Expressions of Love

We have all had experiences where the scent of a flower, the sight of a bird in flight, a smile, or a simple act of loving kindness has evoked love.  I ask that you continue to open your hearts to receive those expressions of love.  I also invite you to notice that love is everywhere – even in the very places that we tend to avoid, such as in fear, and in associative emotions such as grief, anger, and sadness.  The full experience of love cannot be found in the meanings or stories that our egos attach to the emotional content of our lives.  There is a huge difference between the story of an emotion and the experience of an emotion.  The story of an emotion is the memory of an emotion which does not exist separate from fear, and, therefore, it will always distort the perception of what is real.  The full experience of an emotion holds the promise of the unveiled essence or the truth of what we really are – at the expense of our deepest held beliefs, ideas, hopes and dreams.

Indeed, it is very challenging to be willing and able to give up all that we identify with security and safety in search for the truth.  To avoid the upheaval of turning our sense of self upside–down, we spend a lot of time and effort chasing “positive” emotions and running from “negative” emotions.  We chase positive emotions in order to avoid experiencing what is happening in the present, so that we can acquire more of the happiness and joy that we associate with the positive emotions.  We run from negative emotions to avoid the pain.  The irony of this strategy is that when we stop running from and chasing after emotions, we can fully experience any negative emotion for what it is, an illusion; and when we experience the ESSENCE of a positive emotion, we discover that it is both vibrant and stable.  It is my experience that unconditional love can only be experienced with an open heart, and that it is stateless, still, and never–ending.  It neither comes nor goes.  When we embrace ALL expressions of love, we notice that what we are running from is an illusion and what we are running towards is already here.

Separation from love only exists when attached to a story of lost love.  In reality, love cannot be lost because we are love.  Therefore, everything that we withhold from love out of fear includes emotions such as regret, judgment, blame or shame.  All of which imprison us in an old dream of right and wrong and good and bad – a continuous loop of causation and separation held together by a story of a “me” that must be protected from “them”.  What would happen if we stopped believing that old dream and fully felt the essence of the pain of separation from love?  My experience is that when we embrace the reality of pain, without a story of pain, we experience that it is a doorway home to love.  Woven into the very fabric of the pain of separation is the antidote – love.  Instead of running from or avoiding our negative emotions, I am suggesting that we meet them head–on.  If there is any place in your being that is associated with protection from pain, I guarantee that your life will be about suffering.  If we embrace pain with an open heart and with the loving light of simple awareness, suffering falls away to reveal the hidden jewel of love.  Feel that you are the one that is being yearned for, and let it have its way with you.  Love is that which is ever–presently awake and free, free for the “being”.  Surrender to it!

Let it Annihilate You

If love is to hurt you, let it do so fully – let it annihilate you.  I really do feel that the degree to which we are willing to be hurt by love is in direct proportion to the degree to which we are willing to love and to be loved.  Trust love and notice your mind’s tendencies to control and manipulate it.  We do so by placing conditions on something as pure as love.  If you are in love and you are out of control that is the most wonderful love of all.  You know – the kind of love where the “me” is totally lost and we have no clue about the “outcome” – where there is no separation between the object of love and the source of love.  As an experiment on love – rather than looking for more love to come your way, or to seek out more recognition or acknowledgment of who you are – give love to the extent to which you desire to receive it.  Feel what happens when you extend love without any hope or expectation of receiving anything in return.

I have noticed that a sadness centered on a general sense of loss generally appears as we begin to wake up to what we really are – LOVE (beautifully human and divine).  I believe that this is so because at the core every ego is aware of its ultimate plight.  Notice what happens when you shine a light into the darkness.  It is the same with the ego; there is a knowing that the light will eventually reveal itself and obliterate the darkness.  As we realize that we are whole and complete and that love is everywhere, our ego attachment to the story of me is in big trouble.  The ego, which feeds off fear and separation, realizes that its death is inevitable and there is no escape.  So, if fear shows up, welcome it with an open heart, do not do anything, and notice that it is just showing us where we are still identified with the “Story of me”.  Indulgence or avoidance is the stuff of the drama.  Resist the urge to do anything, and simply lean into the emotional content of the movie.  Be willing to “Be” in the fire of the impulse to act.  FEEL that there is something much, much bigger than reactive ego patterns.  Also, notice the clarity and stillness of this place of no doing.

Love Awaits You!!

The power of conceptual thinking and separation is only great if we go to battle with it.  Love your mind and do not go to war with it!  Mind attachments do not exist separate from the divine.  Again, we can find love everywhere.  So, what if all that trash talk that passes through consciousness was true (I am not worthy; I am too this and not enough of that, blah, blah, blah...)?  What if we acknowledge those thought forms without going to battle with them, and without attaching a meaning or a story to them?  Well, I notice that it is at that point of total surrender to what is, that the separation from love is over.  If we go to battle, we lose ourselves and if we stop fighting, we find our true self – LOVE.  The beauty of this non–strategy is that there is nowhere to go, no one to be and nothing to do.  Love awaits you!!

The Rose – Bette Midler

“It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance.  It’s the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance.  It’s the one who won’t be taken, who cannot seem to give, and the soul afraid of dyin’ that never learns to live.”

Sky Blue and Black – Jackson Browne

“You’re the color of the sky reflected in each store–front window pane.  You’re the whispering and the sighing of my tires in the rain.  You’re the hidden cost and the thing that’s lost in everything I do.  Yeah, and I’ll never stop looking for you.  In the sunlight and the shadows and the faces on the avenue.  That’s the way love is.  That’s the way love is.  That’s the way love is.  Sky blue and black.”