stumbling into love

this is brand new for me, and i'm not sure i can articulate it....so buckle your seat belt,
try to get into my mind here, (scary, i know) and fill in the things i miss but you know anyway....
it's tricky for me, so i'm gonna dig right in.

all my life i have been intuitive/empathetic. can feel other's pain very deeply.
when i do this, it's all about feeling. not a lotta brain stuff involved. heart stuff,
feeling stuff, connecting without thinking how.

when i do that, it's really all i do. it's kinda like when you have a plate with
a pile of lentils and a pile of rice. you COULD mix them, but instead you're just
eating the pile of lentils.

the feeling of another's pain is the eating of the lentils.
it's what i concentrate on. what i'm aware of. what i taste.

okay.
and then something else i can do with some ability is see other people and see
their wounds and understand their oh....for lack of a less intrusive word -
dysfunctions. (sorry, i know that's a harsh word, can't think of a better one)
that's a thinking thing, not such a feeling thing.

i do this separately - don't mix it with anything else. it would be like eating
the pile of rice off my plate - and just the rice.
again - it's what i concentrate on. what i'm aware of. what i taste.

it helps me in understanding where people are coming from.

so okay, most of my life i've done these kinda things, done them separately
and used them to help me understand people, relate and care and offer what
i can.

for no known reason to me, the other morning, something happened inside
me. i took my plate with the pile of lentils, and the pile of rice, and i mixed them.
and i came up with this incredible dish of lentils and rice! and together, mixed,
it was awesome!

i ended up taking the empathetic feelings and the seeing of the dysfunctions,
and combined them. held both at the same time. not sure how to describe that,
but somehow, without knowing how, i was doing that.

okay, let me back up for a minute.

when i do the empathetic thing - it fills me with feelings. i can feel sorrowful,
joyful, hurt, any range of things. they're strong feelings and they fill me.

when i do the understanding thing - it fills me with thoughts, and certain kinds
of...oh...'wanting of something' maybe. like i want that person to see that they're
carrying around things that restrict them. or i want them to see thru the wound
and see their beauty. there's some sort of sense of unrest inside me.

when i held these two things together - all i could feel -
i swear -
ALL I COULD FEEL
was love for whoever i was thinking of.
there was some sense of heaviness....as i was thinking of some pretty
wounded people.
so there WAS something else...something that i would describe as a heaviness....
sort of a heaviness of the human condition or something like that.
but other than that......it was just love.

i just plain ol' loved the person.

i didn't feel their pain, i didn't want them to reach beyond something,
i didn't need anything, i didn't hurt with or for them......
i just loved them. and i wanted to show them love.

wow.
it was like i tasted lentils and rice mixed together for the first time ever.
and i realized i've been missing something really really important - and delicious!

so now.
what the heck do i do with this?
first of all, will i be able to do it again?
i get nervous i won't, and then think nah....you do it once, you'll do it again.
and then.....
what does it mean?

is there some wisdom in here that i don't understand yet about
not holding the different parts of life/ourselves/others separately but
holding all the parts as one? and maybe when you do that you step into love?

i mean, you hear that kinda thing all the time, don't ya?
maybe i just sorta stumbled into doin' it by accident for a moment here.
and maybe it's something i can learn to touch again...

not sure.
but it felt so important to me i wanted to toss it out here.