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Have you ever sat with love? Held it in your body and your mind and watched your reactions? Where does it show up in your body? Where is the aversion? Where is the welcoming? Is there a sense of not deserving love, an unworthiness, a separation from love?
Do you notice any clinging or attachment to the shape and feel of love in your body? Even in the experience of sitting with love we want to nail it down, define it, stop it from leaving us or changing its shape. A sense of fear sets in when the love moves position or changes in any way. When it moves through us and away from us, we feel bereft. The loss of familiarity feels like a withdrawal of love. There is a resentment that builds – if I am sharing all this love, who is going to do that for me.
There is a longing for and a grief about love that works against each other, and the scales rarely tip in any one favor for an extended moment in time. It feels elusive and omnipresent at the same time.
It doesn’t take long until we notice how often we use love as a currency – I will give you this love in exchange for you thinking/feeling ‘this’ about me. We bargain with love; we withhold our generosity – I will meter it out in response to what I receive in return. If the ledger isn’t balanced within our timeframe, then it feels like a rejection which can often trigger an anger response.
The constant giving of love may feel exhausting. There is little acknowledgment or awareness of the abundance of love. This creates a reluctance to part with too much love at once. It is a valuable commodity to be used as currency to get what we want from others: belonging, security, acceptance, acknowledgement.
How do you learn to understand and accept love and the abundance of love without having a near death experience or spending a lifetime in hermitage? By removing our filters. Dismantling our beliefs. Suspending our judgement. Removing our attachments. Expanding our awareness through education and contemplation.
We may have inherited our beliefs from our families, our culture, our religion, our community. Perhaps we have developed them as a consequence of our life’s experiences. Regardless, we do have a choice – we can mindlessly acquire our beliefs and live our lives in response to them. Or we can mindfully examine our beliefs and adjust them to the truth of our lives. Indulge in un-resourceful thinking or take resourceful action.
I paraphrase the wonderful Anita Moorjani below and follow with an excerpt from her book Dying to be Me:
“To work at being loving means living in duality because there is a giver and a receiver. Realising we are love transcends this. It means understanding that there is no separation between you and me, and if I am aware that I am love, then I know that you are too. If I care for myself, then I automatically feel the same for you.
When we know that we are love, we don’t need to work at being loving towards others. Instead, we just have to be true to ourselves. Being love also means being aware of the importance of nurturing my own soul, taking care of my own needs, and not putting myself last all the time. This allows me to be true to myself at all times and to treat myself with total respect and kindness. In order to truly care for someone unconditionally, I have to feel that way toward myself.
I can’t give away what I don’t have. And when I am non-judgmental of myself, I feel that way towards others. Oftentimes, the problem isn’t the cause of the apparent conflict. Instead, it is the judgement I have for myself. When I stop being my own worst enemy and start loving myself more, I automatically become more tolerant and accepting.”
If you perpetuate fear, your body responds by adopting the physiology of this fearful state. However, love heals and brings the body back into balance when you associate with this all-powerful energy. What are you going to heal about your relationship with love?
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