The Allergy of Connection

It can sometimes seem as though people have an allergic reaction to genuine friendliness… kindness… compassion… or, more simply, Love.

It's not because they're "bad" people, but because genuine care may simply not be familiar to them. Kindness and generosity without an agenda can create suspicion. Compassion without judgment can feel awkwardly vulnerable. Love that asks for nothing in return can be difficult to trust in a society so often predicated on the transactional.

You can notice it in the deficit model of skepticism… sarcasm… self-doubt… insecurity… the obsessive need for control… defensiveness… the weird come-here-but-go-away… muted hostility… dismissiveness… settling for things that can only temporarily provide the seemingness of connection… or even attempting to push away the very person who is offering care.

Perhaps what looks like a rejection of Love is sometimes simply the inability, at least for now, to receive it.

And strangely, the allergy may emerge from something that could be described as the sensation, or illusion, of **original dehydration** rather than "original sin"… because the basic vibe and energy of Love was, in some way, curtailed… not transmitted… or literally withheld from them.

And perhaps one of the harder lessons is realizing that our friendliness, kindness, care, concern, and Love 100% don't guarantee another person's receptivity. We can offer warmth without demanding that someone know what to do with it.

How could I ever come up with such a concept? Because it's not really a concept. It's been the experience of progressive completeness that is sometimes described as the ever elusive "Spiritual awakening," as a result of these Steps, that doesn't actually have to be elusive, as long as we don't allow the dis-ease to twist the message.

It's my experience as a recovering addict… having had to learn, and then follow, a path that has allowed me to recover my heart as a matter of Goodwill and the Creative Action of the Spirit.

They told me when I came through the doors of Narcotics Anonymous that they would love me until I learned to authentically Love myself with L.O.V.E. They didn't lie to me.

一Dignity and Grace