Saviour saviour where art thou?

“I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty.

You don't grasp the fact that what is most alive of all is inside your own house;
and you walk from one holy city to the next with a confused look!

Kabir will tell you the truth: go wherever you like, to Calcutta or Tibet;
if you can't find where your soul is hidden,
for you the world will never be real!”

- Kabir

"But you don't understand ... I want to save him" went a conversation I had with a friend this morning between coffee and kahlua bars. And like all conversations that raise more questions than it answers, i was left wondering what happened with Jesus then. If he indeed was trying to save us all, why did he end up being crucified for his troubles?

You cannot save anybody or help them fix their problems. You can only love them. When you love them unconditionally you're giving them the space they need to find themselves, feel affirmed as a valued person, you're giving them a reason to reach inside themselves to their deepest longings and you're giving them a lifeline to find their way back to the life they're created with their past decisions. You're giving them a reason to understand why they were hurting, and what they were doing to deal with their pain, and what they need to do to stop hurting ...

But how does one love somebody? Can one be deeply aware of somebody else if one is not in touch with their own nature or their motivations? Can we make the difficult decisions moment to moment that make life easier and easier if one has not learned to value one's own self enough to enforce the discipline required to stay true to the difficult path of sticking with a difficult decision? If one is not centered, if I don't  know my own feelings, my beliefs, then can I even begin to value what you value?

Wouldn't one of us then be in danger of being submerged by the other person's feelings, their needs, their ability to orchestrate one's emotions to meet their own ends? How can one love another when you have to stop being authentic and learn to guard what you're feeling or thinking because of what they are trying to do with us?

So to come back full circle, how can you save that person from their own manipulations? How can you help them fix their problems?

You can't. But you can begin by understanding what they mean to you. Why you are in a relationship with them in the first place. And what your priorities are in regard to this relationship. And how you feel about what they've done to you in the past. And what you want from the future from them. And if you find that your motives are clean, if you find that your needs are healthy, if you find that the way you feel about them is very healing to your past hurts or your future fears, then you are ready for love. Until then, you need to stay focused on what's going on within you, what you think about yourself, how you react and personalize what others say or do ...

The politics of relationships always begins and ends with understanding that the problems always begins ... and ends within us. When we seek to look outside or make somebody else the focus of our efforts, all we're doing is finding a way to run away from the mess inside ...

When you look in the mirror do you like what you see? When the mirror looks at you what does it see? Who's judging whom? And who is lying? When you stop seeing the surface of these truths, do you become aware of what's shaping the realities that binds you from finding love? Again I would like to quote Kabir to end this journal entry

“The guest is inside you, and also inside me;
you know the sprout is hidden inside the seed.
We are all struggling; none of us has gone far.
Let your arrogance go, and look around inside.

The blue sky opens out farther and farther,
the daily sense of failure goes away,
the damage I have done to myself fades,
a million suns come forward with light,
when I sit firmly in that world.

I hear bells ringing that no one has shaken,
inside "love" there is more joy than we know of,
rain pours down, although the sky is clear of clouds,
there are whole rivers of light.
The universe is shot through in all parts by a single sort of love.
How hard it is to feel that joy in all our four bodies!

Those who hope to be reasonable about it fail.
The arrogance of reason has separated us from that love.
With the word "reason" you already feel miles away.”

It is time to put up a love-swing!
Tie the body and then tie the mind so that they
swing between the arms of the Secret One you love,
Bring the water that falls from the clouds to your eyes,
and cover yourself inside entirely with the shadow of night.
Bring your face up close to his ear,
and then talk only about what you want deeply to happen.”