One of the things I do in my work is talk a lot about Love. And yet it seems to me that Love is one of the most misunderstood areas of human experience.
Perhaps it's because words can do no more than point to what is true, but they are not Truth itself. Or perhaps the true meaning of Love has become distorted as humanity has moved away from its natural state of wholeness.
What is love?
The majority of people I speak to see Love as something they lack and are in a constant state of waiting for it to arrive in their lives. Or else they see Love as something they should try to get from someone or some situation in order to feel better about themselves.
Some people think Love is sugary-pink romance and some people think Love is lipstick-red passion. Some think Love is a rainbow-coloured prayer for peace and some equate Love with doing good deeds. But, the thing is, Love is not a commodity: it is not something that can be taken or given. Rather, it is a state of being.
Love is, simply, the unbounded spaciousness of an open heart.
In every moment, we can choose either Love or Fear. Choosing Fear means we tighten, contract, shut down, space out, move away from the edge. It means we are resisting THIS moment. On the other hand, choosing Love means we soften into THIS moment, we allow ourselves to fully accept our experience as it is happening.
Choosing Love is a conscious YES to LIFE AS IT IS NOW. It doesn't mean we like what is happening nor what we are feeling. But it does mean we can rest easy in the open space of OK-ness with what IS.
Love is embracing pain
When life hits a hard patch, when you come up against the entanglements of relationship, the black pit of finances, the ugliness of addictions or the niggling discomfort of a career that doesn't satisfy, do you recoil in horror? Or do you hold the experience tenderly in the bowl of your heart, just AS IT IS.
The first choice keeps you trapped. The second choice liberates you. Any retraction from pain creates a knot of tension that cries out for attention. You can choose to turn away from it and let your life contort itself around the jagged edges of your resistance. But you only end up trapped by your refusal to soften into openness. Over time, your mind becomes twisted into story-lines, your body gnarled with locked emotion, and your spirit yearning for the fullness of love.
Acceptance of what IS
When you stop putting up the blocks and allow your experience to be just AS IT IS, you can really enjoy life. Not in a superficial oh, isn't it fun kind of way, but in a deeply nourishing way, as if you were savouring every mouthful of the most delicious meal. Choosing to relax, breathing into the experience and flowing with its contours makes you more fluid and life more juicy.
It's a strange thing, but the wider you open to let life in, the more meaningful, wonderful and sacred and the more playful, joyful and light it becomes. In deep acceptance, life becomes a multi-dimensional game to be enjoyed, a divine play or leela.
This is a wonderful paradox that is one of the secrets on the spiritual path! The equation is simple really: fear creates contraction and separation, love creates openness and oneness.
The bowl of your heart is much bigger than you think:
it has the capacity to hold the totality of life's experience. In this bowl there is room for every tender part of you that has been bruised and battered, every delicate part that fears being broken again, every part of you that you beat up on because you have labelled it as wrong, bad or ugly.
Even the unlovable is welcome here. There is room here for every brother and sister that has been killed, tortured and violated and for the perpetrators of these crimes. There is room here for all the ugliness and ignorance in the world. There is room here for all the unloving acts that harm us, the people we live with and the planet we live on.
Love does not condone these acts, but neither does it deny them access to the milk of human kindness. In the unbounded spaciousness of an open heart, love is non-judgemental and unconditional.
An open heart does not try to be loving: an open heart IS love.
And from this place, all action is loving action because you are in a state of wholeness. When you are in harmony with your deepest nature and with the nature of life itself, you cannot hurt or destroy that which is a part of you. When you are complete with the fullness of Love, there is nothing to gain or lose.
Love is that which does not change, and that which does not change is the truth of your essential nature.
Behind all the facades of personality and all the defences of ego-self, your true nature waits to be recognised. When you remember who you really are, the bowl of your heart will overflow with the radiant light of Love and your life will be transformed from limitation to liberation.