Heart Rock Love from the Woods Out Back
Through my love for you, I want to express my love for the whole cosmos, the whole of humanity, and all beings. By living with you, I want to learn to love everyone and all species. If I succeed in loving you, I will be able to love everyone and all species on Earth. . . . This is the real message of love. Thich Nhat Hahn
Muse chuckles and says to let you know that this post isn’t your quick fix guide to romantic love as we approach Valentine’s Day here in the U.S. and many other parts of the world. Though its origin and history are somewhat mysterious, my cynic’s view is that it has become yet another day where the opportunity for sincere ritual has been coopted into a capitalistic ritual of buying and consuming. That said, I can love my Fair Trade, Organic chocolate and appreciate all who contribute to putting on the shelves.
Setting aside the cynic, the day offers an opportunity to look more closely at love as a way of being. A way of being that is the underlying requirement for creating a world that turns its back on the culture’s bias toward separation and fear mongering and puts attention on unity, oneness, the whole of which we are each a part.
We don’t tend to think of love as a process or, perhaps more aptly, a learning curve (steep and never ending). We’ve forgotten that love is our essence. Love in its essence is pure and simple, but today we engage in histrionics and fantasy more than in being true to and allowing life to flow from that essence.
We separate good and bad, winning and losing, right and left, right and wrong, ill and healthy, et cetera forgetting that love is the essence in each, indeed love permeates ALL. You, me, us, them, bad, good, … So, despite being our essence love requires experimentation, learning, practice, commitment: the learning curve of life.
Thinking back on a few prickly events this week, I wonder ‘how might I have engaged differently?’ What would Love have done in that instant of beginning to feel the slightest irritation, a crossroads missed as I hurdled toward the path of loveless reaction?
Love would pause, breathe. Love would look both ways before choosing which road to take. Love would offer a reminder that the road of reaction and judgement is barren of love. Having found myself on that dismal alternate route from time to time (indeed more frequently than I’d like), I know its barrenness, its discomfort, its treachery.
I know too that I can create new crossroads and choose different paths, paths of love. I can replace judgement with loving discernment. I can restore trust, knowing that cancelled appointments and unreturned calls are guideposts to change direction. I can remember that ‘everyone has their story … we are all different, we are all the same’. While trusting a positive outcome, I can relax into curiosity about what will be revealed as Zadie Byrd faces a health challenge.
Reflecting on these little blips stirs deeper questions from which new possibilities can emerge as I/we co-create our world: What if I/we practiced love and allowed life rather than resisting and insisting that life be ‘my/our’ way? What if I/we looked at every interaction, every relationship, indeed everything as an opportunity for love? How beautiful will our world be when we can truly be love and embrace love for ALL?
HEARTY Welcome!