Embracing Life is an all-inclusive experience.  The intellect selects certain aspects of Life and calls them "good" or "bad."  The "good" is to be sought after, the "bad" is to be avoided.  Humans have been notorious for seeking escapes.  Religions and spiritual disciplines are mostly about escape, about finding a way to bypass the suffering in Life, the pain.  The intellect observes the problems, the conditions, which amount to suffering and pain, wars, poverty, disease, death.  The outlook appears grim to the intellect, and so it is no wonder that the body, that manifestation of Life that you are, has so much resistance.  The body is laden with beliefs that see only a life of struggle, survival, and then death.
 
As I observe Life, I recognize the resistance that is mostly inherent in the human condition; resistance to, and the fear of, the things that might be.  Sure enough, that fear brings about reality, and then the intellect says, "I knew that was going to happen."  It is no wonder then that most spiritual paths offer some form of escape, some promise of rising above Life so that you need not suffer or experience pain.  But if you will really look at Life, you will see that it is full of pain, indifference, calamities, accidents, problems, peppered with joy here and there.  The intellect is adept at singling out the moments of joy and forgetting the pain, which is another subtle form of escape.
 
We have medicines we take for pain, therapies we do for pain.  I am not saying that pain is a good thing.  Pain just is.  It is part of Life.  If there weren't so much resistance to pain, it would not be such a problem.  When you realize that Life is actually about embracing Is-ness, what-is, what is taking place, and that Life teaches you how to be with all situations if you pay attention, a new experience can unfold.  If you are busy escaping, waiting for some other time, some other place, some other existence, not allowing, you miss what Life has to teach. 
 
If you look back at your life, you see all the time and energy you spent escaping, dulling the senses in whatever way you could, distracting yourself in whatever manner you could.  Everybody is doing it.  It is human nature. No one likes to suffer.  But perhaps suffering is just the consequence of resistance or attachment.  If somehow you could embrace Life-as-it-is, if somehow you could acknowledge that Life is purpose, Life is possibilities, Life is evolution, change could occur.
 
History shows that the most painful situations have also created the greatest leaps in evolution.  The problems in Life inspire the Being to transcend them, go beyond them, see a way through them, and not to escape them.  It is a matter of realizing that the evolutionary process uses everything in the moment to achieve the next level of existence.  This has often been misinterpreted by people to mean that Life is about survival and escape.  Life actually is about embracing Is-ness, being with what-is.  You have physical pain, emotional pain; pain is there.  If you learn the lesson of pain, the brain will evolve.  If you do not try to escape pain, but instead look at it, be with it, see what it is saying, see what it is, you will learn something about it.
 
I see that Life is always trying to awaken, in every cell.  Beliefs that say, "this life is not it," or "the body is an illusion," or "there is some other time and place that will be far better than now, and you must endure this in order to get to that," are such an obstacle to that awakening!  Those kinds of belief are the heart and core of human suffering. 
 
What would happen if, instead of resisting, or longing for some other state, one could be with what-is wholeheartedly?  This doesn't mean you are going to enjoy it, but it does mean not to dislike it, not to avoid it, but to embrace it.  So much energy goes into resistance that it actually compounds the problem.  It is quite surprising when you truly embrace something, how quickly it diminishes.  You don't embrace it in order to have it diminish; you embrace it because it is there. 

Simplistically speaking, you are a synergy of atoms.  The body is made of atoms which form various components, and all of it is Life working for some purpose, mainly to express.  In our world, there is so much shame and guilt about being who you are.  To the intellect, you are never sufficient, or good enough; you are lacking.   And so you feel guilty, you feel ashamed, unworthy, and you attempt to compensate for that, or escape it.  It is a crime that religions have worked upon humanity, saying that humans are bad, evil, sinful, that there is something to be removed, to be punished. 
 
