What reaches me as pain does not need to inflict pain to others.

Only when you suffer much do you make other people suffer.

(Thich Nhat Hanh)

Every action sets something in motion.

But not every movement must become a chain.

Someone acts.

Something within me reacts.

A word.

A glance.

A silence.

The body receives it before the mind understands it.

The jaw hardens.

The breath shortens.

Heat rises.

Then the mind begins to construct its case.

We take it personally: this was done to me, I must respond.

We regret it: this should not have happened, I must make this right.

The mind is a gifted advocate.

When wounded, it can make retaliation sound like justice.

But must I react?

Is this mine to act upon?

Why make mine what did not begin within me?

Why carry forward what may have come only to pass through?

The first reaction may arise without my consent.

What happens next, remains mine.

In between the occurrence and my reaction, there is a sacred interval.

Perhaps only a single breath.

Yet, within that breath, another world becomes possible.

I can feel the reaction, without becoming it.

I am the observer, and I begin by observing myself.

The pride.

The exhaustion.

The ancient sorrow wearing today’s name.

The Emerald Tablet reminds us to separate the subtle from the gross, with discernment.

This does not mean rejecting what I feel.

It means holding it long enough for it to reveal what it carries.

The heart is the crucible.

It does not deny what enters. It transforms what leaves.

This is what we have been practising these days.

Not how to remain untouched, but how to remain present to what touches us.

Not how to suppress the reaction, but how to hold it until reaction becomes response

It is not indifference.

It is intimacy without captivity.

Spaciousness without withdrawal.

The courage to feel everything without passing everything onwards.

What becomes visible between us often began invisibly within us.

The accusation began as fear.

The anger began as pain.

The punishment began as a wound no one stopped to witness.

And so, I ask: What is truly mine here?

Not every word requires my opinion.

Not every projection requires my correction.

Not every story requires me to become a character within it.

I can listen to the reasons, the constructions, the justifications, the stories.

And let them remain what they are, just stories, someone elses stories, not mine to carry.

I do not need to be right.

I do not need to fix anyone.

I do not need to abandon myself to remain beside you.

I see your pain.

I hear the sorrow beneath your words.

And I do not deny the pain your words may cause.

Compassion does not require that I pretend they did not hurt.

It asks only that the hurt does not become the author of my answer.

I can love you without believing the story your pain tells about me.

I can stand beside your wound without standing against myself.

Sometimes, grace arrives with a little humour.

Not humour that mocks the wound, but the gentle mischief that breaks the spell and reminds us that we are both larger than the story we are telling.

And sometimes, our loving awareness speaks without saying anything.

Compassion does not ask me to call harm harmless.

Love remains silent.

Love tells the truth.

Love draws a boundary.

Love may leave.

What makes it love is not that it always stays, but that it does not seek to wound on its way.

To love without condition is not to live without discernment.

We may let you be who you are and still choose where we stand and remain there, unmoved.

Sometimes, it is too much.

The body moves before awareness arrives.

We react.

We say the word.

We raise the wall.

We return pain in the shape in which it reached us.

This too is part of our practice.

The moment we see it, we become the observer again.

We can repair.

We can forgive.

We can return to our centre.

The work is not to become perfect at never reacting.

The work is to become present soon enough to interrupt the inheritance of pain.

We cannot choose what enters us.

But we can practise choosing what leaves us.

This is sovereignty.

This is alchemy.

This is love.

What reaches us as anger may leave as clarity.

What reaches us as fear may leave as tenderness.

What reaches us as cruelty may leave as a boundary.

What reaches us as sorrow may leave as compassion.

What reaches us as control may leave as release.

What reaches us as pain need not leave us as pain.

And sometimes, nothing else needs to be done.

Nothing to fix.

Nothing to prove.

Nothing to change.

Only to remain.

To let you be who you are, without becoming what your pain asks us to become.

Present.

Patient.

Loving.

Unfazed.

May you know what is yours to answer, and what is yours to let pass.

May humour soften what anger would harden.

May compassion keep you tender, truth keep you clear, and love keep you free.

May whatever reaches you be transformed by your presence before it returns to the world.

And may you find the courage simply to remain:

Present;

Loving;

Unfazed.

Yo lo Creo/I believe, and so it is.