Wounding and Healing

When it comes to Love, one theme often emerges in those many stories I have heard from friends and strangers: the struggle to Love have wretched the relationship between them and those they Love. Like a spectator, I can objectively watch them as they grapple with the reality of Loving. It is a struggle to Love the other when Love itself becomes the cause of struggle. These people churn both intentions and actions of Love that continuously bring them the freedom of healing themselves, and the pains that wound their spirit. I witness them breathing out their suffering, so they can breathe in again their fresh memory of Love.

But whenever I face such struggle, it is hard to witness myself. It becomes harder for the fact that I am in the path of learning and embodying Love. For others who barely understand my struggle, it is easy to assume that I failed to learn Love since it is often a concept of an ideal and constant harmony. In every struggle, disharmony and misunderstanding are present, and Love is difficult to see through them.

I have always believe that Love is always about joy and pleasure and bliss. That is no further from truth, because Love flows toward those experiences. Yet in my exploration to Love’s uncharted regions, both with my relationships and with my daunting journey within myself, such belief can be easily blinding. When the Buddha first taught that life is suffering, it is no pessimistic assumption. Moment to moment, our life is wrought with conflicts, troubles, annoyances, all from pettiest to gravest. We all face an ultimate challenge – to find Love in the midst of these unwanted realities.

Love is the rhythm of wounding and healing.

In my humanness, I face these real wounds. Those wounds of not being Loving because at times I cannot do it. There is wounding of expressing Love that seems not enough for the people I Love. That this wounding provokes me to wound them unintentionally. It wounds when I am unable to put into words and actions what I am learning and teaching. It wounds me when others witness me in such a wounded state. It gets worse when such wounds have no words to express when they continue to deepen in silence and suffering. As I desperately attempt to escape and deny all these wounds, the result wounds me more.

I trust the wounds and surrender to the pain, for they do not stay as wounds forever and pain dissipates in time. They all heal. To trust the wounds is to surrender to healing and let its course take place. To leave them in silence as they begin their healing from its depth. To treat them with outside cure and wrap and hide them for awhile. If physical wounds never heal when exposed, so as the wounds of the spirit. And like our physical bodies, the spirit has as its own healing force within. So I also trust and surrender to this healing.

In my humanness, I welcome this healing of bringing back my strength when I completely embrace my weaknesses. From there I welcome healing as I honor the Love I can uniquely express, so I can grow the potential of what I am yet to express. I am healing as I forgive myself for hurting not just the people I Love but myself. In that healing, I am finding that Love is not just something I have to say or do, but simply what I have to be. As I rest my spirit in this peace and acceptance, healing heals me more.

Nobody can ever Love us completely and we cannot Love others completely either. We cannot ever expect them to do so in return. This truth is always deeply wounding, yet it is also a healing one. It is because Love is the rhythm of wounding and healing. When we recognize this truth in our wounding, we begin to bring out this power of healing within. So, as we face the wounds within us, we can finally heal them together. In healing of those wounds, our Love is always complete.