“Where there is love there is life.” –Mahatma Gandhi”
Let’s talk about love
Love – everybody wants it, everybody needs it. Poets, philosophers, musicians and saints have all tackled the subject of love throughout the ages. It’s a word, a feeling, an idea bantered about endlessly, sometimes recklessly, and often with great drama.
What we don’t really understand though, is that love is what we’re made of—love is who we are! It is not something we need to find, it’s something we need to claim.
Love is the very substance that makes life possible. It is found in the vibratory experience of simply being alive. It is the eternal energetic geometry of creation that includes all things. Love is everywhere, everything—no-thing would exist without it. To live is to love. To love is to live.
Love itself is so vast, any attempt to describe it is instantly diminished, collapsed by the words themselves. Words often fall short of the thing we are trying to name, understand, and share. Words alone can never adequately explain the true nature of love. And yet we keep trying.
I know, I know, you are ready to argue—it’s too simple, too utopian, too naïve! Life is so much more complicated than that—life is filled with suffering, you say. Bad things do happen to good people. Yet love contains within it all possibilities—its essence is the foundation of creation through which we are all connected.
Yes, grief is a part of life, but maybe suffering is optional. Life involves both creative and destructive forces. Life is meant to ebb and flow. And love remains present even when things aren’t working out, life is hard, and a loved one leaves or dies. Just as there is love in joy, there is love is sorrow.
Life is multi-dimensional. If you remain on the material level of “reality,” where seeing is believing, then, yes, you would appear to be right. If you are willing to shift your focus in the direction of believing is seeing, you just might encounter a different picture.
“We have been brought up in a world that does not put love first, and where love is absent, fear sets in.” – Marianne Williamson
Choose Love over Fear
Truly opening to love however can be scary. Once we feel scared, whether it is a real or only perceived threat, we typically react unconsciously—and often become defensive—in protection mode—others become the enemy—and we prepare ourselves for fight or flight.
And so begins the blame game—we project onto others what we can’t tolerate, or consciously understand, in ourselves—and quickly decide the problem is you! The process of disowning your shadow self and projecting it onto others might feel like a good idea in the moment, but it only provides a false sense of safety, and creates separation rather than connection.
This both maintains the illusion of separation, and limits your capacity to give and receive love. Fear prevents the flow of love. The integration of all possible feeling states within one’s self allows for a fluidity of experience that prevents our emotions from getting stuck in any lower less desirable vibration.
In fact, if you did not desire love, you might not feel anything at all. It is normal for emotions arise. We often feel scared and angry and sad and lonely and frustrated and confused and overwhelmed—or happy and encouraged and confident and enthusiastic and turned on.
Recognizing that emotional states are like bubbles of energy that arise in response to what is happening within and around you allows them to be acknowledged and then free to dissipate more easily. They are not who you are. They do not define you. They are experiences, and experiences, by nature, are transient. Through this understanding, love allows compassion for all things, and heals any illusion of separation.
“If you could only do one thing for your well-being, I would urge you to learn to love yourself.” –Gay Hendricks
What’s your Love Song?
First, see yourself through the eyes of love. Open your heart to include yourself on the list of those you love. Recognize your own worthiness in each relationship equation. To see your own self through the eyes of love is to see only perfection. There is no judgment in love. There is only beauty. And the recognition of beauty demands respect.
Your heart is a vast portal of love. Becoming conscious fuels a greater capacity for the felt experience of love for you and for those around you. The vibration of love can be measured energetically and generate an exponential healing impact in your life and in the world.
You are more powerful than you realize. My hope is to elevate consciousness to the recognition of the sacred. What would you do if you considered yourself sacred? How would you choose to live? How tender would you treat your thoughts, feelings, body, and soul? How kind would you be to others, to all living things?
Love is the substance. Song is the expression. Love is the essential vibration of creation, made possible through the co-creative power of life. Song is your contribution to the grand orchestra, your part in relation to the whole, and your unique creative expression. Be the love you already are and you will find the love you seek.
Like links in a chain we are all both active and receptive. We extend one hand and take another. A healthy balance of both the masculine and feminine in all men and women makes this exquisite love available to us all. And this can only happen when we make peace with both the masculine and feminine within each of us.
Love is everywhere waiting to be noticed. It is within and between all relationships. It is in the beauty of the natural world, the light of the sun, the faces of children, and your pet’s attentive eyes. It is in the power of memory, uplifting music, objects of art, humanitarian organizations, the miraculous inner workings of your own body, and the grace of God. Love resides below it all.