Love Is …
I have a friend who, unapologetically, states she has absolutely no interest in ‘loving everybody’! I laugh because I actually understand where she is coming from. I appreciate her forthrightness and it presents me with another opportunity to cogitate again on the concept or the experience of love.
I start with remembering Quan Yin’s premise that love is not something you have or don’t have. It is a verb, an action or experience consciously chosen daily. And it is not something you can earn or lose. For Quan Yin, and finally for me, Love is a given.
Love does not hurt! Neither loving someone nor being loved by someone hurts. Not even that marvelous, exhilarating and sometimes surprising experience of being “in love” hurts. The experience of love, and of being “in love”, leaves a warm and sweet memory, even when it has passed. Too often people feel hurt, fear, pain, dread, or loss and blame it on “love”; the loss of love or the absence of love.
The fear of never experiencing love can and does hurt, especially if there is an under-lying belief that one does not deserve love. It is, however, “fear”’ that is being experienced, neither love nor the absence or loss of love.
The loss, or passing on, of love, need not hurt, unless you have chosen to keep the loss instead of the love. Since everything you have ever experienced is stored in the collagen in your body, and imprinted on the Akashic Records, you need only recall the memory of love to re-experience it. Since love leaves an imprint of openness, warmth, peace, and safety, it doesn’t seem to matter if the experience is personal or impersonal; person to person or person to Creator.
Perhaps it is the pragmatist in me that wonders why, for heaven’s sakes, would anyone choose to remember and re-experience pain or loss instead of love.
I believe that we always have a choice as to which memories we bring forward into our current lives. I choose to bask in the warm memories of love I shared with others as well as love I was showered with by others. These are the memories that fill my heart and make my world a wondrous and awesome place to live. Coincidently, these same memories are like a magnet which draws more opportunities to love and be loved into my life.
I suspect that much of the confusion about love is a plethora of meanings for the word (not the actual experience), and the projected expectations of the experience. Just cast your mind to the movies, stories, songs, operas, books, etc. that all seem to put love on a pedestal that is all too often dashed to the ground leaving behind pain and loss and hurt!
I think of love as the underlying meaning behind Namasté, which can be loosely translated as: That which is Divine within me greets and acknowledges that which is Divine within you.
Or
Aloha: (Alo: presence and Ha: breath) The presence of breath, or breath of life. This quote attributed by Roberts Hawaii to the late Queen Lil’uokalani, resonates with me as being as applicable to love as to Aloha; “Aloha is to learn what is not said, to see what cannot be seen and to know the unknowable.” What a beautiful description for the experience of love!
If we are to actually move into and live from Fifth Dimension consciousness, we must remember that Divine Creator is at the heart of every human, even those who exhibit the most reprehensible actions or behaviors. So, while we may not be able to ‘love everyone’, we can respect everyone as a fellow, faulted, human. We can honor the Devine which enlivens all manifested life. We can acknowledge the “enemy” as human, or as a creation of the same Devine Creator that created you, and them, and Nature.
Quan Yin embodies the love she presents herself as: she is the personification of unconditional, uncompromising, steadfast love. It is this ‘love’, by any other name, she encourages us to practice. And, like every practice, the more we choose to do it, the more we actually Become it. Practice ‘love’ by whatever name you choose to call it, and you, too, will soon Become Love, and need not name it anything, for you will BE it!
Happy Namasté, Aloha, Divinity, Valentine Day.
Blessings,
Charlotte