Ken Wilber uses a phrase to describe the dual development of wisdom and compassion on the spiritual path, “Hurts More, Bothers you Less”. This is pointing to the relationship to suffering as one’s contemplative understanding deepens. Somehow suffering is more real, and hurts more deeply, but at the same time because one’s identity has expanded to include more it just doesn’t bother “you” as much.
Along those same lines it occurred to me today, as it often does in different ways, that I really don’t know what this life will bring. More then ever I find that my view on life is that things are extraordinarily uncertain. My mother-in-law’s car dropped twenty feet just a few days ago, a fall that could have easily killed her. Fortunately she is alive, but she came out of the accident with a cracked collarbone and a lot of pain. Tomorrow I board a plane to go to a meditation retreat. I may not make it. I lost my wallet a couple of days ago, and then found it while cleaning up the backseat of my partner’s car. Nothing is certain, on either the macro or micro levels. Because of this fact, and because I’ve seen it so clearly on a moment-to-moment level I really don’t get to caught up in how things will or should unfold in this life.
At the same time I feel ever more compelled to live a life based on values and principles of awakening, and I love more then ever what I’m doing in life, the people I’m meeting, and the path that seems to have unfolded before my very eyes. I care tremendously about people, those I know and those I don’t. It’s not always easy to connect in with this caring, but it’s there, and it seems to drive this life.
What I’m trying to get at is that the movement of this life, largely motivated by contemplative discipline and a deepening of realization into the nature of things, has left me caring more while also caring less.