It is a crime for spiritual systems to teach avoidance and escape, to teach "this isn't it, the body is an illusion."  It is a denial of the very power of Life.  That is the problem for humanity: the denial of the power that Life is.  It is also a denial of one's abilities to be with, to embrace Life wholeheartedly.  You don't want to be in pain, so you try to escape it.  If you wanted to be in pain, that would be an escape too.  But there is a middle ground, a place of balance where you can allow the pain to teach what it has to teach.
 
Pain is always about something.  It can be very subtle, hidden, mysterious, but it is always about something.  If you spend your energy and time trying to escape it, you inadvertently give the pain more power.  But if you look at it head-on, saying "Oh, what are you about, what are you trying to say," evolution can occur. 
 
The poor body carries this burden of Life, often without any appreciation, without any concern, just being taken for granted.  "Oh," the belief says, "it is just the body, one day I'll be discarding it, and I will be on my way."  Can you imagine how the body feels about that sort of belief? It is no wonder that the physical body causes so many problems.  How else can the body feel when it is regarded as something that will one day be thrown on the garbage heap in exchange for something better?
 
What if you start appreciating, embracing, encouraging, looking at, being with the body that you are?  Not being ashamed of it, or fearful of it, or seeing it as a problem, but seeing it as Life itself happening. 
 
As I move through this existence, embracing Life-as-it-is, the body as-it-is, I am learning everything about Life.  The body has taught everything about Life!  You just have to listen, pay attention, not seek escape, and not be attached.  You can see how Life penetrates to the very cell, the core, how it functions energetically as waves and particles moving throughout the system.  Life doesn't stop where the intellect stops; it doesn't stop at your skin.  It is a continuous flowing energy matrix.  Humans know very little about the system.  Very few humans recognize how it is all connected.  These individual components that form the corporeal structure are the more solid aspects of Life, and there are less solid aspects of Life that extend beyond the skin.  These are not contained in the intellect's agenda, but that is where feeling-knowing takes place.  Feeling-knowing does not try to escape the body; it works with the situations. 
 
Great problems arise when the intellect constantly tries to keep the body separate, to control it.  There is so much assistance for the human condition if you just become open to the possibility of Life.  There are ways of knowing and experiencing more of Life if you can just be open to the possibility, and not look at yourself as being limited as a body, but see it as an experience.  Individual experiences are unique, but through the connection with Life, essentially you are having all experiences simultaneously.  The Consciousness is really one; there is no other, no inside or outside.  It is Life, and it is all connected.  You are now just aware of those connections that are pertinent to your livelihood, your existence, but the brain has the capability of being aware of the greater connections, the connections that have been mostly avoided by humans.  Humans have not wanted to feel the consequences of their negativities, their sharp tongues, their criticisms, their judgments. 
 
If you are criticizing someone, who is it that you are criticizing?  If you can isolate yourself and be separate, you are criticizing the other, but that is a great illusion.  You are actually criticizing Life, the Life that you are.  So you are criticizing yourself, you are being mean to you, and you can be sure that the body (you) is going to rebel.  You heap tons of problems upon yourself by your self-judgments. 
 
Don't be guilty about it.  Your experience would have been different if, when you were born, you had been informed that, "You are a pinpoint of Life existence, and you will grow to function as a human being, but you will always be at one with the whole of Life, you will not be alone or separate.  You will be able to act independently and uniquely, for that is how you gain wisdom, the knowledge of Life, but you are not to lose sight of Life itself.  You are to embrace the pinpoint of existence that you are, and the rest of Life."  But who was told that when they were born?  You instead learned everything through struggle, trying to survive.  That is the way Life has been, because humans have been in a state or gross ignorance of the very Life that they are, with great imaginings, great escapes, longings, desires for something other than this. 
 
What happens if you suddenly turn around and just desire who you are?  Just love being you?  No matter how you look, how you smell, how you taste, how you act, just love who you are.  If you can't love who you are, then maybe you can accept who you are.  Life doesn't make junk, so you cannot be faulty, you cannot be diminished.
 
