Long ago, I adopted the belief that at our core, we are all love. We express that love uniquely. So much so, that sometimes it’s hard to even recognize the love. That is, I think, the beauty of love; it uses us as mirrors for one another.
What do you think of when you think of love in it’s purest state?
Love opens our hearts. For most, it is the first expression experience when placed in our parents arms. That child, in an instant, expands the parents love capacity more than they could ever remember.
Certainly “falling in love” opens our hearts. It also brings up our insecurities, the disconnections within ourselves. It gives us the strength to slowly remove the layers of protection (often caused by the pain of love). It gives us the strength to want to be better, to show up fully. In doing so, it gives us the courage to be vulnerable and honest.
Love guides us, helps us take risks, just the unjust, encourages us to bring more light into the world, expand into our greatness. Love gives us hope and the power to believe again.
But love also hurts.
It causes us to go inward to explore who we are verses who we became when pride, ego, and fear took over.
It serves as xray vision through the bullshit when someone’s actions are misaligned with their essence.
It helps us face the unthinkable and recognize what matters most.
It causes a pain so great that death is welcomed which ultimately makes us more empathetic and compassionate and reminds us that in death there is peace and we need a lot more of that here.
It helps us hold space for others whose pain is deeper and more unimaginable than our own. We become the ground for them to stand, if only for a moment before collapsing in grief.
Sometimes love is so powerful that we want to turn it off, run from it, numb it, hide. But we can’t. It is who we are. Our best bet is to just sit with it when words do not come, when anger spews, when grief devastates, when fear paralyzes.
Asking for help, love always answers.