Thursday, July 31, 2008 The Compassionate Heart I think that the hardest part about being a human being is finding the compassionate heart. We all have so many expectations that we carry with us into every situation and when they aren't met, when people let us down, when we don't get the result we expect or desire or feel we deserve, it's very hard not to feel bruised. It's very hard to love people when they aren't treating us the way we want them to, it's far easier to love those who somehow manage to meet our expectations. The thing is, we're all going into situations with our own individual expectations and more often than not, those expectations do not coalesce. We all have our own elaborate personal mythology and it colors everything we do. No two people will ever see the same thing in the exactly same way. Think about the numerous times in your life you've had a plan or a wish or a desire and the other person completely let you down. Was that their fault, really? Particularly if you never even told them what you wanted?

Is it possible to do good things and not on some level feel we should be rewarded, appreciated, loved and accepted merely because we did good things? I think it's very hard. Whether we think on some level we'll be rewarded by gratitude or karma or God or the good luck fairy, how often do we do good things just to do them and immediatly release our attachment to the results? How often are there invisible strings attached to our good deeds and how easily do those strings trip us up? How often are we disappointed in life because people don't react to what we do in the way we expected?

Real love is unconditional. It expects nothing in return. It doesn't judge and it has no capacity for expectation. It just is, infinite and powerful and all encompassing.

The path to joy is to reach a state where we do good things merely because that is the right thing to do and we love everyone including and especially those who let us down. We have to come to understand down to the core of our being that no one will ever meet our expectations fully and that living in expectation is a sure fire ticket to disappointment. We have to know that people around us have expectations we can never possibly meet, even if we try, and knowing that we have to understand that we will disappoint them no matter what we do and that's part of the deal. We should be kind anyway. If we can stop carrying our unspoken expectations into every relationship, we can quite possibly know true joy. True joy comes from knowing that the love you make returns to you ten fold and more importantly expands from you in ways you can't begin to perceive. When we reach that state of true joy in all that we do, we have found the compassionate heart.

Namaste
Margot

PS: I loaded my survey into Survey Monkey yesterday so please if you have a moment and can go take it here. It will help me immensely as I work on some new directions and maybe it will result in some innovative new products and approaches to crafting.