The Way of Great Suffering and Great Love

The knowledge that
knowing God, the Universal Divine, is our
life’s one true purpose on this earth
came early  

As if through a veil,
clarity came from
reflection deep within and a turning out towards,
and study and disciplined  practice 

And, yes, the many spiritual teachers
of timeless spiritual truths
and spiritual practices of
the Universal Divine cosmology

And one must wander from time to time
in the pathless land of exile
from our personal, socio-cultural hubris and comfort,
as a certain mindfulness and awareness settles in

That in the  tensions of our lives,
a great truth lies,
which our societies’ dual thinking misrepresents to us
as either/or choices to be argued and fought for 

When, in fact, the tensions
are not oppositional choices but complementary flow
in a harmonious state of oneness
as both/and healing wholeness

Our very nature as conscious beings
is BOTH human AND divine
thus existing in the paradoxical tension
of both Great Suffering and Great Love

Great Suffering and Great Love
is the Universal Divine way
of teaching us the great spiritual
lessons of our lifes’ one purpose

It is the Great Divine’s primary tool
for our human transformation from ego
to contemplative mind of knowing/unknowing
and to mind/body/spirit/self/other being together

Recalling the story of the Christ principle,
both human and divine, and
subject to it all, the Great Suffering and Great Love,
of the One eternal life resurrected here and now for all

And thus, as in heaven, so on earth,
that all Great Suffering be regarded with Great Love,
resisting all that separates and divides us from God
uniting together in solidarity in authentic communities

Beloveds, setting aside our oppositional ego thinking,
programmed by personal, socio-cultural biases and desires,
for the contemplative mind of the Universal Divine
that suffers with us in loving and healing togetherness as One

• Herb Stone, here&now working poetry, September, 2019