Hi Anita and Alessa
Sorry for the mix up I need to pay closer attention.

I am feeling a little better Anita but still finding it difficult to concentrate. You summed up my thoughts quite well and put in a way that may be less confusing to anyone following along. 🙂

“The sun is perceived to rise and set, but reality is that it simply exists. Similarly, love exists as a constant presence independent of our perceptions and experiences

I did want to add that there is a time for everything and that I’m coming from these topics well into the second half of life. Someone in the first half of life focus may be more on the filling of the ‘crucible’ then placing it over the fire.

Hope everyone has a good weekend and happy Valentines day.

The heart is the place of union where the luminous consciousness is made. . . . Human existence must reach out to transcend the world of forms that conceal the ultimate reality. This reality lives in the heart and must be set free at whatever cost. . . . Thus to reach one’s heart, to possess oneself of it, means to penetrate into spiritual life. The operation is extremely painful, and that is why the heart is always represented as wounded, and why the drops of blood issuing from it are so significant that they alone are a sufficient symbol for it. The religious imagination reveals the broken heart as the very best means to wisdom and growth, – Laurette Séjourné

Hi Alessa

There are ways to not accept bad behavior without having to rely on asking for accountability and responsibility from another person.

I was wondering if you could give an example and what ‘accepting bad behavior’ in this context.

To clarify I view accountability and responsibility as important values in the creating of healthy boundaries and healthy boundaries as a kindness and act of compassion to myself and those I interact with.

When I talk of accountability and responsibility I’m not associating it with punishment, or any other such measurement of “justice”. Nor do I assume to apply such values only outwards but inwards as well… I’m using the words in context of the serenity prayer. To address the things I’m responsible to address… and wisdom to know the difference.

I agree that often when we take responsibility and create boundaries others can take them in unintended ways, feel hurt by them, even experience such things as being punished. I would argue that that is their responsibility to work through.

I wonder If I’m sounding cold and robotic?

The scenario of betrayal and theft was also a metaphor. Based on my own experience the wrongs done to me were also a betrayal and theft of something of ‘my spirit’ taken. Asking for the “key” back involved learning and in learning better creating healthy boundaries.

That’s why I’m starting to feel like asking for accountability and responsibility from others is unnecessary

I see I’ve put things badly when I used the words to hold someone accountable and asking for the “key back” may seem aggressive with a focus on the outer vice inner response. When the “key” is reclaimed I’m primarily being accountable and responsible to myself. True as that is happening within relationship with another it is at the same time holding them accountable and responsible…

I can’t think of a story where healing or change doesn’t happen until some form of accountability has taken place….

I find that simply maintaining my own boundaries, treating people with compassion and understanding is helpful.

I like that. My experience has been that compassion and kindness arise naturally from healthy boundaries and that accountability and responsibility as properties of such boundaries. (When I use the words accountability and responsibility I do not hold them rigidity or righteously but lightly. As you noted those words can be troublesome.)

The sun is perceived to rise and set, but reality is that it simply exists. Similarly, love exists as a constant presence independent of our perceptions and experiences
What do the crucible, and the fire represent in this metaphor?

The crucible and fire are metaphors/tools within the temporal, dualistic, linear sphere of experience. This is the “playground” of measurement and judgments. Here the “sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening”.

When we wrestle with such notions of accountability, responsible, relationship, boundaries… we are placing such measurements within the crucible and the crucible over the fire with the aim of deeper truth and authentic self (gold). Perhaps the gold involving a realization of the relationship between the temporal and Eternal, that the “sun neither rises or sets”, a change in perception where Love exists as a constant presence from which All things arise and return (unconditional). That such a realization is “the sense of life“.

Sorry; I tend to lean towards the metaphorical which can be confusing. Language as a property of the temporal measuring experience tends to get in the way.

Thoughts to ponder

Stillness is what creates love. Movement is what creates life. To be still and still moving – this is everything. Do Hyun Choe

“Stillness reveals the secrets of eternity.” – “To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.” – Lao Tzu

“Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the love and joy beneath the pain.” Eckhart Tolle

The central point of the world is the point where stillness and movement are together. Movement is time, stillness is eternity, realizing the relationship of the temporal moment to the eternal, not moment, but forever – is the sense of life.
Realizing how this moment in your life is actually a moment of eternity, and experiencing the eternal aspect of what you’re doing in the temporal experience — this is the ‘knowing’ experience.- J Campbell

The beauty of that light, like love, is not to be touched, not to be put into a word…
But there it was – in the shade, in the open, in the house, on the window across the way, and in the laughter of those children.
Without that light what you see is of so little importance, for the light is everything; and the light of meditation was on the water. It would be there in the evening again, during the night, and when the sun rose over the trees, making the river golden.
Meditation is that light in the mind which lights the way for action; and without that light there is no love. – Krishnamurti