(I wrote this back in March of 23 when I first got my AAA diagnosis. I update its date so that it appears now as the first thing readers see when they come here.)
The thing is you suddenly feel utterly free from all the fix'em/get'em thoughts.
Fix what you did wrong and fix what or who did you wrong or others or the world.
Suddenly you have Beginner's Mind. You see that thing that happened, but you are someone looking at it (regarding, as Ekhart Tolle says, your pain body from a higher place). You see it less personally. You see it as that thing those people suffered or you suffered, and you who did that thing or suffered that thing are one of the people there.
This is a freeing perspective, seeing how you felt and how they felt, and not feeling shame or anger. You just see it with a certain sympathetic resonance.
And something like that perspective carries over to where you are now. You can feel that way not just for the happy toddler, say, but for the guy sitting across the table from you or anguishing by himself across the room. Or the gal. It's nice.
Tara Brach calls this attitude loving awareness, and it looks to me very much the same as what Ram Dass calls coming to the world with loving attention.
