Dirty Love

"Yes, this is a dirty love. The unloved and unwanted and unmet get stuck under its fingernails. It wants all of its children, not just the pretty ones. It is the mother, the father, the lover we always longed for. It loves because that’s all it knows. It would work its knuckles to the bone just to be here.

We pretend to be fearless and beyond human concerns only because we are afraid. We act at being peaceful and undisturbed only because there is a tumult inside. We strain to show others how far beyond anger we have gone, only because anger still rages in us, longing to be met. We show off our perfect spiritual knowledge in public to mask our perfect private doubt. It’s a perfect balance.

Who will stop pretending? Who will meet the ‘shadow’, the misunderstood ‘dark side’ of life, those waves of ourselves that are not inherently negative or sinful or dark, just neglected and abandoned and longing for home? Who will meet life’s orphaned children? Who will sacrifice the image for the delight of not knowing?

It is such a relief to no longer have to pretend to be anything – not ‘the awakened one’, nor ‘the one who knows’, nor ‘the blissed-out experiencer’, nor ‘the spiritual expert’ – and instead to know ourselves on a deeper level as the home for those homeless parts of experience that we always thought should disappear.

Our unwanted children cannot disappear until they are truly free to appear in us. And when they are truly free, who would ever want them to disappear? When they are no longer unwanted, is there any problem? Even the unwanted are wanted here in the vastness that we are. There is plenty of space.

Beyond awakening, there is this grace, this inexplicable and heartbreaking timeless welcoming of everything as it arises.

By dirtying itself until it cannot dirty itself any more, this love purifies itself."

- Jeff Foster

Photos -- "Where one person sees a dirty car, the other one sees a blank canvas. And if you live in Moscow, your car can also become the ‘target,’ doesn’t matter if you want it or not!

It’s thanks to the Russian illustrator Nikita Golubev, who brings out the full artistic potential of dirty cars by turning them into amazing pieces of art.

Before he started this ongoing project, Nikita also did plenty of painting, drawing and digital art, which you can see on his Facebook page. But this project has to take the crown simply because of how fragile and temporary these amazing drawings are.

So the next time somebody mocks your dirty car, just explain to them that you’re simply supporting the local street artists with a canvas."

-- Bored Panda