About Love and Life
Why do we avoid speaking of and practicing "love"? It is a focal point and deepest value of all the world's traditions and a majority of us say that we see ourselves as either religious or spiritual. Religious, spiritual or not, love is the most universal of human values. Look in the mirror. What we actually value is what shows up in the choices and actions of our day-to-day lives. Our hypocrisies are rampant; we live divided lives.
Love is simply a label that we give the energy of unity that we sense or feel that is present in all things. It is what physicists call the quantum or unified field. It is the source of our drive for connection, coherence and wholeness; for purpose and meaning; for self-determination and choice; for evolution and mastery. It is the energy of engagement and co-creation. We experience and express love as common ground, serving the greater good and engaging with care, understanding, respect, and responsiveness. Love is about acknowledgment, acceptance and appreciation for all that life offers.
Love is an openness that is full of possibility to realize the potential of the moment for the good in life to express. Yet we fear this openness, this space. It feels empty, void, that we are out of control. It is only in this openness that is without constraint that the greatest good can be known and expressed. Love as unity is life, the spirit in all things. The emptiness we feel and try to fill with external things is a denial of our unity, our spirit, our love within.
Fear distorts our perception; it blocks our ability to see, feel and experience this unity. Fear drives our habitual patterns of behavior anchored in the belief in separation. Fear drives our insatiable desire for power and "winning at all costs." Fear is prevalent when we take positions, control, dominate, exploit, or oppress others; treat people as objects, kill or maim, and destroy nature. The source of fear is our beliefs about how life should be, our personal and social conditioning based in the past. Fear alienates us from living life and from one another.
Much of what we call "love," are actually our fear-based projections of not having it. Hence, our experience of love depends on feelings of attraction, affection, attachment, and approval. It is based in our conditioned beliefs and fears of being alone, outcast, rejected. It is our idea about what love should be that separates us, serves to protect our egos and get something from others, not the reality of love as unity. Love, unity, is always present. Acting from fear and suppressing the experience of love results in chaos and suffering. In every moment we either choose love or react from fear.
Love, as unity, is of the heart which the mind does not comprehend. Our awareness and consciousness of life comes only from the heart. The mind can only produce ideas and thoughts about how life should be. Only the heart gives us the direct experience of life as it is and who we are. Honesty is the truth of the mind; truth is the honesty of the heart. Love is the truth of the heart. Love is the only answer. Love is the energy that makes all things possible. Engagement with life is the dynamic movement of giving and receiving love.
Focus expands. Will we focus on love - care, understanding, respect? Or, will we focus on fear - fight, flight, freeze? Will we focus on the eternal presence and stillness of love within ourselves? Or, will we focus on the incessant search and striving for external validation that results in duality and polarization, right/wrong, good/bad? This is our unrelenting battle. Love grows love. Fear grows fear. At the same time, fear contracts and limits our experience of life. Love generates the infinite expansion of life and its gifts. Love is the one value that we universally share yet we allow fear to govern our lives. Fear dissolves when we think with our hearts and love with our minds.
Through our shared emotions, the pain of traumatic events serves to break our hearts open, liberating us from the mind's fears and allowing our true nature to be revealed. Traumatic events can awaken us to the truth of our being as spirit, as love, in human form. Heroes emerge and we all find the courage and resolve to respond. We show our greatest strength and power in our vulnerability and willingness to experience emotional pain. This is love.
Participation in transformation is an individual choice to release our conditioned, fear-based beliefs and actions and instead live from our heart.When we think and act from care, understanding and respect for ourselves and all of life, we move with and facilitate our shift.When we act from fear, resisting the shift, we continue to have intense "negative" experiences.
Our world is a perfect reflection of our collective hearts and consciousness that is made manifest. Will we choose to live in the present moment reality of love as unity or in the ongoing shadow of fear, projecting and broadcasting our past into our future experience?
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Lucira Jane Nebelung is the Founder & Principal of Leading as Love.
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