compassion and clarity

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Compassion and clarity ... maybe these two are the baseline requirements of a spiritual practice ... a life practice ... a life.

I don't know about anyone else, but for me, the effort to be at home with these two aspects is not always easy: I can grow suspicious and downright cranky in the face of my own efforts ... and the efforts of others.

Did you ever find yourself in the company of someone who positively oozed 'compassion?' Butter wouldn't melt in their mouths. So goody-two-shoes it makes you want to puke? Everything is just 'oneness,' so there's no need to differentiate this from that or take offense or speak out boldly.

Ick.

And then there's the other end of the spectrum -- everything has a deeeeep meaning, is profound, is solemnly in need of a severe haircut, is crystalline and factual and as-it-is. Ramrod straight and never heard a good dirty joke they couldn't refrain from laughing at. No duality. Emptiness. Rigid as Viagra. Spiritual life is important.

Ick.

The ick's, for me, just seem to refer to my own unwillingness to relax; to let life unfold without my imagined help; to pay attention but not grasp; to stop imagining I could possibly be good or better ... or, in some secret place, best.

As inescapable imperatives, clarity and compassion are not two things. Each is the other, though of course time passes. To know what they are escapes me.

But it does seem that they work a lot better when I stop interrupting.
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