No one gets out of life without experiencing grief and loss. Sometimes the deepest grief comes when we look back at our life and think how much of our life was wasted! Wasted in anger. Wasted in fear. Wasted in confusion.
No one gets out of life without experiencing joy and delight. Sometimes the most delicious joy comes unexpectedly and from something unconsidered and passed over which has suddenly caught us by surprise!
Perhaps the most deeply felt grief is that we somehow choose to focus on pain instead of comfort, or laughter. Sometimes the exhilaration of unexpected joy happens when we simply turn our head and see what has been there all along!
I believe one of the qualities of Uncompromising Love is that we can choose to mark and grieve the loss, and mark and celebrate the joy, and also to recognize in our bones that both are passing and both are deserving of our unswerving gratitude.
The other side of joy is sorrow. Not the “opposite” of joy – it is the other side. Not “opposite” as to push against or overcome, but androgynous, encouraging us to experience the fullness of life.
Another dimension of sorrow is joy, just as another dimension of joy is sorrow. They are the warp and weft of the fabric of Life! they are two sides of the same coin, and as such a true koan* of life.
The experiences of sorrow and joy, grief and gratitude are not limited to physical or emotional life. We cannot “run” to “spiritual life” to avoid or escape them.
Quan Yin has stated that there is not a physical life and a spiritual life. They are the same life. There is, like Love, only Life. She shares, though rarely, that her heart hurts for us – for the fears which close our eyes and hearts to the outrageous beauty and exquisite joy of simply being alive!
So it is that Quan Yin and I wish you all the joys and sorrows, all the griefs and gratitudes of a full and wondrously rich Life!
Blessings, Charlotte
*Koan: Oxford Languages defines koan as: A paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used by Zen Buddhism, to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment.