wholeness of being of humanity. This is not to glorify or condemn those actions and choices that lead to an experience of suffering, but is an endeavor to move beyond a fixed view and judgment of it, to accept that it it is an expression of human consciousness and that a framework through which it can be viewed can be extended beyond only the personal.

"With illumination comes compassion"
From the darkest of days comes an experience of light and the human heart softly stirs as the lumbering mind awakens