Love and Other Stuff
Courting the Source
We often make the mistake of thinking that other people are here to make us happy. In fact, nobody’s here to make us happy.
You want to be happy, then you must make yourself happy. And if you can do that, then you’ll be happy.
Maybe you want people to love you. That’s a tall order too, because nobody’s here to love you either. If you want people to love you, then practice loving people. In this way, you show by example what love feels like… and trust me, people will get the message.
Similarly, if you want to have more fun, then let laughter be your teacher, because your body knows what’s funny, before you do… so if you can learn to look at life in that funny kind of way, then you’ll see, it’s regularly hilarious… and so are you.
The thing is, you can’t be attached to outcomes. Because you don’t know what you’re doing, and so you don’t know how to get to where you’re going, except by surrendering to what’s right in front of you, and then by working with that until it turns into something else. And then, if you do that a whole bunch of times, you grow more used to it, until you realize that that’s the whole game… just to be in the now and then to move forward into the future, whatever that might be, and irrespective of where that might lead you.
Also, nobody’s here to work through your stuff either. Everybody’s here to work through their own stuff, and on that score, you do the best you can, and you go through all the countless mistakes you make, and all the crap that you put on other people, and then one day, maybe you come to see it’s just you and God here, and it’s only that glorious being/force of nature, that you’ve got to work it out with… and no one else.
•••
We all get lucky more or less to some degree. Some of us have a hard road. Some of us have a super hard road. Some of us have it easier. I don’t know why that is. I just know it’s tough for many people, and then circumstances intervene and make it even harder, oftentimes for no rhyme or reason we can point to. Just because.
Don’t make the mistake of trying to make it easier for yourself. You’re trying to make it more real. You’re trying to make yourself more present. You’re trying to make it all happen with more unplanned and unpredictable force and energy.
You want something to be different, then go make it so, and to the degree that you do that, you’ll be freer of attachment, at which point maybe you realize that you’re just making this beautiful thing up as best you can, for as long as you can, until you can’t any longer, and then that’s it… and then something else takes the place of this life, but you’ll have to wait until you get there, to know what that is.
What we do know is that life happens quickly, so you would be well-advised to always pay very close attention.
Sure, there are shortcuts and people take them all the time, but you know what? You don’t want to take shortcuts. You want to plow right through the center of this life. You want to barrel right down the middle of the road, irrespective of how much it hurts.
Along the way, keep acquiring more detailed memories. Hold them close to your heart, because your story is contained in them, and if you lose them, or if they lose you, then in that way, you become a stranger, even to that most precious part of yourself.
I’ve seen it happen to the best of them. They just forget themselves, and then they forget where they’ve been, and what they’ve done, and who they knew and how it felt. And that is enough to turn any farcical light-hearted comedy, into a ponderous burdensome tragedy. Don’t let it happen to you.
•••
Bottom line, you want to experience it all. You don’t want to settle for the “lite” version of anything. You want to live your life as if it’s a great and unique work of art, even if it’s just a series of doodles and paint blobs, done to the sound of babies’ laughter.
Remember, it’s not the output that matters; it’s the input … and that’s you, your awareness, your consciousness, you are God’s little mirror - that tiny drop of water that contains the infinite ocean.
And of course, you want to love as best you can. You want to forgive as much as possible, and you want to let go and not worry about healing anybody, least of all yourself.
“Fixing yourself” is really hard work, because it assumes that you are broken, which in most cases is just not true. What we often are ,is distracted and confused.. so if you just reimagine yourself in stronger, more invincible ways, and don’t give up, but rather keep on going, you’ll see that things work out. God wants you to be noble, and your angel wants you to be moral and fearless. That can take a while… so be patient.
If you hang in there long enough though, you’ll come to see that the sweetest place for you to spend your time is in silence or in nature… in meditation or prayer, because these practices help create within you a strong but unprotected and receptive space, where you can come to see how very little you know… and that’s why you pray, so that you can ask for help. That’s a useful thing to do, because in that way, God and all the merry angels can do something for you, which they wouldn’t be able to do, unless you asked for it. So don’t be an idjit… ASK for it!
And that’s pretty much all I know, so I’ll just share it with you here, and you can make of it what you will… because what else you gonna do with it? … Ha!
Love, and blessings…


Great piece Mark. One of your very best pieces. Ram Dass would be nodding in agreement.
thank you. happy to read "other stuff" too