We are part of intra-active energy that keeps making things, including us, out of itself. The earth’s systems are born of an intelligence that includes us and our ability to choose meanings for our experiences. Understanding that life’s challenges are part of perfection is, well, hard work.
No human knows how to create a carrot or a cloud. They emerge from an invisible source which is everywhere we look, listen, smell, touch, taste, think. This spontaneous emergence we call life. Is it perfect?
When I burned my knees on the woodstove and felt pain, was that perfect? Isn’t pain part of the intelligence that guides me from doing that again?
Our judgments of perfect and imperfect have been shaped by experiences of pain and pleasure. Burning my skin brought into my experience an awareness that is perfect for fostering life. Be careful with the woodstove door when you’re in your bathrobe. If you aren’t careful you will suffer physical pain.
Perfection—experience without flaw—is what life actually is. We can and do call it by many names. No matter what name I apply to life, no matter what emotion or thought I experience, life continues according to its own laws. They are in charge of harmonizing all the interactions, from water to human imagination. The laws of life give themselves completely—lovingly—no matter who uses them. This is perfection.
Love is total giving of one’s self to the moment. The moment may range from pain to pleasure, yet remains totally giving of itself. Life, perfect life, includes any thought we apply to experience. When we accept experiences as perfect love, we are guided by them. When we resist experiences that have already happened we will be guided perfectly, by some form of physical, emotional or mental pain for as long as we resist.
This doesn’t mean I encourage burning my knees again. I accept the danger, pain, the lesson and proceed with an understanding that love includes suffering, and that suffering is part of perfection.
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