Ok....This is about to get deep.
What is love? This is another intense topic to digest. It's just as vast as talking about Yoga and Ayurveda.
So, we might as well start by saying that we all come from unconditional love. In fact, all creations come from unconditional love. We can also say that Yoga and Ayurveda come from unconditional love...but what exactly is love? And...What the heck is unconditional love?
Ok, so let's chip away at this....As always, this is an opportunity to see things from a different perspective. We are often only exposed to life as we know it. It sometimes helps to look as things from a new angle. Bridging the gap between the Western and Eastern perspectives is something I'm deeply passionate about. This comes from my profound experiences as a westerner, infusing eastern practices into both my personal, and professional holistic health practice.
When we look at love from a western lens, especially a consumer driven perspective, we can easily see how the concept of love is overwhelmingly used as a marketing tactic. All we have to do is think about Valentine's Day. "The day of love." He loves me because he spent his entire paycheck on me. She loves me because she spent her entire paycheck on beautifying herself for me. Catch my drift...
The concept of love might be one of the most confusing things to wrap our heads around. We often get love and romance confused. We often get love and lust confused. In fact, love can get confused with almost any emotion. Love often gets Romanticized. Romanticizing something isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it can get us into trouble. Here's why.... When we romanticize something, the tendency is to describe it in an idealized way. In other words, we have rose-colored glasses on regarding a person, or topic. When we romanticize something we tend to overlook the negative aspects, for the sake of creating and maintaining the story, or image we created around the person, or thing. We aren't able see it with clarity, or we don't want to see it with clarity. We create a glamorized perspective of the situation, because we want this in our life, or because we want to be accepted or seen a certain way. This can lead to a big time entanglement with our ego. When this happens, it then becomes the dance of not wanting to admit to ourselves that what we see, is not what actually is. So, we keep the story going. We put a ton of energy into convincing ourselves, and others, that it's perfectly blissful. We often, avoid admitting the truth to ourselves, because we don't want to feel foolish, or ashamed. We rationalize it as, "It's better than nothing," or "It's not that bad." We accept status quo. Many times, we play out the story because we believe it's easier than facing the truth. It's also way more glamourous than the truth. So, we carry on with the story, in many cases, for years or even a lifetime. We do this because we want to feel love and we want to be loved. Who doesn't want that? Love is a natural human emotion and experience...but is this really love?
There are so many different scenarios and circumstances under this umbrella of love, but here's one ....you meet someone...maybe you went to school with the person, or know them from work, or through a family member. In any case, you connect, or re-connect and boom, seems like you hit it off. Great! You're talking on a daily basis. All the "right" things are being said, and done. You think, "This is it, I found my soulmate!" The search is over! We've been talking for a long time, we know each other from town, we have mutual friends, and so on....So the mind says, all the boxes have been checked. This a sure thing. By the way, it's possible that you did find your soulmate, it's also possible that you want to believe that you did. As time goes on, the fireworks start to dwindle. You start having a gnawing feeling in the pit of your stomach almost all the time. You ignore it. Time goes on. You are kissing less, spending less time in the bedroom together, conversations are a bit tense. Time goes on. You say to yourself, "Well we've been together for a while, and this was going to happen eventually." You carry on. You notice you've become almost like roommates, or acquaintances. Years pass, and you ask yourself, "How did I get here?" "What happened to the fireworks?" "Is this really how it's supposed to be?" All of these questions start running through your mind. You can either take an honest look, or continue things as they are.
So what happened here? In many instances, the minute the mind says things like "The search is over," the message is, that the work is done. There's no need to work on building, or maintaining a foundation, or anything. What for? All the boxes are checked. The mind decided that none of the work was necessary, and it went right into creating the story of what the relationship should look like. Why did the mind do this? Sometimes it's easier, and a nice escape, to create a story instead of doing the work. The mind is a master at this, unless it's taught that it's not the boss. The reality is, our work is never done.
So, the question still remains...is this love? What is love? Is this how we want to live? Where does this leave us?
Let's keep going....What if I told you that you didn't have to earn love, or work to achieve it.
