I am the cat getting out of the bag--a realization for Radical Love

Illustration: sweet momma and baby sloth :)

Last week, I was sick for over a week. It was exactly what I needed: it gave me a lot of time to chill out and read instead of fretting in angst and discontentment about things I could never seem to change. I read "The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are" by Alan Watts, which was sitting on my pile of books to read for months, or actually years, and listened to some podcasts that featured teachings people have received from Ayahuasca. Together, also with some other things harder to list, they helped me to come to some very important realizations:

First, it was that my family, who I actually had hated for a long time, is myself.

Then I realized that *anything* that I've hated is myself.

I learned to hide away those parts of myself because of fear and pain when I was very little. I stuffed them so far inside that I forgot about them, and they grew into a monster--just like anything shoved into a hole for 25 years will do.

I needed to face that monster, because it was only getting bigger and more grotesque and snarly and appearing everywhere around me.

But when I did face it--it turned out it was just a scared, hurt little creature that needed to be healed with love! It was me! all the parts of me I hid away were trying to get out and be with me again! Those precious, beautiful parts of myself.

Everything I hated about the world is a part of me that needs to be healed by love! Bible thumping rednecks, greedy powerful elites, reactionary conformists, violent imperialists, thoughtless consumers--it's all me! All me because I was a condescending intellectual, oppressed powerless poor kid, sanctimonious radical, violent counter-imperialist, austere self-denyer.

All the other people who are sick and unhappy and dysfunctional are that way because that's what I've been. Their healing and my healing are the same.

All the people I've ever envied for having achieved what seems to me far-away happiness or success can only have what I must already have, because there is no "other."

When I love myself, the world will love me too.

I used to think there was something wrong with me. Now I know there's no such thing as having something about you that's "wrong." There's nothing "right" that's "out there" to compare yourself to! You change, you grow and evolve, but you're never wrong at any point. It's your birthright to be who you are, every step along the way.

I used to think the world was wrong too. It's true that it's gotten very, very hard to live in. Widespread desperation, degradation, accidents, violence and sickness for almost every group of people on the planet, and most groups of non-human people too. It's gotten as bad as it can get before something happens.

Like what's happening right now.

This is 2012, right now.

I felt like I was missing out in the fall when I wasn't part of the Occupy protests. Now I know I *was* those protests, both the ones full of love and the violent angry ones. It was all me. In my own heart. Now that the violence has played out, it's clear that it doesn't change anything. My girlfriend was right that night when she texted me with the Buckminster Fuller quote right after I threw the brick through the Starbucks window: "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." The Occupy with Love part is growing, and it mysteriously coincides with my realization that I need to occupy myself with love. And occupy everything with love. That must mean...

I'm not missing out on anything at all.

Love and gratitude,

Joey