All This and Heaven Too - Kait's Mixtape

A very dear friend of mine once said, "That's the thing about love, it comes in so many different flavours."

I remember when I used to measure love - used to see it as how much I could have for a person or thing. One thing meditation definitely does is change this perspective - especially Metta practice (Maitri). Love stops being something quantifiable because that implies that love is limited.

True, genuine, unhindered compassionate love is as limitless as the universe. 

And it's not easy to explain this without it coming out a bit funny. It sounds hippy-dippy cheesy when I try to explain to someone the very transformative experience of tapping into this sense of unbridled compassion.

I can use all the cliches - it's without conditions, no matter what. It does not excuse poor behaviour or cruel actions but has a sense of tenderness towards the confusion that leads to one human being causing pain to another intentionally or otherwise. It's embracing the fact that no one does anything because they want to feel worse and people aren't just one thing. No one is inherently 'bad' or 'evil'.

No one.

I say this emphatically even though it's not something I can explain. All I can say is my practice has taught me that I cannot and am unwilling to write off another human being. It doesn't mean I have to like everyone (You can love someone without liking them, ask any parent ever) and it doesn't mean I have to keep people who have done me harm or intend to do me harm in my life. It doesn't make me blind to the atrocious behaviour of some people on the planet. If anything, this kind of love makes me more aware of it and more able to be there for those who are at the hands of such treatment.

It mean my heart is open to possibilities and I feel more genuine in the world. This is because I know I am just as capable of acting unwisely, causing pain or harm to another consciously or unconsciously.

But regardless of what I write here, I don't think my words will ever truly capture what I'm pointing at. It doesn't mean I'll stop trying to explain it, to put something so ineffable down on paper or in a blog, but as the lyrics I chose say, nothing I could possibly write would ever be worth this feeling. You have to test it for yourself to know it.