Another parabox—joy and suffering, both come from love.
A friend shared this meditative reflection with me recently. I asked permission to post it.
I feel waves of suffering coming from within my being. It’s as if they are at regularly determined intervals and I am just riding them; allowing each one to bounce me up and then down. I am bobbing along this seemingly boundless ocean, but by bobbing I am not drowned. The waves continue the bobbing and bouncing, gradually becoming a gentle rocking as I more and more surrender into it. The pain is the strong undertow, ever present, appearing unexpectedly at times in my surrender; floating in this ocean of suffering created by love. When I look about all I see is the love and mercy of God. Endless ebbing and flowing love and mercy; deep swirling into deep. I float along, gently supported by the very water of life that I would drown in should I try to swim these waters on my own.
I feel it all so deeply. I come to realize that I have become porous. No longer must the ocean flow around me but it flows through me. That is why I feel the waves, why I feel the movement. I am becoming more and more real, more and more other. I watch as the once impenetrable skin of self allows evermore new depth of the other to make me hidden within it’s waves.
— asmn (10-9-04)