Every Human Is Beauty and Beast

This is so important to understand. There is no sense going further when you're not able to grasp this reality about being human.

Look up the people around you. Your spouse in your living room. The kids across the park. The couple or a man or a woman walking in the mall where you're having coffee.

These people are possibly wonderful human beings. Perhaps, they have talents and gifts that would make angels weep. They may have potential to accomplish greatness or help the world a better place.

Yet as certainly as these are true, it's also a reality that these very human beings also have the ability for the most evil deeds imaginable. The level of depravity or nastiness in each of us is simply there. It is part of what it means to be human.

Learning this, you can realize then that every human is both Beauty and Beast, both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, both image of good and image of evil. There can be a loving mother who is addicted to sex or affairs with men. There can be this successful celebrity actor or actress addicted to drugs. There can be this award-winning writer who is a murderer and a respected teacher who sleeps with his students.

This is, I'm sorry to tell you, unending catalog of darkness about the nature of humanity. This is what you and I forget when good things are flowing and all is well. We idealize or remake people into what we need them to be. We are not wise in our relating. And so when evil comes, we are shocked and then destroyed and then broken down and even unable to get back up.

To live in any sort of real connection to our selves, to others, and to the world is simply seeing what our humanity truly is. The idea is that if we learn this well, we can heal and live more effectively.