Compassion and pain

In the middle of our desires, are we able to see ourselves? When we desire that next person or that n'th pair of shoe, is it a real need, a real desire? Or is it a manifestation of something else. When we ask ourselves, what is underneath, do we find longing for a better self, covering up loneliness, suppressing our pain, fear, anger, postponing that deep look into our lives? And when we ask ourselves what is the underlying blief in this, do we get the answer we might be looking for? That we were too busy, too caught up, too into our object of desire to figure that deep fear out. And when we find this weakness, can we send tenderness to ourselves and say 'Yes, I have desires, I have weaknesses, I accept myself and love myself because there is goodness in me'. Then can we extend the same compassion to the people around us and say ' Yes, people around me have desires and weaknesses but there is goodness in them and I accept them and I feel compassion for them for we share the same pain of being.' And in your compassion can you see that life is rough and full of ups and downs and twists, yet we as beings share the same pain of being imperfect and being thrown into life's waves and that life finds itself come to being through us and in every wave there is boundless beauty. Life lives through me, life lives through us. Can I accept this flow, this indescribable beauty of being in life's ups and downs, sharing this experience and still loving through everything that happens, everything I, we experience.

The most difficult thing in life is to be with yourself and feel the pain of being day in and day out. In my compassion my pain dissolves.

-- "In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."Albert Camus