Suffering is inherent in the world of form. Dying babies, war, hunger are just a few of the conditions the world offers in our school of learning. Many of us have shielded our heart with armor. The cost is “I can’t afford to love them.” We deaden ourselves to the great universal loving energy. The heart is encircled by thoughts built block by block by the mind of separation.

How can we bear the suffering without closing down the heart? The rich and the poor suffer alike, for perhaps different reasons. How can we stop using the mind from excusing the denial of suffering? We may think everything would be perfect if there wasn’t any suffering. Our perception closes off love and engenders fear in the presence of suffering. The great mystery has wisdom I can’t see due to the analytic mine and its limitation. It’s like we were standing in heaven and hell simultaneously. We fear vulnerability as the heart of compassion breaks wide open, yet by bearing the unbearable, the heart of compassion reveals itself.

Suffering uncovers what we have to do to free ourselves from the prison of the analytical mind. We do not have the moral right to take away another’s suffering. But if you are hungry I can feed you or invite you to fast. “The suffering” can be “the compassion” in action: not mine or yours but part of the whole of the human condition.

Read the newspaper or watch the news with an open heart. Denial of what is, is costly.

This moment has the full dimension of the broken heart, the grief, sadness and tears, along with the fragrance of the blooming rose, the celebrations, the kiss of your beloved. It all exists at once, in this moment. Wishing for our circumstances to be different shields the beauty of what is.

Tomaso’s Last Breath almost a year ago was a mantra of unity. I did not turn away. I bore the unbearable.

Breathe! You are alive. OM