Mere words have something of quicksand about them.

Only experience is the rope that is thrown to us.

~Georges Bataille

how many times do we abandon ourselves? do we even notice how we reject all that is unloved? how we accumulate pain….how we harden to what seems insurmountable……

Great love has the potential to open the heart space and then the mind space. Great suffering has the potential to open the mind space, and then the heart space. Eventually, both spaces need to be opened, and for such people nondual thinking can be the easiest. People who have never loved or never suffered will normally try to control everything with an either-or attitude, or all-or-nothing thinking. The mentality that divides the world into “deserving and undeserving” has never been let go of by any experience of grace or undeserved mercy. this absence leaves them judgmental, demanding, unforgiving, and weak in empathy and sympathy. Authentic love is of one piece. How you love is how you have accessed Love. ~Richard Rohr

for all that aches

True love and faith arrive when it’s most dark. In the dark there is a special kind of beauty. In a dark time, your eyes can see your true friends by the light of their lamps. Sometimes we grow most through suffering, loss, and betrayal. The unexpected breakups that befall us deepen our capacity to lead an authentic and free life. And learning how to survive our own difficulties is one of the few things that will help us to know the right things to say and do when others whom we love suffer as well. ~Jack Kornfield