Where is the Love?

     Everything depends on my love in every moment. Other names for this essential ingredient include heart, wisdom, or life force - 'may the force be with you.'

     Everything? Absolutely! Abandonment, neglect & other major abuses, by those on whom infants totally depend for love, shelter, protection & nurturing, often cause catastrophic physical, mental, emotional, psycho-social-spiritual chaos, for generations! This has been thoroughly documented in "adverse childhood experiences (ACE)" studies, since the late 1990's. Lack of love is severely traumatic, devastating lives like a raging forest fire. Most people who commit violent crimes, suffer addictions & incarceration came from unstable, dysfunctional homes.

     Despite far-from-ideal childhoods, some children still grow up to be functional, loving adults. Most, perhaps all such resilient children, had at least one loving, nurturing adult to inspire & energize them to survive, and maybe even thrive.

     Many of us, at least subconsciously crave to be loved unconditionally, without judgment or expectation, just for who / what we are. Our deepest desire is to receive love like this forever.

     “A single force, love, links and gives life to infinite worlds.” Jordano Bruno

 

     How to wisely keep open our heart energy center is exceptionally-well dealt with in: Michael A. Singer. “The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself.” New Harbinger, 2007. 

 

      "Experiencers" - those who've had near death experiences (NDEs), and the many others who have, by various other means, glimpsed beyond the narrow perspective ('veil') of this physical dimension, consistently agree on the absolute primacy of love. The highlight of their strikingly vivid, overwhelming spiritually-transformative experience is the certainty of being loved unconditionally. Nothing compares to this, the most important message which they all share. To the best of their ability, they resolve to be the source of unconditional love for the rest of their lives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwkOnahGlsc

     This pivotal spiritual shift from craving for to being the source of love, arises from the remembered capacity to recognize in oneself the exact same perfect source of love, as is present in all other people, animals, plants & things - as expressed in the greeting 'Namaste.'

     “If you don’t find God in the next person you meet,
      it is a waste of time looking for him further.” Gandhi

     The only relief available for the worst possible pain - that of losing one's child - is the meaning derived from being able to provide wise loving support to others going through this same terrible pain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suhc428VJLc

      With every person we meet, the task is to recognize their perfect loving ('divine') true nature, which helps them recognize their own perfect true nature. It's about creating a nurturing, harmonious resonance of authentic beings. We are being asked to radically accept & get beyond our differences, and that's not easy. To finally recognize each & every one of us, including ourselves, as fully divine AND AT THE SAME TIME having a fully human experience, in ALL circumstances - joy, boredom & agony!

     "There’s only one happiness and it’s who you are. There’s only one place to find lasting happiness, and that is to know who you are and to be who you are.” Francis Lucille

"It is this love which will bring about miracles
in the hearts of men."
Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Your task is not to seek for love,
but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself 

that you have built against it.”  

Rumi

 

"Time, Time, Time, What has Become of Me? ..."

      Many of us, up till around age 50 or so, are ramping up the race to become #1 among our peers wrt to success - however we define that. Usually success is measured in material terms - from financial security with a hefty cushion for safety, all the way to "The one who dies with the most toys wins!"
     Many of us assume, that "to survive in this dog-eat-dog world," we must endure "short-term pain for long-term gain." With such an adversarial, competitive mindset, short-term pain necessarily includes neglecting, and too often eventually forgetting about, our own, our family's & others' physical, mental & emotional / spiritual welfare. Albert Einstein said: “Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age.” We tend to become increasingly fixated on, & progressively more efficient in, speeding down the wrong, narrow path. 
     This "momentum of our life" just keeps ramping up, until slowed down or stopped by physical or psychological health crises, disillusionment, burnout or even suicide.
     We become so identified with & locked into (ie unconscious about) the "momentum of our life," that attempts to bring healthy balance into our work life will be misinterpreted as attempts to sabotage our success & happiness, or at the very least, as serious handicaps.
     It's only when, despite our best efforts, our fast train to success starts slowing down, goes off the rails, or crashes - or for some of us, reaches the destination yet leaves us bitterly disappointed, that we start the process of opening our heart-mind to our own, our family's & others' physical, mental & emotional / spiritual* welfare.
     There are many different reasons why - "no matter the cost" to ourselves, others or the environment - we're driven to narrowly focus on & chase after security, respect, wealth, fame, status, glory etc. It's a primal survival strategy, which we are best to accept & embrace according to the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model, and equally important, skillfully integrate into our innately wise, loving, more evolved "part."

     * "Spiritual intelligence implies a capacity for a deep understanding of existential questions and insight into multiple levels of consciousness."
       Vaughan F. "What is Spiritual Intelligence?" Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 2002; 42(2): 16-33.

Danger Signals

     Immediately from one or a few obvious cause(s), or more gradually from unknown numbers of straws on the camel's back, we're regularly bombarded by many, many danger signals.
     'Danger' sounds acute, even life-threatening. But as social creatures, we sense danger even when someone we consider important, isn't as friendly towards us as usual. So the innumerable variables in life, coupled with our 'negativity bias' conspire to more or less constantly keep us on edge! And the greater our history of trauma, the more exaggerated the alarm bells & our responses. One can sustain major trauma without ever having experienced combat or sexual abuse.
      “By far the most important predictor of how well (people) coped with life’s inevitable disappointments was the level of security established with their primary caregiver during the first two years of life.”
     Bessel Van Der Kolk. “The Body Keeps the Score. Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.” Penguin Books, 2015. 

     So we can see that we should be gentle & understanding with our own & others' odd behavior. We're all, to some degree, scared, needy kids who just want to be safe, secure, loved & happy. Our behavior hints at how patient (to desperate) we are to get there, as well as how healthy (to dysfunctional) our idea of "there" happens to be. All of us are always doing our best, no matter how that may appear to others - and even to ourselves when we look back (with dismay & gratitude for the great tolerance we received) later!
     But identifying with our level of dysfunction is unsatisfactory - intentional wallowing simply won't do. We must tirelessly dig ourselves out of this hole. We can learn to quickly & easily recognize the felt sense of false (ego) danger. There's a distinct difference between danger to our ego vs actual life. We must learn to identify this difference, because our quality of life definitely depends on skillfully managing these two vastly different dangers.

 The Space Between by Alice Mason   https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/AliceMasonArtist?ref=l2-shopheader-name