Live more Love more

The Net of Indra is a profound and subtle metaphor for the structure of reality. Imagine a vast net; at each crossing point there is a jewel; each jewel is perfectly clear and reflects all the other jewels in the net, the way two mirrors placed opposite each other will reflect an image ad infinitum. The jewel in this metaphor stands for an individual being, or an individual consciousness, or a cell or an atom. Every jewel is intimately connected with all other jewels in the universe, and a change in one jewel means a change, however slight, in every other jewel.
— Stephen Mitchell, The Enlightened Mind (via heartspace.org)

I sometimes think about Indra’s net when I’m in a room full of other people. Clearly, I see everyone else in the room. And everyone else in the room sees ‘everyone else’ too, meaning they see everyone except themselves. So each person then is a conscious focal point in the universe reflecting the presence of everyone else.

Which brings me to one of my favorite words, compersion. The Polyamory society defines compersion to be ‘the feeling of taking joy in the joy that others you love share among themselves.’ In other words, I love you and I want you to be happy, so when you’re happy, I’m happy. Got it? Ok so what if we BOTH experience compersion for each other? That means when you get happy I feel happy as a result, and my happiness makes you even happier then you were in the first place, and your extra happiness makes me even happier, until we both experience happiness ad infinitum! Now that’s what I call radical love!