We long for love as much as we fear receiving it.
We yearn to be seen as much as we bolt at the possibility of being seen.
We hunger for the deep embrace of presence, tender eyes that gaze upon us with understanding and empathy, as much as we try to escape that very holding. It's too intimate. Too risky. Too exposing.
Nowhere to hide. To be seen is to be loved. To be seen is to die. Love is danger. Or so we have been taught.
A battle rages in us. The unloved one longing to hide, and the one who longs for the thrill and risk of living. Contraction and expansion. Breathing, in and out.
Unconsciously, we are attracted to or repelled by those who treat us, speak to us, hold us the way our parents did or did not. We are drawn to those who can heal us, and sometimes drawn to those who cannot, or worse. We think we are falling in love with a person, and sometimes we are just falling in love with our own image of them, which has nothing to do with the 'other' at all.
We love and we lose our images of love. We rise and we fall. Our hearts soar and our hearts break into a million pieces. We seek security and find insecurity and we find security in that. We seek freedom and find the prison of our own programming and lose hope and then regain it.
Sometimes it takes courage to leave a relationship. Sometimes it takes courage to stay. Sometimes it takes courage to do nothing, today. Sometimes it takes courage to admit how much pain you are in.
Sometimes it takes courage to admit how happy you are.
Sometimes you take a step without knowing why, and everything only becomes clear in hindsight.
You can't get it wrong anyway.
We lose ourselves and we find ourselves. We give more than we can take, exhausting ourselves in the name of "love". Or we run as fast as we can, exhausting ourselves in our flight from "love".
"Will somebody see me. Listen. Hold me. Let me break..."
And the drama of love plays out. And as the play goes on we learn more about ourselves. We begin to see our blind spots. Our unconscious patterns come into the light of awareness. We realise our assumptions. Our childhood fantasies start to crumble. Pain that we never wanted to feel, we suddenly feel. Grief. Anger. Feelings of rejection, abandonment. We want to run, go back into the old addictions, the old comfort, and for whatever reason, we don't. We get curious. We start looking and stop thinking so much.
We begin to relate to ourselves. Treat ourselves like the greatest lovers that we are. The most fascinating and beloved creatures.
With each day, we begin meeting ourselves more deeply. Discovering who we really are. What we feel, and what we don't. What we want and what we don't. Learning to say 'yes' when we mean yes and 'no' when we mean no and if that hurts someone, giving them back their responsibility to heal. Learning that love is not all butterflies and roses and positive feelings. It is work, too. It is mess. It is pain and the courage to breathe through that pain into joy and expansiveness. Love asks us to become more and more real, more and more human, more and more conscious, less and less perfect. More self-aware and willing to feel. And to feel more. And to feel more. And more. And to let our hearts break sometimes. To not know, sometimes. To be bored, sometimes. To be blissed-out, sometimes. To be full of life. To sometimes not know what the next step is. And to take it, or not.
Love is not a feeling, a state, or an experience. It's not a destination.
It's this extraordinary Light that shines from within.
It's this radiant Knowing that never leaves.
It's the Joy of being alive.
We can know it together. We can know it alone.
We can remind each other of it. We can forget, too.
We can trigger each other and help each other get curious about those triggers. We can do that work, or not.
We can meet in love's fire. Walk together, or not.
Share our hearts. Step back. Step towards. Or stay where we are.
Learn to love the dance of it, the spontaneity, the adventure, the mystery, the immediacy and the intimacy of it and the running too.
Learn to unlearn what we knew and embrace the unknowing as new knowing.
And get more and more content with the unresolveability of it all.
More and more happy with the unhappy one, certain about the uncertainty, so secure in the insecurity.
More and more blissed-out at our lack of bliss.
More and more curious about what's here Now.
Less and less solid, more and more playful.
Less a seeker of love, more a giver of it, and a finder, and a Presence that invites others into the same wild joy.
This is Love's Adventure.
