This is another profound little gem from The Five Invitations by Frank Ostaseski. — Molly
Life begins with love, is maintained with love,
and ends with love. — Tsoknyi Rinpoche
When I was in my late teens, I put my Red Cross lifesaving certificate to work teaching swimming to children with severe disabilities. Jasmine was a beautiful sixteen-year-old who would have been the high school homecoming queen if she hadn't had spina bifida. The way the disease contorted her body made her too self-conscious to put on a bathing suit and join us in the pool. But she loved to watch, make wisecracks, and flirt.
I spent months patiently encouraging her to give swimming a try. Each day, I tried to playfully reflect back to her the strength, courage, sense of adventure, and beauty I saw radiating from within her. As the poet Galway Kinnell wrote, "Sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness."
One day, Jasmine slipped out of her wheelchair and onto the raised marble ledge of the pool. Weeks later, she took off her braces and heavy orthopedic shoes to dip her toes in the water. And after six months, she showed up in her turquoise bathing suit. Without prompting, she maneuvered her twisted, skinny legs onto the pool's edge, called me closer, and with a huge smile leaped into my arms like a seven-year-old child.
***
In the horror of my own suffering, I always had held out hope that one day someone would rescue me. I had imagined that I would be saved by love coming toward me. Just the opposite. I was rescued when love came through me. I discovered love through acts of kindness ... not offered to me, but coming from me. I think of the words of the late John O'Donohue, who wrote, "We do not need to go out and find love; rather, we need to be still and let love discover us."
The experience with Jasmine and the other disabled kids unlocked a compassion hidden deep in the heart of my suffering. I discovered an essential love that was reliable, vast, and undamaged. This became a source of true support, my steadfast guide throughout many years of sometimes amazing, sometimes trying experiences of hospice care.
Love has been my mentor. Love itself has taught me to love...
Love is what helps us to accept ourselves, our lives, and other people as is. When something unwanted — such as death, illness, loss of a job or relationship — approaches, it is natural for fear to arise. In such moments, we need to find some part of us that is not afraid.
When you are afraid, don't you know that you are afraid? Then that means that some part of you, the part that is witnessing your fear, is not afraid. It is not caught by the fear. We can learn to relate to difficult thoughts, strong emotions, or challenging circumstances from the vantage point of the witness, of loving awareness. When we do, it all becomes a lot more workable.
We love the positive experiences of our lives. It's relatively easy to accept them without questioning their origins. But one of love's most exquisite capacities is its ability to embrace whatever it comes into contact with — even if, at first glance, the situation, experience, or person seems unlovable. Love has its own freedom. When we feel love, it doesn't seem to concern itself with who or what we should love. Loving awareness helps us to embrace our sadness, loneliness, fear, depression, and physical pain. It shines a light in the darkness and reveals the actual sources of our suffering.
Love is not a gated community. Everyone and every part of ourselves is welcome. "No part left out," they say in Zen. This is the receptive function of love...
As people come closer to death, I have found that only two questions really matter to them: "Am I loved?" and "Did I love well?" ...
Rest in love.
When people are sick or wounded, just love them. Love them until they can love themselves again. This has worked for me. It makes me wonder if maybe love really is the best medicine.
Love is the very human quality that allows us to welcome everything, not just what we prefer most. Love is the motivation that enables us to move toward fear — not in order to conquer it, but in order to include it so that we might learn from it. In love, there is no separation. Caring for all things is therefore a natural action of love. Nothing remains isolated from our care.
Why is love the quality that allows us to welcome everything? When we view reality from the vantage point of our personalities — from a small, separate self — we are constantly looking for what distinguishes us from one another. But when we live from the vantage point of boundless love, we begin to see all the points of connection that join us together.
Love breeds love.
— Frank Ostaseski
Excerpted from The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death
Can Teach Us About Living Fully
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