Life is a really hard school - you earn credits by surviving the lessons. And sometimes it feels like that - just surviving. But eventually things get better and you get stronger and the best help is just talking and sharing your pain and experience with others. I was so manic depressive when I was younger and I'm still afraid of my emotions - but not like I was back then. Then it seemed like a bottomless pit I could never get out of, now I know it will pass and praying and being with some good people can get you through the bad days. We are here to learn about love, which always seemed kind of abstract to me - you know "God is Love" - what does that mean? If God is love why does God cause so much pain? Because that is the only real way to learn about love. Reading books can direct your mind but the deep longing in our soul is what brings us to God. And our pain is that longing -
that longing for wholeness -
that longing for peace
that longing to be part of love and to not be separate from it.
And this lesson will always be here - we cannot escape it, we cannot "die", so we have to grow. We can let ourselves be "stuck" in our sorrow and no one can really get us out of it but ourselves. God is watching and God helps indirectly by giving us what we really need to grow - but we have to take the lesson - our own private lesson, and face it. And there is no "judgement", no one can see anothers heart and mind. No one can claim your pain but yourself. No one can say face it now. For you will face it when you are ready to face it; it can free you and bring you peace. Like crying when there is nothing left to do and asking God for help eases the pain. Right now it may seem like love is the illusion and Pain is the reality that seemingly lasts forever. But love is infinite and forever - and our souls when they have been burned by the fire of loves pain - like walking across burning coals to get to the other side - we will know the infinite joy and peace that is love. It is so hard on this side of the "wall of illusion" to know the truth of love, but life seems to teach us the greatest lesson at the moment of greatest pain - that in the depths of our pain lies the joy of our love, and that love is immortal and those we truly love will be with us always. And we will meet again - soon enough when we walk through the veil of death into that place where we've known each other forever and always. Before we were born we choose what lessons we need from this life, and we all share the lesson of losing those we love, harder even than losing our own lives. So much pain yet so much to gain - to be a witness of love, to be the eyes of love, to be a part of the experience of love. "We are created by love, for love, we are the expression of love - we are love." We are a part of God's love but we cannot see it. Like we are born blind and must learn to see. We would take all the obstacles of pain from the path of our child - but this pain is what cracks open the shell of this earthly illusion, and shows us our spiritual nature. We, each of us need our pain to grow from. If our pain seems too much for one lifetime remember we choose it before we were born because we wanted to learn that much in this lifetime. And if we can't do it now we can do it next time, or the time after that. But the sooner we learn what we came here to learn the sooner we get to that place of peace and bliss. June