Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.Rumi
Cultivating a profound, compassionate respect for folks goes beyond feelings and attitudes. We can enjoy a deeper experience of connection with others through a simple shift of focus.
The Phenomenon of Being
I've found that when I see someone not as just a person, but as a phenomenon — an event happening right in front of me — my perception of them changes radically. All at once I am aware of this masterpiece of wild energy. I become attuned to a deep river of emotions, wants, needs, passions. I realize that I am experiencing something unique and amazing.
All I'm really doing is looking beyond preconceived labels and judgements, which have a way of dulling our experience of the world. Just a tree. Just a flower. Just a person. We create these labels over time and become jaded to the true wonder of the world around us.
When we shift our awareness of one another to the event of each other, we no longer rely on a "feeling" of compassion / kindness / oneness to arise in us, because now we realize we are witnessing something very special. Something sacred. As we attune to the phenomenon of being in one another, tapping into that wellspring of holiness, it is natural to feel a deeper sense of connection.
It is a joy to experience folks in this way. In my experience with this, I can almost see an aura of energy around a person, circulating and radiating like golden threads and sparks. My sense of empathy increases. I feel that I am truly seeing them, and we are not so different.
As we learn to see the sacred in one another, and cultivate a sensitivity to it, perhaps our world will begin to change. Perhaps we will become less irritated, less troubled by the presence and actions of others as we acknowledge our essential connections. Our common drives.
Our desire for a life of peace and our need to love and be loved, and all the joys and pains that live in-between.