Stillness 10-25: I was thinking about how to feel a sense of unconditional love for ourself (which is very hard!) and what came to me is remembering or acknowledging how pure and innocent we are in our essence. It’s difficult to acknowledge that, because throughout our lives we make so many mistakes, and do so many regrettable things or things we wished we hadn’t done, or spoken words we wish unsaid, but as I get older I am struck by how fleeting all that is. It’s as fleeting as clothes we used to wear but no longer suit us or fit us, or like a large-brimmed straw sun hat that really can’t be worn in a snowstorm, or keeping a beloved horse in a city apartment … If we’re wise we let go of the straw hat and the horse and remember that we are not attached to them, they don’t represent us. They are not who we are.
So we let these things go and instead trust in the next turn of the wheel of life. When we release the layers of crusty experience (imagine them to be like hats and horses), we discover we are pure spirit, pure light, and pure love … it’s a very hard practice to do but worthwhile. Start by trying to remember being rocked in someone’s arms before you could walk or being adored by a first love or playing with a beloved pet. Don’t think of yourself doing the loving, nor imagine that you are the object of who or what loves you: instead remember the feeling of being beloved. When you can embody being loved simply and only because of who you are and not because of anything you claim to be or speak about yourself, you’ll get a sense of what I’m talking about.
We spend our lives, in a sense, becoming impure, in that we clothe ourselves with more and more things, people, experiences, feelings, years, and places. Feeling our inward purity is a process of gently washing these away so they remain more as pictures and memories than as part of who we are. We might live in Rome, but we are not Rome. We might lose our temper, but we are neither our rage nor our equanimity. We are as pure of heart and spirit as we can remember.