“Oh I know, Phil, I know… “
He spoke with such beautiful empathy, a love and compassion so full it left no room for doubt. He did know, and on hearing his next few words, every possibility, including the end of my suffering, tore open for me.

“Even your most noble beliefs about love have you suffer.”

As I allowed myself to consider what I just heard, what I was being shown, I felt my suffering dissolve. A mix of bittersweet relief washed through me, it’s sweetness tainted by an egoic sadness as I watched my romantic ideas about love being revealed for what they were - just ideas.

I could see so clearly that for every idea I held onto, for every belief, there would always be a different, contradictory and often paradoxical view, and that whenever I defined anything, any thing, by way of a belief or idea, in my defining was a confining. And by definition, confining was an act of imprisonment against the freedom of the undefined.

The more I held on to any idea, be it a noble idea about love, how things are or should be, the more I would feel resistance when presented with any contradictory views outside of that idea.

I’ve seen this in other communities, too. Some of the most aggressive and defensive behaviour I’ve witnessed on social media coming from those preaching a particular and perhaps noble idea about love and Truth with a capital ’T.’

Yet as we recognise our ideas and beliefs as just another transient manifestation of the energy of life, the energy of thought, it seems to me that even the solid lines of our most compelling beliefs soften into a liberating unknown.

Ah, the beauty and freedom of the unknown. Acknowledging but not being directed by my egotistic desire to be right, to know my true self, to know ‘Truth’, noticing the egotistic desire to simply know.

I have many ideas, entertain many beliefs, and am torn open to the infinite possibility that each and every one of them may be myth.

My ideas and beliefs have become a reminder that I don’t know, a reminder of being caught in the illusion of knowing, and the suffering that any belief can bring.

If we think that any discovery or belief about truth, love, or who we are is what brings us peace then we don’t understand the real source of peace.

And now when I see people touting ‘Truth’ and the like, ideas and understandings that bring peace, I find myself whispering “Oh, I know… I know…” and am myself filled with compassion.

Freedom, and compassion.
Love.
Now that IS a nice idea… 💞