I guess in the most direct way,
The opportunity that we have right now,
Even though it might be a little scary,
Is to invite ourselves to get deeply honest about our direct experience.
It's like we become profoundly open to answer the question,
Wait,
What's really going on here?
This has something to do with an opportunity to meet our deepest pain.
It surprises me that anyone shows up because in an adorable way,
We spend so much of our time running away from that.
And so I want to go slow here and be super super gentle and I hope you see why.
Because so often,
The closer we get to this deep pain,
The more sensitive we become.
And in that sensitivity,
It's quite easy to get offended,
It's quite easy to want to argue,
And it's not uncommon to find any method possible to run in the opposite direction.
But I'm presenting this just as an option to be here and maybe look in this direction.
Because I guess also one of my promises is that so much of the difficulty we experience in our everyday lives,
These difficulties are inspired by our unwillingness to meet what's really going on.
In this deep pain that we carry,
If left unaddressed,
If left unmet and unhealed,
It becomes a filter through which we look out into the world and distorts everything that we see.
And so in taking this time,
Not that it's required because you don't have to be here,
But I'm gonna kind of pretend like I'm just talking to myself,
Maybe a younger version of myself,
And just be radically honest about what I see is now the real issue or the deeper truth as to what's really going on here.
And maybe you'll resonate with that and maybe you won't.
That's all fine.
And immediately what arises for me is that if we're gonna make any real progress,
We have to start with something real.
Or something true.
Because again,
We're asking the question,
What's really going on?
Which is interesting too,
Because so often in our lives we're not really interested in what's really going on,
We just want what we want.
And we're racing toward it in some imaginary future and we don't really care about what the truth of the matter is.
We just want what we want.
But sooner or later in our confusion and in our pain and in our many attempts to avoid these things,
We see that it's not working.
And so there's a sincerity within us that questions,
Okay,
What is this?
Why do I feel this way?
Why do I have such difficulty in my everyday life or my relationships?
What's going on there?
And so of course this is a question of sincerity that now says,
I'm ready to look.
And so in this quest of understanding the nature of our experience and attempting to understand this pain that we carry around,
Can you recognize that this pain,
Even if you can't identify where it comes from,
Maybe you can,
Maybe there's a story wrapped around it.
But either way,
Can we agree that it is a felt sense of a withholding of love or a love that seems absent?
And this can be expressed in many different ways.
It could be seen as,
I feel like I'm not enough.
I feel like I'm broken.
It's almost like to perceive yourself in any way other than absolute wholeness.
Isn't it wild all the different stories we can tell about that,
But effectively all the stories are the same?
I wonder if you can see the truth of this because it's true.
And if we're going to make progress,
We have to acknowledge what's true.
