I’ve been thinking a lot about kindness, about how it is often not my first (or second, or third. . . ) impulse. At some point I realized just how daunting and life-changing it could be to make my moment by moment intention, kindness toward myself, others- family, friends, strangers- and the world.

Kindness, in any specific instance, leaves no one and nothing out. Sometimes kindness requires that we walk away. Sometimes it asks us to dive in. Most often I find it asks me to pause, to slow down, to feel my way into the moment asking, what would kindness look like here?

In a world shouting that you must live your BIGGEST, BEST life, kindness can seem too tame, too quiet, too ordinary. But I begin to suspect that making room for kindness. . . .could take us beyond where we thought we could go, would unleash the breath-takingly wild and generous stuff of which we are made.   ~Oriah Mountain Dreamer

From the perspective of exhaustion and the longing for rest, it is compassionate to seek relief from the uncertainty, and to replace the groundlessness with something more stable. Honor the call to safe passage and something to hold onto. It is an act of kindness to practice self-care, to weave a new story, and to soothe an overstimulated nervous system.

From the perspective of open awareness, groundlessness and aliveness are one. There is nothing to hold onto, nothing to “heal,” and nothing to transform. Life is overflowing at all times, exactly as it is, in and out of the core of the tenderness that you are. Each thought, emotion, and raw sensation appear within boundless, creative space, unfolding as pure sacred activity.

Inside the temple, you may come to discover the rest you are longing for will never be found in the activity of resolution, but only by way of intimacy with the contradictions.

Though the activity of love is infinitely tender and holding, in its essence it is everything. It is devastating as it is the end of one world, glorious as it is the beginning of another.   ~Matt Licata