You know,
And as I look at these things,
It just points to how sacred life is,
How sacred this human experience is.
And again,
To see that and then to watch myself get lost and to think it's about something else is wild.
And all I can do is keep showing up to see the truth of things and then essentially turn my heart back towards God.
I think in many ways this would be the nature of repentance,
Right?
Where you see how lost you got in trying to make life about you and then you see,
Oh wait,
It's not about that.
Oh,
Okay,
I got it.
Let me turn around here and focus on what it's really about.
And then there's the confused idea of repentance,
Which probably involves some flavor of self-judgment.
I love that humility though.
Oh yeah,
This isn't about me.
And I love the courage to be honest with myself about when I'm trying to make things about me.
Luckily,
Suffering reminds me that I'm trying to make it about me,
Right?
That's the beautiful thing about emotional pain.
Emotional pain is an alarm.
It has an incredible utility to it,
Emotional pain.
Like in my relationships,
As I'm dancing in life with my partner,
If I experience emotional pain,
It is signaling to me that I am misunderstanding the situation,
Which so often is the case.
I'm trying to make this about me.
I'm taking something personally that isn't really personal.
And how beautiful is it to be with someone you love and when they experience emotional pain,
You don't have to take it personally.
Like it's just,
It's okay for people to have their experience.
Right?
You know,
The comedy of it,
Like in the example I was telling you earlier with my partner,
When I don't do something she wants,
And then her mind says,
Oh,
You don't love me.
And then she gets the pouty face.
Imagine if I interpreted her pouty face as meaning she doesn't love me.
Do you see the back and forth,
The circle?
It creates a vicious cycle.
And those vicious cycles,
My goodness,
It's like they become,
Or they can become explosive.
And it's all based on an innocent misunderstanding.
This is why I think that these things are just so important,
Right?
To see things more clearly is so important.
Because it hinges on everything.
And I don't know that it's an original idea,
But I've never seen or heard it anywhere else.
But the concept that I see is that we are healing our perception.
We are healing how we see.
We're not fixing anything.
We're not changing anything in the world.
We are simply learning to see things more clearly.
And as that happens,
Everything else changes.
