"The cost to me of not doing so. I'm unwilling to pay the cost of
carrying a resentment (or whatever) around, so I draw on the
intelligence of forgiving."
I am indebted to Tera Freestone who inspired this conversation.
How
do I include that which I simply can not include? For example,
how
do I tolerate that for which I have no tolerance?
How
do I give to that with which I'm not easily
generous?
How
do I forgive people who are the hardest to forgive?
There's a
trap
in including anything ie there's a misconception about including
something. It's a
trap
which, when in place, may actually render including things
counter-productive at best, and misguided at worst. It's this: we're
thrown to include whatever there is to include, even those things which
are hardest to include, in order to be tolerant and / or
in order to be
generous
and / or even in order to be forgiving etc. Now there's really
nothing wrong
with any of those justifications / rationalizations for including
something. The
trouble
however with including anything in order to be tolerant and / or in
order to be
generous
and / or in order to be forgiving, actually in order to be
anything, is it diminishes
who we really are.
If I'm going to include something which until now, I've not been
including (that is to say if I'm going to include something which until
now, being stuck, I've been unable to include), what I've
discovered
is it just plain doesn't
work
if I do it "in order to". Indeed, including something "in order to"
only gets in
the way.
Try this on for size: when you
truly
include something, there's no
action
to take. As
stupid
as it sounds, including something you've not been including, doesn't
require any
action
on your part. Rather, including it is a recognition (or a
re-recognition) of the fact that
who you really
are
is the
context
for all this. When I'm being
who I really am
as the
context
for all this, everything is included, yes? There's
nothing
to do. Everything being included, is just
the way
it is (or, stated with more
rigor,
everything being included, is just
the way
I am). What this says is: when you're being
who you really are,
it's all included. It's just that
way
- which is to say we're just that
way.
Now this isn't something about which you should be looking to figure
out if you disagree with me on, or if you agree with me on
intellectually. And as we all know, we're all thrown to do that
from
time
to
time.
Yet taking it on that
way,
distracts from what's available here. The intellectual approach to
this, as easy as it is to slip into, is certain to obfuscate the value
of what it's possible to realize here. But if you can simply get it (or
grok it - as Robert Heinlein may have said) and
experience it directly
for yourself, it will
completelytransform
your life and everything in it with which you're dealing and which
matters to you.
So: to include? or not to include?
That is the
question.
It starts off looking like there's a choice in the matter ie it starts
off looking like it's one ... or the other. Yet the longer I look at
it, the more I realize it's really one of those no-brainer
choices. To be sure, I do have a choice in the matter: it's either /
or. The
trouble
is this: choosing not to include, ensures an immediate diminution of
myself and of the space that's available to me in my life.
