Love?

Love - the thing we all spend our lives wishing and dreaming for, and spending our lives, energy and money chasing after. And yet not many of us know how to really love, or even what love is. It is another one of those abstract nouns like peace, freedom, democracy, and justice, that mean something different to each of us.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. A Course In Miracles

Haunted by the past?

Most of us were raised by people who didn't love themselves, so they had trouble loving us in real and healthy ways. But we can learn how to break that cycle. We must see the negative programming for what it is and look for role models and community that can teach us how to love ourselves, and therefore others. To quote the prophet Isa "Love thy neighbor as thyself". He didn't say love your neighbor as your parents, or as you love god, or as you love your pet (that would've been a lot easier to do because loving them is easy). The tricky part in that advice is not how to love the "other". The work is in the second part of the sentence- "as thyself".

How many people do you know who really LOVE themselves? We can be good to ourselves, or spoil ourselves, or be overly indulgent but really loving in a deep, balanced and healthy way is very tricky. Once we love US we can love anyone. And what better laboratory, training ground, for learning how to love than relationship. That is where the metal gets tested, the alchemical union takes place. Two people learning to love themselves and each other is always a holy and beautiful mess. It takes courage, strength, faith, tolerance, forgiveness, sweat and hard work, to take on that mission. But it is worth it. Anyone can sit at home alone in front of the TV.

Ok, gang, lets get going. Get out there and LOVE LOVE LOVE. Get out of your comfort zone and RISK!

It is a fundamental mistake of man’s to think that he is alive, when he has merely fallen asleep in life’s waiting room. Idries Shah

And don't forget--love is not the same as hollywood romance. That's the ego's inferior version of divine love--something more like fast food than a real meal. If you want delicious, and nutritious you have to grow it and cook it yourself. Hard work? Sure! Learn to enjoy the process, the journey. It has never EVER been about the destination. Didn't you see the wizard of oz?
Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we have learned here. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and the acceptance of love back into our hearts. Marianne Williamson

What we humans need most is what we find the hardest to do....LOVE
So learn from those around you who need love but are going about it all wrong.

I have learned silence from the talkative,
tolerance from the intolerant
and kindness from the unkind.
I should not be ungrateful to those teachers. --- Kahlil Gibran

Love is misunderstood to be an emotion; actually, it is a state of awareness, a way of being in the world, a way of seeing oneself and others. David R. Hawkins

Love is all you need