this love, this violin
One of the greatest gifts to give to myself. Forgiveness. Forgiving others. Ourselves. Not only a gift actually. A lifesaver. Here is Hafiz dancing with the violin that can forgive, the heart that starts singing:
When
The violin
Can forgive the past
It starts singing.
When the violin can stop worrying
About the future
You will become
Such a drunk laughing nuisance
That God
Will then lean down
And start combing you into
His
Hair.
When the violin can forgive
Every wound caused by
Others
The heart starts
Singing.
Most of us reading this blog don’t hold on to fierce hostility. We don't wish harm. We make an effort, know how to muster kindness. But what if we were to look deeper? Where, even as we do our best to forgive, a smidgen of resentment or else aversion toward our own past actions imperceptibly contracts the heart.
The initial contraction is so natural. Survival kicks in. Yet it's an impulse, only an impulse. And it's right here that I can lean to forgive fully and completely, in the moment. No need for contraction to turn into cramp, eventually injury. When I don't forgive, fully and completely, I kill aliveness. Bit by bit. It doesn’t work. I fog my clarity to see what is. I fall out of love.
We hold on so tight to trying to be who we think we are. We impose impossible made-up standards. But we are all "frail, fragile beings who at various times in our lives have not lived up to our ideal and have injured or hurt," as James R. Doty writes.
Instead: To be present to all experiences and trust our capacity to meet them. Here is our shared humanity and potential. Let go, go on. Totally up to us. Tremendous resilience sparkles within this heart of our fragility.
An ongoing practice. Contraction, expansion. Full and complete. In breath. Out breath. Radical, literally: Roots of compassion growing. The truth of this freedom. This tender, fierce love. Who we are.
And from Sri Nisargadatta, a quote I am hanging with: "The mind creates the abyss. And the heart crosses it."
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