The hardest decisions aren't between pain and peace.
They're between two kinds of pain. Stay, and it costs you.
Leave, and it costs you. Speak, and it'll hurt.
Stay silent, and it'll also hurt.
Like staying in a relationship where you're loved
but not emotionally met. Or leaving, knowing you'll
miss the way they made your coffee or held your hand
in the grocery store and made you belly laugh until
you cried.
What makes these decissions so tough is that we've
been thaught to believe that the right choice is the one
that feels good, and that clarity of making the right choice
will come with a sense of calm and peace.
But a lot of the time there's no frictionless path.
There's just choosing the pain. You're more willing to hold
that feels most honest.
It's choosing the version of discomfort that lets yourself
live with yourself afterward.
And we don't really talk about this. I certainly don't feel
prepped for a lot of hard decisions I've had to make,
especially not in this curated, convenience driven
virtual world where, you know we expect everything to be
optimized and clean and obvious, but real life is just
murkier than that and emotionally maturing is less
about finding the right decision and more about building
the capacity to sit in tension long enough to make one.
So what I've come to understand is the question really
becomes, can you build a nerveous system strong enough
to stay with what hurts without abandoning what matters,
so that when life throws you really, really hard decisions,
you're equipped not to go in survival mode and collapse
or freak out, but actually keep your head on your shoulders
and navigate whatever the tension presented will be.

Baya Voce

I have laughed and I have been silent.
There were days I looked at the future with courage, believing something good was waiting for me. And there were days I walked through life without desire, carrying myself forward without asking for anything. Sometimes I look within and wonder if hope still lives there, quiet but alive.

But this much I know. I have not given up on life. I am not bitter. I still choose to live. Not because it is easy, but because it is right. I do not know whether this wish to live is desire or something older carried through time. But I know this. There is no hatred in me. No envy. No resentment.

That is why I still stand. Calm. Unbroken. Able to lift my eyes to the night sky and look at the moon and the stars, not as a man who has fallen, but as one who remains.

—Chamod Senevirathne

The ability to consciously open the heart is the most
important skill needed for an evolving relationship.

If you want an evolving relationship, one where growth,
healing and awakening are central to the experience of
intimacy… it needs to be created as a craft.

Relationship must be something you apply yourself to,
in order to master. With an entire set of necessary
skills to practice… regulation, boundaries, communication,
polarity, conflict....the list goes on.

One of the hardest things about relationships is that
the deeper you go in intimacy, the more the impacts to
the heart hurt.

Because nobody is perfect all the time.
You fuck up... you react.. you get into conflict....
you say hurtful things… you demand to much..

Hurt is inevitable.

When we are hurt, the heart naturally closes in response.

We protect ourselves.
We armour up.
Close down.
Withdraw.

Yet the moment the heart closes, the intimacy stops flowing.

And when the intimacy stops flowing, the relationship begins
to dry out.

Too long without the flow of love and intimacy, and the connection
shrivels and cracks like the bed of an empty desert lake.

For a relationship to be resilient we must be able to find
a way to re-open the heart after impact.

Because impact is natural
difficults are normal.

An evolving couple finds their way though the though times…

They repair and reconnect
They open their hearts again.
And they do it consciously.

Understanding
Forgiveness
Letting go.

If the resilience to weather the storms is weaker
that the intent to find love through them….
a relationship cannot last.

Until we develop consciousness our hearts are purely reactive.
They open and close without any control.

Yet as we develop consciousness we realise…
that we have a choice. We can open the heart again.

We can love again.

And together we become capable of rising to higher levels.

And it's necessary.

When we open our heart we fill ourselve with forgiveness,
empathy, compassion and love.

And all the resentment drains away.

If you want to be able to really go as far as you can in
a relationship.

This skill is needed.

@evolverelating

If you only knew how much I cried
when I decided to distance myself from you.
How I still wanted to be with you.
But I knew I couldn't. I don't think you'll
ever understand how much it took out of me.
You don't know how hurt and broken I was
because of the decision I made.
The decision to let you go, even though
I didn't want to. But I had to.

I still remember how out first conversation started.
I still recall how wide my smile was whenever we talked.
The way you made me feel safe.
That was when I realized I had fallen for you.
I loved you more than you ever knew.
And I feared it.
Losing you when I loved you the most, was the hardest
thing I've ever had to do.
It was hard to understand how something that felt
so right could go so wrong.

Maybe for you, we were nothing.
But for me, you're everything.

The best decision I've ever made
was to be quiet. I have nothing
to prove to people who have already
made up their minds. I'm not convincing
anyone that I'm a great person.
I'm not fixing what I didn't break.
I'm not fighting for anyone to see
my worth.
Whatever you do is on you. Just hope
you don't regret it. As for me, I'm
moving toward peace.

@goodmindstribe

Most of us are trying to dissolve our Ego.
But the Ego cannot be dissolved using will-power.
Using will-power to dissolve the Ego creates
spiritual Ego.

Spiritual Ego is an image of oneself as the
egoless person. So one is chasing a projection,
an image instead of change of behavior.
Therefore, the old egoic behavior simply
continues, with an image of egolessness on top.

This is how you get clever spiritual teachers
who convince themselves of being enlightened,
and lure others into their trap. Most of them
are full of shit.
Especially those who have a lot of wealth and
political power.

The Ego can't be dissolved. It can only be
observed and integrated. To integrate your
Ego is to bring together conflicting parts
of your identity together. It is to know
why you fear the person you love, and why
you chase pleasures, while also chasing enlightment.

Without doing this, the Ego remains conflicted
and confused. You say one thing, and do another.
This conflict resolves with integration between
the three parts of the Ego.

The Ego is divided into three parts.
The Self-protection, the Self-image and the
True-self.

Self-projection is who I show the world,
Self-image is who I think I am, and the true-
self who I actually am.

The greater the self-awareness, the greater
the overlap in the three selves.

The lesser the self-awareness, the less is
the overlap.

The path to integration begins with intense
self-observations from moment to moment.
And in such observation having an insight.

The Insight into why you have conflicting
thoughts, creates clarity. That clarity creates
Integration.

For example, when I am angry, and observe that
anger. I sometimes notice I am not angry at another,
I am only afraid of an unkown future. So I try
to control that fear, and that control manifests
as anger towards them.

This insight dissolves anger and creates integration.

You observe and understand a lot. Some you can't.
And to that, you Surrender. In Surrender, the battle
of opposites comes to an end.

That which refused to change begins to undergo a
spontaneous transformation. Where there was once
pain, there is now passion. Where there was fear,
there is now flow, where there was darkness, there
is light.

When there are no pretenses, no judgements, no labels
inwardly, when all of you becomes one unified whole,
without any divisions or conflict, the Ego has found
integration. Thought becomes cleard, definite and precise.

An Integrated Ego takes action without the influence of
fear or desire. Which is why it takes right action that
is suited to the moment and intuition, it acts from
uncompromising morality and compassion.

This is why whatever it chooses to do, spread joy,
love and healing in the world.

findingawareness