The only thing you have to do is BE love. What does that mean? After, I just said, "Our work is never done, now I'm saying we don't have to earn love." What??? Let's make sense of this craziness.
Let's think of all of the things that we do or say, "In the name of love." How many times have you heard, or said, I'll love you when... I'll love you if....I'll love you once you finish this...I'll love you more if..." These are all examples of love with conditions. Guess what...Love with conditions isn't love at all. It's called using love as a tool to get what you want. In other words, manipulation. This will always lead to a scenario of "earning" love. Look around you. Look at all of the ways love is used as bait.
Love is love. Love cannot co-exist with any other emotion or agenda. It's energetically impossible. Love in it's true state is unconditional. This is why we don't have to earn or achieve it. The minute there's an agenda, or a manipulation tactic, there is no love. Love with conditions is what most of us have experienced at some point in our lives, and it can become a never ending quest, but without understanding that what we are looking for is already within us, we often develop a cynical attitude towards love.
Entangled in this never ending quest, things like seeking approval, seeking validation and seeking acceptance exist. These are tricky traps that can cloud our perception of love. We are often conditioned from a young age to believe that approval, or acceptance equates to love. This is hardly the case. We misinterpret these things as love, but they are just cravings within ourselves that we haven't brought to the surface. Without understanding this, we naturally seek these things outside of ourselves, instead of within ourselves. This can potentially open us up to questionable relationships because we are confusing these feelings with love, and seeking someone to fill a void, which only we can fill. We can end up on a roller coaster of chasing approval, validation and acceptance from a partners or friends. This will only lead to exhaustion. It can also open a door up for an unhealthy relationship with master manipulators.
So, we think love will find us if we look a certain way, act a certain way, or dress a certain way. Simply put, love sees no color, size, shape, or attire. Unconditional love is what we are, we just lost it along the way. We need to find love, it doesn't need to find us. Well where is it??? It's always there. Love doesn't pick and choose where it goes. It lives within each of us. We just have to do the work to build a relationship with it. How do we do that? By BEING LOVE. So, let's untangle this a bit. We do not have to do a darn thing to earn love, because love can't be earned. We do have to work at "Being love." So, how do we do this? We have to work at building a relationship with love. The only way this happens is with a commitment to ourselves. That commitment has to start with wanting to do the work. Once we establish that, the daily practice becomes clear. Everything that you do, think, say, and share comes from love. That's it. Only love. No matter how you look, you accept yourself with love, no matter what your thoughts are, you meet them with love, and so on. That is the practice of "Being love."
Love isn't always fluffy and Rosey. This is another trap. The practice of love is very challenging. It will bring up things that will stir you up. The answer is love yourself through all of it...and this is no easy task.
Love doesn't require a Romanticized story, or any story. Love doesn't require a bank account. Love doesn't require a fancy car. Love doesn't require a modern home with all the trimmings. Love doesn't require "date night." Love doesn't require, expensive gifts.
The home of love is in the depths of the heart space for every single human on the planet.
However, Love does require a foundation and a place where it can grow and have space. Love needs to be watered daily, which is the commitment. The confusing part is, that we think the commitment has to be to the other person or people, and yes, but that's only a small piece of the pie. The bigger piece is the commitment to yourself and to the bigger picture. Love requires a person to be able to stand naked and be exposed within themselves. To be able to get out of their own way. To be able to risk being raw and vulnerable. To be able to risk it all, for the sake of the bigger picture. If we hide from ourselves, that will flow into any relationship that we have, romantic or non-romantic. Love requires stamina. Love requires action. Love requires courage. Love requires the ability to see clearly. Love requires dedication and devotion.
From a Yoga and Ayurvedic perspective love is a sadhana, and probably the deepest form. Sadhana is a daily practice. Without a daily practice, life becomes dry. The commitment to a self practice gives juice to the body, the mind, and to everything around you. When everything in your life becomes a Sadhana, love abundantly flows because it's in a harmonious rhythm with life. Love is a union of mind and body. Love starts with the self.
We Are One In Love ~ We Are Love!
~ Leelah Lakshmi ~
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