i listened to this podcast alone in my apartment and yelled, ok. people are working very diligently and carefully at becoming more loving, not for the sake of virtue, but because it reduces suffering, because it makes us more available for the miracle of being alive for we don’t know how long.
i hear stuff sometimes that makes me want to keep trying, stuns me into wanting to be better aka more diligent about kindness. sometimes the inner child discourse is a lot…but….Dr. Jaiya John, in an interview with Dr. Thema on her Homecoming podcast talked about our child nature as our divine sensitivity…and i was floored. IDK about lullabies but the man has a point:
“We often are very confused with regard to our own physical appearance and age and the physical appearance and age of others causes us to say I am an adult that person is an adult and then we go from that categorization and label and language into a whole endless array of assumptions and ideas and schemas deeply engrained in the brain schemas about what an adult is…we are led to believe that an adult is a finished thing that has its act together that is impervious, insulated from vulnerability and fear and insecurity and needing affection and embrace. The truth is that I observe these adults as we call them carry within them carry within us a primordial primitive always existent child…the heart of a child, the perspective of a child, the seeing of the world as a child. We have to remember…how small we felt as children how looming and large the world seemed to us and how towering adults seemed to us. As we walk around with each other as adults and engage with each other as adults we still have that child vulnerability we still have those fears insecurities uncertainties and need for assurance and affirmation, validation and so this where this message comes from for me about just our need to recognize that this child nature in us is there. If we can practice seeing each other as adults with a child nature I feel that it will elicit and liberate within us geysers of compassion and mercy. We will be more forgiving of one another gentler kinder to each other. We’re so harsh. I feel that largely that’s because we have forgotten that we are not invincible robots as adults at all. We’re always an unfinished thing we’re always tender we’re always sensitive we’re always needing a hug an embrace we need lullabies we need to be sung to be softly sent into sleep and dream we need to be gently awakened into sunrise and day we need to be nourished socially by one another and by ourselves as we move through our days regardless of how well things are going we need to be free….let this be our starting place when we consider each other, engage with each other, reflect upon each other and react and respond to each other. Let it be our relationship with ourselves as well…..we still need to be loved on…this is our design.”
we are so harsh! i am extremely harsh. and harshness doesn’t diminish harshness. i saw this meme that i will try to find that said that when people are rude it’s because they are experiencing ROARING pain. it’s also like the Tara Brach thing where omg scary dog barking so scary but the dog’s leg is in a trap.
this doesn’t mean anyone is off the hook but also kindness/love/curiosity cause lil glitches in these feedback loops of rudeness/violence/suffering, make presence, connection more possible.
it is all a big mess, thank you for reading these musings, for trying a little tenderness even if only with yourself.