Vachon Imagined

When we suffer, we suffer against an idea of life, an image held in the mind rather than life as it is.

That image may wear another person’s face. It may appear as a painful memory, a future we fear, or a story about who we are. It seems as though we are suffering because of another, yet beneath every image is life itself, waiting to be seen without the veil of thought.

We move from image to image, from story to story, believing each one defines us. Fear arises. Pride follows. Resentment takes root. Identity hardens. Then the idea of an enemy is born. None of these are separate experiences. They are different expressions of the same illusion: that we are separate from life.

Yet when we walk in the power of God, there is only I.

Not the “I” of the separate self that compares, defends, and strives, but the eternal I that simply is. The I that was present before every story, every wound, every triumph, and every name.

To love that I is what frees us.

This love is unlike the love we usually seek. It does not love us because we have been perfectly kind, wise, or faithful. It loves us because it cannot do otherwise. It loves us when we have failed as deeply as when we have flourished. It is not earned. It is our nature.

This is the unconditional love every human heart longs for. We search for it in other people, in achievement, in approval, in success, believing someone or something else will finally complete us. Yet what we seek has never belonged to another. It has always been quietly waiting beneath the image we call ourselves.

When the self is seen for what it is, and the life that allows every experience is finally recognized, we begin to walk in a greater power, a deeper knowing. We no longer cling to passing states because we have discovered what does not pass.

Sadness still comes. Tears still fall. Anger still visits. Joy comes and goes as well.

But none of these define us.

They are movements within life, not the truth of who we are.

We walk a greater path, not because we have escaped the human condition, but because we have awakened within it. We begin to see that what we once called our identity was a dream, while the life that has always held us is reality itself.

In that awakening, nothing needs to be added.

Only remembered.