It’s a strange and holy paradox — this thing called awakening. To feel ecstatic in the light of God, and at the same time to feel the weight of suffering — my own and that which I’ve caused in others. For a long time I thought these couldn’t coexist. That joy and sorrow were opposites. But the closer I come to the truth, the more I see they are two faces of the same grace. Suffering refines the heart. It opens the places that pride once kept closed. It humbles the mind that once thought it knew what was best. Through suffering, the veil thins — until awareness sees that everything, even the pain, has served the unfolding of love. And yet, awakening does not excuse the past. The people I’ve hurt still live with their own veils of pain, their own stories that include me. Some are not ready to see perfection in the unfolding — nor should they have to. Their suffering is sacred too. So how do I sit with that? With humility. With patience. With silence when words would only wound. I can’t hand them awakening. I can only live it. I can meet them not as the one who seeks forgiveness, nor as the one who has transcended, but as the one who now understands: love does not erase the past — it illuminates it. The law of suffering isn’t punishment. It’s the invitation to awaken again and again — to meet pain with awareness, to let compassion rise from what was once regret, and to let that compassion ripple outward as quiet service. When I sit in the stillness of that truth, I see the whole dance — joy and sorrow, guilt and grace — moving as one current. And I bow to all of it.