Until we have loved and until we have suffered, we all try to figure out life and death with our little monkey minds. But afterwards a Larger Source often opens up within us and we “think” and feel quite differently: “until knowing the love which is beyond all knowledge” (Ephesians 3:19), as Paul says. Thus Jesus would naturally teach something like he did, “This is my commandment: you must love one another!” (John 13:34).
Outside of loving, you will never know what you must know to fulfill your very destiny. Love is the only way to initially open the door of awareness and aliveness, and then suffering for that love keeps that door permanently open and available for ever greater growth. I guess that is why so many of our saints even seemed to seek suffering of some sort, and why we Christians worship a loving and suffering man on a cross. Love and necessary suffering are the two great doors to transformation, and we dare not leave them closed.
Excerpted and adapted from
“Opening the Door: Great Suffering and Great Love”
from The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See
