Love-Flow
Love is a complicated, sometimes loaded, word. Its meaning changes with the people using it and the context in which it’s used. Despite its baggage, it’s the word around which I organize my soul’s purpose in this life stream.
When I speak of love in my teaching and writing, I’m referring to universal love or unconditional love - as distinct from egoic (personality-oriented) or romantic love.
For me, love is a verb and a noun. As a verb, to love means to flow freely with the positive, intelligent, creative, healing energy of the universe – the energy that permeates everything and each of us. As a noun, love is the flow of universal energy - a dynamic process of receiving and radiating.
If we try to radiate without receiving, we exhaust ourselves. If we hoard energy and try to receive without radiating, we get spiritually constipated. Receiving and radiating are equally essential to love-flow.
Love is unconditional. It makes no judgment about the worth or value of whom or what we love. It’s like the radiance of the sun, which shines on everyone and never withholds its energy because someone isn’t a “good” person.
Love is intrinsic to who we are. At the heart/soul level - the deepest level of being - love is what best defines us. And, when we’re most connected to heart/soul, this flow is not just who we are, it’s what we do.
Love moves through us. We don’t have to earn it or work to create it. We simply need to soften and surrender to its flow. This is a bit like stepping into the current of a river and allowing it to carry us – simply, naturally, effortlessly. Love does the heavy lifting.
Simple, yes. Easy, no. The theory course on unconditional love is not that difficult. The lab is where it gets tricky.
We’ve learned so many ways to impede the flow of love – so many ways we block ourselves from receiving and radiating. Habitual emotions, stories, beliefs, expectations and patterns of behavior – mostly related to fear and unworthiness – trick us into tightening down, creating barriers and holding ourselves back from the river of life.
As we focus on receiving fully and radiating freely, we become more mindful of our barriers and, hopefully, more compassionate toward them. As we inhale universal/unconditional love into our fear and unworthiness, we gently invite these obstacles to melt away. Gradually, they do melt. And if, again and again, we breathe love into our hearts and breathe love out from our hearts, we will deepen our capacity to receive and radiate – fully and freely.
With persistent practice, new habits of love-flow take root and blossom.
