Looking at vulnerability... at allowing ourselves to be transparent.
Looking at how we mistake openness and kindness... for weakness...
Looking at our capacity for exploitation...
Looking at how we live in a world or armoring and self protection..
Looking at how far we still have to come to live from the heart.
Looking at the frailty of our human interactions... at how challenged we are to simply listen, to let someone else really sink in so we can understand them.
So often we are running what someone else says through our own filters and reacting to it instead.
So often we are looking for the opening, the way to get an upper hand, the hand grip that we can hang from to swing the interaction back to ourselves.
How often a conversation that could lead toward great connection through compassion goes astray into positioning, advice, judgement and accusation.
Do you ask questions to find out what your friend is trying to communicate, or do you make assumptions and step in to take the lead?
Do you let yourself feel what they are feeling?
Do you hold a place open for your friend to be in confusion and find their way or do you jump in with analysis or advice?
All of us are guilty of this.
At the very base this is a reminder to myself.
If it helps you remember too, so be it.
When we can listen with our hearts.. instead of our heads, we will find the connections we all so deeply want.
Just as the stars light up the sky, defining it spatially, every significant place you have ever been, emotionally and karmically, defines you, telling us who you are by where you have been. Through new experiences we are given the opportunity to learn and evolve but many of us defer to our old maps because we know the territory. When we do not learn from our experiences, and transcend them, we develop themes that create little eddies in the flow of our lifetimes, little black holes on our maps that draw us in, over and over again, until we have learned their lessons. When we are caught in these vortices our lives becomes dull and fated, as if we are caught on a hamster wheel, running but going nowhere. Our souls do not come through to repeat the same old tired dance steps, however, they are driven to evolve past who we have been, into who we are becoming. They come through with a purpose, they want to align with the highest destiny they can hold.