Broken Patterns, Whole Hearts

Perhaps we deserve a cheerful bit too, after all this gloomy plodding by the damp and wintery valleys of death. Although it often feels “not very well”, as a routinely understating Englishman would say, we do acquire some experimental knowledge of our real self too.

First, the real self is extremely difficult to offend, and impossible to destroy. Actually, what feels anger, guilt, fear, what feels hurt, unworthy, rejected, abandoned, fragile is the inner infant, because it knows no modus operandi beyond satisfaction/frustration dilemma. But the soul is all-inclusive, capable of integrating all contradictions; this is its greatest strength.

I am not saying that the suffering caused by the false self is imaginary – bloody really painful it is, if you ask me. Nor am I saying that we “mustn’t” feel these things – this is meaningless, because we can’t help it anyway. People who try end up in asylums with some unclear diagnosis… What I mean is that to feel (=hurt, abandoned, rejected) and to be (= idem) are very different things.

Nobody can avoid feeling hurt: you can't choose not to feel pain when you receive a blow, you just do that’s all. But being hurt is more than that : it is acting out of this feeling; nursing and cultivating the wound; responding with a blow or tears, or both; responding in a destructive way, be it directed against others or against yourself. And this is a choice indeed that we do have, although we can not see it if we identify too closely with our feelings, and rely too much on the acquired automatisms.

This is why no loving heart can ever be broken, in fact. Your false self may convulse and crack; your soul will be only watching it go into pieces. The real self can stand any blow, and does not need nor want any defence. It is just standing there in the open, just “being there”, holding the inner infant in a compassionate embrace, and waiting for him to pass.