In the Presence of Love
“From Love you come
To Love you return
Remember, there is none other.”
Dojén, as channeled by Eric Barthell,III
“There is only Perfect Love.”
Quan Yin
“How do I know if I love someone”, I am asked. “Simple”, I reply. “Close your eyes and think about that person, picture them in your mind, how do you feel?” “My heart feels warm and I smile”, is the response. “You love them”, I say as my heart warms and I smile.
The deepest yearning in the human heart is for love. The drive to become wealthy, famous, or powerful has, at its heart, the desire to love and be loved; to somehow be worthy of love. Even the search for a personal connection to “god” is a search for love. While the search for love is all too often externally focused, I personally believe that love in an inside job. That, as Quan Yin teaches, “the joy and the healing of love is in the loving, not in the being loved.”
From Quan Yin’s perspective, a living personification of unconditional, uncompromising love, love is a verb; an action, not a goal, and a conscious choice. Love then becomes a daily (sometimes hourly) active choice; a choice for connection, which is Love, instead of disconnection, which is Fear.
I can choose to “love” someone and at the same time choose NOT to interact with them because of their destructive behavior. I can choose to wish them well, put them in god’s hands, and also refrain from commingling our lives. I can choose to cut the emotional, psychic and physical ties with love, or with kindness instead of with fear, anger or hurt. I can choose to love my own flawed, human self, and also love another’s flawed, human self in the same way.
To love does not mean that dependence, interdependence or personal or intimate relationships must or will follow. It does mean you offer the same acceptance and generosity of spirit you want for yourself, and hopefully, give yourself.
When I finally stopped questioning what love was, and simply basked in the experiences of love and its many facets, I stopped believing that I lacked the capacity to love. Every time I smile (even masked and six feet apart) at someone, stranger or friend, I am in the presence of love. Every time I make time for someone to speak, even in a business capacity, I am in the presence of love. Each time I am able to simply accept someone for who they are being at the moment, I am in the presence of love. Every kindness, including slowing down so a speeding car can cut in front of me, I am in the presence of love. We are taught, especially as healers, that love heals. I believe that the true healing of love is to love; love others, love pets, love nature, and most importantly to love oneself.
I recognize that there are people who, when thought about, inexorably produce a tightening of my shoulders, a grimace on my face and a heaviness of heart; it is clear that I do not love them in any form whatsoever. Even though I know they carry Light, as does all sentient life, I am incapable (or unwilling?) of “seeing” it, responding to it, or even, in some cases, acknowledging it. I suspect it is my loss, not theirs, for choosing to not love diminishes me.
Perhaps the truth is that you and I are the presence of love, and we are simply acting out the love that is the essence of who we are. And as we consciously choose to be in the presence of love, we become, as Quan Yin encourages, the presence of love.
During this month when we celebrate love, may the Valentines you choose to receive and the Valentines you choose to give remind you that you are always in the Presence of Love, that you are the Presence of Love, and that, indeed, ‘there is none other’.