Understand the reason for your own and others’ suffering.
Having first cultivated a heartfelt wish to see others free of suffering (step 1), the second step to practicing Loving Kindness is to
understand the reason for our own and others’ suffering.
In the story, The All-Seeing Boy and the Blue Sky of Happiness, The All Seeing Boy learns that we experience sadness when we forget or ignore our own true nature. Our true nature is that we are not our thoughts. As the All-Seeing Boy’s mentor, Jason Carper Esq says to him: ‘The grey clouds of sad thoughts, are just like curtains covering a window. Just because it can’t be seen doesn’t mean it is not there.’
At all times, in the same way, the blue sky is always present behind the clouds, our true nature remains unbroken, pure and whole.
We only experience sadness and its subsequent suffering, when we choose to identify with our sad thoughts, and ignore or forget our true nature. This then is the second step to practicing loving kindness.
We begin to accept that our suffering is the result of forgetting that our True Nature of Self, is as simple, clear and expansive as the blue sky. It’s always there, even when we forget.
Thought for the day: Consider how your life would be, if you accepted that your True nature was as uncomplicated as a clear Blue Sky free from clouds?
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