There is a delicate balance that we need to honor as we try to find meaning in any event or state of mind: Many people confuse finding meaning with finding a reason, putting our finger on something or someone for blame.

When your fear touches someone’s pain, it becomes pity, when your love touches someone’s pain, it become compassion.

It is not for the concept, but for the experience, that we use the term the Beloved. The experience of this enormity we falteringly label divine is unconditioned love. Absolute openness, unbounded mercy and compassion. We use this concept, not to name the unnameable vastness of being-- our greatest joy-- but to acknowledge and claim as our birthright the wonders and healings within.

The mind creates the abyss. The heart crosses over it. Love is the bridge.

Letting ourselves be forgiven is one of the most difficult healings we will undertake. And one of the most fruitful. (79)

When the heart acknowledges how much pain there is in the mind, it turns like a mother toward a frightened child.

You have to remember one life, one death–this one! To enter fully the day, the hour, the moment whether it appears as life or death, whether we catch it on the inbreath or outbreath, requires only a moment, this moment. And along with it all the mindfulness we can muster, and each stage of our ongoing birth, and the confident joy of our inherent luminosity. (24)