Wayfarer's Faith

The course, to which you and I share, follows a chart of acceptance, gratitude and compassion.  Like any seafaring voyage, there will be times in which the progress appears to be lacking, yet the engines churn, as the screws continue propelling the vessel on its appointed course.  There will be rough seas, tempest even, as complement to the periods of calm.  The dark storms will invoke fear and doubt, but perseverance is a seasoned wayfarer’s faith; navigating as they must, the harsh winds and angry weather along their way.

   I will not finish with an uplifting end, for that would detract from the message I wished to convey. The point being: change is the journey.  Change affords us the opportunity to comprehend the law of impermanence; it is the fundamental-basis of the world of form.  It is for each of us to accept the fact on our own.  As each island along the passage is met, and then left behind, clarity becomes more pronounced; as the lesson becomes invariably more profound. 

   The ultimate objective in any journey is its destination. In this case; compassion.

   That is not to dismiss the obvious, which is that the place we are at now is the only real journey at any given moment.  I used to embrace the ideal where compassion would be towards others.  Where it would be for me to love them for who they were, what they had been through, while resisting the temptation to judge them in rigid terms of being closer to right or further from wrong.  I had a mental idea of that character, of what charity of heart would look like.  But I must be honest with this neat and tidy concept; I was always in the position to judge.  I retained the vaulted authority to evaluate them from my perspective of unquestioned and exacting legitimacy; so thereby default; right. 

   Instead, compassion is the manifestation of inner acceptance at its deepest level, and that would be surrender away conclusions fearful minds need. This demonstrated by critical and judging ways for surviving a competitive mental struggle to be right, to be safe, in the illusive effort to obtain the state of being secure. 

   A seduction of belief is one where we ourselves are not subject to the very standards of performance in which we hold the rest of the world to perform to; which is what our living situation is mostly about.  Mistaking that contradiction in our day to day living is the conflict that disallows us to become satisfied in our comforts; we know something is out of kilter. 

   The invitation in living is that we open our hearts to life, and in that become love. An opportunity to release our resistance to what is, and abandon need to be right as substitution for acceptance which is bias that keeps us inauthentic, so then woefully unhappy. 

   You can place any of the age old adjective after need, and it will be applicable; to judge, to pity, to influence and manipulate the external world in order to meet the thirst of self delusion. Prodded by a deceitful nature resistant to the truth of things independent of subjective values.  To truly be, is presence in all moments; of not just 'peace' but fully the passion of what freedom offers in opportunity: to feel anger, to savor sadness, of any emotion that comes up in the healing of dis-ease with one’s self. 

   Our challenge to not 'act out' as in taking events being indictments waged on us personally, but release this reflex notion is a maturing of individual self esteem; as self monitoring calls for trust, the very exercise of freedom known as  liberty. 

    Grasping the abundance of being is to welcome everything, being genuine as we gain authenticity without biased judging degrees of lacking anything, including others being inferior in their perceptions. 

Each journey is a sacred occurrence, as a gift for wisdom's sake.  Events arrive from many different ports; like seafaring ships from exotic places abroad. They come without excuse, on subtle breezes, so we can realize the actual source need not be charted to be accepted as influencing our travel; nothing real can be threatened is the gratitude of loves presence.  "I see you."