To live in a state of compassion is to live in a state of acceptance of Is-ness.  This is not complacency.  Complacency is an attribute of the intellect.  The intellect is not present.  You cannot be complacent when you are present.  You learn compassion, you accept the way things are from a place of power, not powerlessness.  You realize you have a great effect on Life when you are in a state of knowing.  When you are in a state of confusion, you join the confused crowds.  But when you move into a state of knowing, presence, being, you see pain for what it is, "Yes, I see you there; you obviously have some reason for being; maybe wisdom and knowledge will come about, and we will understand why you are there, we will see what you are saying."

Most of humans' suffering is a consequence of their beliefs and concepts, the way they have been.  You are not alone in that.  The whole world is indifferent, self-centered, separate, egotistic, trying to survive.  The belief has been:  "My survival is dependent on your demise."  That is not survival.  True survival means that my survival is dependent on your survival; my quality of life is dependent upon your quality of life.  That is compassion.  That is the actuality.  That is what Life is trying to teach.  What you do to another you to do yourself.  Any disharmony in Life disrupts the whole universe.
 
Pain can be experienced from a place of peace rather than resistance or separation.  You can look at it.  This doesn't mean that you should not try to alleviate the pain.  It is only saying that you should be conscious of the pain; not unduly focusing on it or resisting it, but not ignoring it either. When you can just be present, you begin to understand pain, understand how it comes up; you may even see why it comes up.
 
Whether we like it or not, we are empathic beings, we are connected.  Some people have better insulation than others.  Some of us don't have any insulation; we feel everything that is happening in the whole world.  Others have more insulation and don't feel as much.  That doesn't mean anything; it is just more or less.  But when you are very empathic, when you feel everything, it is more difficult for you to understand pain, because it could be your pain or someone else's pain that you are feeling.  But ultimately, who is the "someone else" but Life, The Consciousness?  When you don't resist pain, it becomes very natural to feel it.
 
Pain signals the body to do something.  There is a physical intelligence to the body that generally knows what to do in all situations, if it is not hampered.  If you are not full of beliefs and concepts of escape or attachment, if you don't hold to "this isn't it," your body can deal very well with whatever pain comes up.
 
My sensitivity is so increased that I feel the world all the time now.  I feel the earth all the time.  Sometimes I would prefer not to feel it, because it hurts.  Earthquakes give me migraine headaches.  This simply validates the connection in Life.  It says, "When the earth is upset, you are going to be upset physically.  When the earth is shaking, you are going to shake."  It is all connected.  I don't flee from those things.  I say, "Well, OK, this is what is happening now."  It eventually passes.  And maybe in some small way, I am taking on some of the brunt of the pain, thereby lessening it to a certain extent.
 
Life brings the opportunities for an individual to change, and it is up to the individual to make the necessary changes.  Life inspires, encourages, points out possibilities, but humans are notorious for not listening, not paying attention, avoiding and escaping.  And so Life comes around again and hits a little harder the next time.  Pain gets people's attention.  The calamities in history have brought people together, helping them to go beyond their individual agendas.
 
There is no point in feeling guilty about the pain you experience.  Who is going to punish you?  "God" and "the devil" are figments of people's imagination, invented to control people, and the control has not worked.  If right now people would remove "God" from their thinking, the Jews, the Muslims, the Christians and the Hindus would not have anything to fight about.  What kind of world would it be then?
 
What kind of world would it be if people embraced the pain in their life, instead of trying to put blame and guilt on someone else?  If people were to embrace it and see what it is, see what it has to say, what it teaches about Life, about all the other unique expressions of the same Life that each of us is?  We could live on this planet, and honor and respect all unique expressions without judgment, we could see our neighbor as ourself, we would not need borders, we could live as people with uniquenesses.  The new species will be that way.  The new species will have nothing to do with division, nothing to do with the "other." 
 
The new species is who you are becoming.  The new species is not dependent on the old dying out.  The new species is already within you, it is becoming, evolving.  There is only a simple thing that needs to be done:  Embrace it, allow your brain to fast-forward in its evolution.  Use the pain to motivate transformation, to see what it is. top of page

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