(Take and drink of it, all of you.
This is my soul.
Offered not as a sacrifice,
but as a sharing.)
Not everything that shines is gold.
And not everything that is offered is meant to be received.
I have always believed I could help others.
Not out of arrogance, but out of vocation.
Yet I have learned a simple and painful truth:
it is not enough to have something to give—
those who receive must be tuned to the right frequency.
Most people do not trust.
They live imprisoned in a past that no longer exists,
yet still governs the present.
Negative experiences become identities,
unhealed wounds become borders.
And so we deny ourselves what brushes against us gently.
We do not see. We do not listen.
The people who could bring light into our darkness
pass by us,
and we—blind and deaf under the weight of our own history—
close the channels of the soul.
Then we ask ourselves why we are alone.
And yet the universe is never deaf to our cry.
It does not judge, it does not select, it does not withhold.
It receives everything that passes through it.
Everything that transforms it is welcomed.
The universe does not live off time.
It lives within time.
We do not.
We live off time.
We accumulate it, fear it, use it as an excuse.
We act according to what has been
or what might be,
and in doing so we allow time to drag us into darkness
while the only life we have slips away.
We believe ourselves better than the universe.
And that is why we keep hurting one another.
Do you want to outwit time?
It can be done.
By loving.
And by allowing yourself to be loved.
Without the fears dictated by the past.
When this happens,
the instant ceases to be something that passes
and becomes eternal.
Here is the uncomfortable truth:
many do not seek love,
but a diseased need to be filled.
A void imposed by a society that excludes those who do not desire,
who do not consume, who do not compete.
We demand affection,
we live it selfishly,
we idealize it,
and then we destroy it.
In the end, only apathy and mutual disdain remain.
This is how negative experiences are created.
Not because love wounds,
but because we experience it through fear.
We believe we love someone,
but in truth we love our distrust even more.
Sooner or later, that fear surfaces.
And when it does, we run.
We run because we are afraid of not being enough.
But who ever told us we had to be?
How could we know, if we never stay?
Fears, when not expressed,
govern our existence.
And this is where most people stop.
They flee before truly knowing themselves.
If we know how to love ourselves,
nothing is beyond our reach.
Beyond romantic love,
beyond hatred, possession, jealousy, and envy,
it is authentic listening that creates bonds.
It is there that we stop seeing an enemy or an object
and begin to recognize a complement.
But too often we do not listen.
We shout our insecurities at one another.
And so no one stays.
The responsibility is ours.
I have chosen to welcome what life offers me.
Not because it is easy,
but because suffering is not a justification for closing oneself off.
Pain is inevitable.
Escape is a choice.
It is true: no one can do the inner work in our place.
But this is only half true.
Human beings need to express themselves,
to speak,
to be seen.
When this does not happen,
we learn to shine alone,
cold and distant,
selfish like isolated stars.
And eventually, we are swallowed.
Brothers and sisters,
this is a spiritual battle.
The first after centuries of automatisms, dogmas, and absolutism.
It is normal to feel unprepared.
That is why we feel the same need,
especially during sleepless nights:
to love without schemes,
without roles,
without imposed concepts.
To love and allow ourselves to be loved now.
To embrace the diversity that makes us equal.
To abandon ourselves with blind trust to love
and to care for it.
Like flowers.
Without water, they die.
Be rivers.
Be oases.
Be the universal expressed through the individual.
To live eternity within the instant.
Within the moment.
This is our only imperative.
Everything else
is not pain,
is not joy.
It is only boredom.
