'The pain passes, but the beauty remains.'
Renoir to Matisse
Suppose you have a chronic affliction.
{Who doesn’t? } Suppose it distracts you
from your life and you don’t want it
in your life. You want to say, I am more
than this misery, I am more than this body.
Go ahead, then. Live through the pain but
create around it, create so much that is beautiful
and wonderful and marvelous, so much that is
meaningful and helpful to others and also to you,
create so that the pain will not have a chance
to tempt you. It will not be able to get a word or a groan in
long enough or deep enough to deceive you
into giving it your identity. Instead, you will be
what you create. And you will always be
what you create. And what you create will be
for those you love, for the strangers who will meet you
long after your pain has died forever with your recycled body,
and they will find your clear, radiantly healthy spirit,
and they will say, Thanks. This is lovely. This is just what I needed.
Even if you are unable to create with your hands,
create awareness with your mind, create insight,
create peace with your spirit by letting it be drawn out
and beyond the window pane into the fields and sky, the marketplace,
the festivals, across the oceans, to other planets and between the stars.
Remember the world that needs more love and love it,
love individual beings where you find them,
move your mind out into it and travel through it
with tender eyes and an appetite for everything marvelous.
Let the pain melt away with your mind’s love
in the form of self-transcending compassion,
even when you cannot smile or speak or think.
In your deep meditation that happens by intention below the pain,
will your burdens to become blessings, like compost in the earth,
like sooted snow in late winter, yielding to the sun.
One inner word is all it takes, as simple as, “Here, ” or
“Help, ” between breaths. It will be done.
You will have made your pain into something more,
a connection that keeps alive your bond with all living beings.
And from below, their own soul roots will quiver
with a feeling of having been strengthened and blessed.
You will have been part of everything, still contributing,
reverberating that one intention throughout time and space
beyond your own body, mind and mortal life.
And that will be your forever joy.
Even after there will be no more human beings to experience your spirit,
it will be part of the Song of the Universe to infinity,
part of the Holy One forever.
Renoir to Matisse
Suppose you have a chronic affliction.
{Who doesn’t? } Suppose it distracts you
from your life and you don’t want it
in your life. You want to say, I am more
than this misery, I am more than this body.
Go ahead, then. Live through the pain but
create around it, create so much that is beautiful
and wonderful and marvelous, so much that is
meaningful and helpful to others and also to you,
create so that the pain will not have a chance
to tempt you. It will not be able to get a word or a groan in
long enough or deep enough to deceive you
into giving it your identity. Instead, you will be
what you create. And you will always be
what you create. And what you create will be
for those you love, for the strangers who will meet you
long after your pain has died forever with your recycled body,
and they will find your clear, radiantly healthy spirit,
and they will say, Thanks. This is lovely. This is just what I needed.
Even if you are unable to create with your hands,
create awareness with your mind, create insight,
create peace with your spirit by letting it be drawn out
and beyond the window pane into the fields and sky, the marketplace,
the festivals, across the oceans, to other planets and between the stars.
Remember the world that needs more love and love it,
love individual beings where you find them,
move your mind out into it and travel through it
with tender eyes and an appetite for everything marvelous.
Let the pain melt away with your mind’s love
in the form of self-transcending compassion,
even when you cannot smile or speak or think.
In your deep meditation that happens by intention below the pain,
will your burdens to become blessings, like compost in the earth,
like sooted snow in late winter, yielding to the sun.
One inner word is all it takes, as simple as, “Here, ” or
“Help, ” between breaths. It will be done.
You will have made your pain into something more,
a connection that keeps alive your bond with all living beings.
And from below, their own soul roots will quiver
with a feeling of having been strengthened and blessed.
You will have been part of everything, still contributing,
reverberating that one intention throughout time and space
beyond your own body, mind and mortal life.
And that will be your forever joy.
Even after there will be no more human beings to experience your spirit,
it will be part of the Song of the Universe to infinity,
part of the Holy One forever.
- Alla Renée Bozarth,
from Learning to Dance in Limbo and Purgatory Papers
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