I think I’ve figured some of this stuff out as it pertains to Support and it has to do with Kindness. I didn’t expect that at all, but it seems to be very related, at least within myself. You see, I’ve always seen support as something practical. When it comes to true support, or support coming from within rather from without, that’s not necessarily the whole story. Without going into a detailed story of my inner exploration around this topic, what I found that was missing was an inner sense of Kindness toward myself. As I explored, what I found was a strong desire to be helped, and that desire felt like a wanting of my mom to come to the playground where I’d fallen off my bike. Instead of wanting her to comfort me and help me home, the desire was more for being helped (supported) in getting back on the bike and keeping going. It was a very Kind gesture I was wanting, but one that was also supportive. As I explored that feeling/image, I realized that I was feeling that same Kindness toward myself, and it was in that Kindness directed toward myself that I found the inner support that I had been wanting and writing about lately.
Without inner support, life can feel very ungrounded and actually panicky at a very subtle level at times. Normally, I think what most of us do is “buck it up” and do what needs to be done in our lives. What I had been seeing is that the more that I saw through the falseness of the “buck it up” structure, the less capable it was of holding me up. I feel that now that I am much more in touch with a deeper sense of internal support, grounded in kindness toward self, that there isn’t so much of a need to “hold it all together” anymore. There is much more ease, at least at the moment.
In Kindness, I also saw some form of universality, as in the middle of experiencing that kindness deeply, I saw that there weren’t really any boundaries between anything, because kindness has a very transcendent quality to it. Kindness wants sweetness and beneficence for everyone and everything, including oneself. It is truly a universal quality.
2 replies on “Kindness”
We most often make the mistake of associating images to what it is we are feeling, in this case, your mom helping you get back on the bike. It is very important to know that yes, you did have a mom and you did/do want her to put you back on the bike AND…the actual dynamic is…getting on the bike, knowing whatever you have about that is not in any way associated with the suchness of getting back on the bike. Getting back on the bike requires you to drop any ideas of how it all might look and surrender to the experience of doing it alone, which is what is actually happening……Robert
very true robert. thank you.