you suffer because you forget who you are

“Within each of us is the soul of the whole.
When it breaks through our intellect it is genius.
When it breathes through our will it is virtue.
When it flows through our affection it is love.”
 
Emerson 

Our essence is this boundless heart-mind. When it flows through us unimpeded by our stuff (what is Buddhism are called the “adventitious contaminants of our mind stream”) it manifests as pure, unconditional love–bodhicitta.
 
We suffer because we forget who we are. We get caught up in smallness, and disconnect from the depth of who we are.  We limit the limitless, as Pema Chodron once remarked.
 
Meditation encourages us to not be afraid of ourselves and to not turn away from our source. This takes a deeply humbling, radical, non-judgmental honesty that gives us the courage to look at every aspect of ourselves.
 
Something has to break the habituated patterns of who we falsely take ourselves to be or just we keep cycling.
 
For me, the following poem, from an anonymous 12th century Buddhist woman, shows what this practice of radical honesty points to.
 
“Watching the moon at dawn
solitary, mid-sky,
I knew myself completely,
No part left behind.”
 
This is spiritual warrior practice! Meditation is a mind-turning practice. Practice orients us again and again back toward our own goodness, our own benevolent nature. And that intention to turn toward our goodness is the goodness in action.
 
So it can be as simple as saying from our hearts “May all being be happy.” If you don’t think about it and just say it from your heart, joy trickles it.
 
It’s magic.