In My Shoes
In my shoes, just to see what it’s like to be me
I’ll be you, let’s trade shoes
Just to see what it’d be like to feel your pain
You feel mine, go inside each other’s minds
Just to see what we find
Look at life through each other’s eyes
But don’t let em say you ain’t beautiful
They can all get lost, just stay true to you
Don’t let em say you ain’t beautiful
They can all get lost, just stay true to you
The process of love goes in stages I believe. Its a total process. You have to go from ‘Having Love, to Showing Love, to Being love!’
Each one is a step, and its a practice that many have gone before us and have conquered. Having love is the first step of the process. It usually happens when you have been amazingly touched by Love in your being. So the beginning process is that you respond by just having love and grace for others around you! This first phase if you will is more of a response. No one can have love that hasn’t first experienced it. It is like the ripple effect or wave after the initial splash in a pool of water. So those that ‘Have’ love towards others have experienced love! You can not share and give what you do not have or experienced. If you do it will not possess the true content of substance. Your having love towards others will be nothing more than another concept, not substance.
Showing love is nothing more than a choice to align myself to the power of love that was shown unto me. Love on this level is a choice, a daily, minute by minute decision to choose to remember the power of the love that abides in you! Choices like these chip away at the core of your self life. In every situation in your life, weigh it in light of I Corinthians chapter 13. If you read that chapter, there is pretty much not anything else to say.
Being love is a total surrender! When you choose you still are in control, because you might still choose not to show love. When you surrender then you have given up the right to choose. This is the ultimate level, then God Himself can BE Himself through you. You surrender your choice to love or not love, and eventually you become Love.
Practicing this process in real life goes like this. For the record in the old concept of God’s grace or man’s will, I say God’s grace abounds and definitely came before mans ability to choose. When I think about this journey and process of becoming Love, I think it goes in these ascetic practices.
1. Empathy: the learned ability to to feel FOR someone and their struggles. This is a conscience choice to feel for the suffering of others. This is what I call Having love. The ability to share in a commonality with others in their sufferings. My belief is that this only comes about by those who have been touched by Love Himself in some fashion or form. Love on this level is the beginning, but it is a supernatural characteristic. When I feel empathy towards another I am striking a chord in my own life of my own suffering in the past or present. But it rarely moves anyone to real action that requires me to get involved. It’s like I want to eliminate the suffering of others but I don’t know how to do it without conflicting with my own personal life.
2. Sympathy: the inability to no longer sit by as a bystander and watch others suffer. In this stage we possess the mindset to feel WITH you. So now our motivation is to get up close and personal and be one with you. In this level of the process you actually suffer when others suffer, and rejoice when others are honored.
3. Compassion: is the surrendered path of life that live to feel AS you…..and seek to eliminate the suffering and injustice of others.
So don’t be discouraged, but rather keep cooperating with the process…
In the words of Eminem,
In my shoes, just to see what it’s like to be me
I’ll be you, let’s trade shoes
Just to see what it’d be like to feel your pain
You feel mine, go inside each other’s minds
Just to see what we find
Look at life through each other’s eyes
But don’t let em say you ain’t beautiful
They can all get lost, just stay true to you
Don’t let em say you ain’t beautiful
They can all get lost, just stay true to you