Just another heart beat trying to let love lead the way.

I just finished a 20min meditation, and thought to do some journaling about my experience.  I was reflecting on how many thoughts kept coming up, how difficult it was to find an open space of quiet between all the streaming of thought sound.  One of the thoughts I experienced was a judgment of my lack of stillness, which of course is a little hypocritical of the judgmental thought, considering it in itself is a reflection of the very target of it's criticism!  However, like a cool breeze on a hot day, the next thought rolled in: that mud is a part of the river.  The fact that I don't like mud (or thoughts in this instance) is a issue for the judgment to reconcile, but not a problem for the river.  All of the river is natural and worthy of my love and acceptance, not just the parts I choose to appreciate.  The mud, the sea lice, the clean water, the slimy algae top on hot days, the sea snakes, the rotting tree stumps, the reflection of the sky...these are all integral parts of the river, all there for me to make peace with, accept and hopefully even love.  Thoughts are an integral part of being human, the fact that they come up and bug me when I'm meditating is only a problem because I wage war with them.  If I choose to acknowledge and accept this part of myself, the issue is immediately resolved... and I might even create an experience of peaceful stillness, because the volume on self-loathing is turned down with each act of self-acceptance.  I was journaling about this experience the last line I wrote was "just another heart beat trying to let love lead the way".  And I thought, that's it, my heart beat is proof of being enough, each beat a reminder of my own worthiness of compassion and acceptance...and damn this might be a great blog topic:-).  There is so much we can choose to be critical about in this life, but really, most of it is just highlighting that which defines the limit of our love for ourselves or for others (or both).  As a human being, we are genetically predispositioned to want to fit in, as being a cast away was worse then death.  We keep a watchful eye for the limits of belonging, and are sure to create all sorts of preventative pain to try our hardest to repel ourselves from being identified with the "other" or evil.  It's my understanding that all religions and all the great thinkers of our times past and present reckoned compassion and love were the greatest of human achievements.  If this is really the case, then any time we feel loathing towards self or other, we should be able to remedy it with compassion, acceptance and love.  All of the things we judge are reflections of pieces of us we feel shame or fear of, and so try to keep buried and in check by judging others as a reminder of how bad these parts really are.  If you have a pulse, then you are as vulnerable and imperfect and still totally and completely worthy of acceptance and compassion as anyone else. 

Anyhow, time to eat and sleep and be merry.

Love and blessings and goodnight
xx