Compassion requires ferocity to be exalted compassion.
Compassion without ferocity is “idiot compassion”: impotent, flaccid. Imagine a veterinarian that cannot deliver a shot to save an animal’s life.
If you’re unable to be in acceptance of being an agent of (the world’s) pain, you are completely powerless…
To fulfill one’s potential requires urgency, ferocity, devouring, wastefulness.
In publishing a book, trees are cut. The time you spend reading this post is time you do not spend reading someone else’s, calling your mother, or volunteering at a local shelter.
I eat and others don’t; I travel internationally and whole forests catch fire and burn in the tropics; I have professional photos taken and others struggle to survive physical threats. Is the solution not to eat? Is the only goodness to contract, to wither, to deny myself, my needs — and most especially, my dreams and desires?
It’s tragic not to live to our potential; it’s cruel to live to full capacity. Both ARE true.
By living to the capacity that life asks of me, I am saying: I (and what I create) AM WORTH all that is literally, consensually sacrificing its own (life-)time for me.
That proposal is a lot of gravity to bear. Those who are unwilling to bear it are not ready to live all that their life asks of them.
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This is the grief of having high value. Let it hurt. And continue on.
To enter the chapter of feminine value, notice what has served you, sacrificed itself for you, and laid itself at your feet… out of love for you.
(Notice it is not free even for the earth to produce the flowers that are at your bedside table.)
The feminine’s greatest gift is her reception. In taking in what is gifted her, she pays her respects to the sacrifices at her feet.
The woman of worth sees with eyes of compassion (a gratitude moistened by sorrow) that which experienced pain for her to live her purpose.
She bathes in grief, honors death,
And — continues eating, still ravenous, since a mandate of living her destiny is that she must devour.
Nothing — I repeat, nothing — is inoffensive. Least of all what is powerful — Least of all you. “She becomes a safe habitat by accepting her own dangerousness.”
