I haven't done much today. In fact, I have yet to get dressed or take a shower. I wrote for about two hours this morning,and now I'm having a sandwich and some orange juice and so thought I might as well write some more.
So yesterday I saw some posts online about International Peace Day and Day of Unconditional Love, which basically seem to be about the same thing to me. It seems to be just about awareness of humans' sensitivity to and need for love and non-judgment. What strikes me most about this is that we still need "Days" for these things. It seems so obvious to me. Of course everyone longs for love and freedom from judgment. What confuses me is when and why people refuse or fail to give these simple things. And yet, it's what we do...
(When I say "you" in the next paragraphs, I don't mean you personally or cumulatively, this is not accusatory, just the most natural way for me to write this.)
Maybe you meet someone and it's your instinct to like them, (because I think that's the most instinctual thing... to naturally like the people you meet) but then your social circle disapproves and you shun the person, even though you really connected, even though you enjoyed their company initially. Now you're without a person who you enjoyed yourself with, but you still have your entire old circle. How does that circle of friends make you feel? Are they really your friends, or just people who you hang out with? I don't think it's enough to just run around with people; people need something that ties them together. Do you miss the conversations you had with the friend you turned away from? How do you think your friend feels? I feel like this is a pretty common situation, that folks turn their back on someone for fear-based reasons, afraid to lose the comfort of old approval. And I just wonder how much more peace and how much more love we could all let in and create if we just let the need for approval go, or if we gave and received approval without the prerequisite of conformity. It just strikes me as sad that we are all so desperate for love (and don't let yourself say you aren't, because even if you have real love in your life already, you're still desperate... because if that love left... you'd be miserable... we just weren't set up to be this high-functioning need-no-one individuals that society seems to tell us we should be) and yet so full of the love that everyone around us needs so desperately. Why do we hoard our love? Let it go...
The illustration at the top of this post is a representation of the heart chakra, and whether you believe in wheels of energy along the spine or not, it still has emblematic significance. The heart chakra is the center from which compassion radiates, and whether you connect with that via a belief in a wheel of energy, or connection to a higher being, or just the general notion of the golden rule, it really doesn't matter. The important thing is that we are full of love, and we can choose to let it go. But when our love goes out to others... it doesn't just transform them (and sometimes it isn't well received at all and does the intended recipient no good whatsoever) but us also. When you give love, you grow your own, but I think the fear is that if you give love, you'll be depleted. People will use you up.
I'll be real for a moment and admit that it isn't so easy. There have been times when I've given love only to get burned. And probably there have been times when someone's given me love and I burned them. I've had fear-based reactions that have caused me to keep people at arm's length. It's something we have to work at daily, keep peeling back those layers of fear and mistrust. And we have to check ourselves, too, make sure we aren't giving anyone a reason to fear or mistrust us. It would be an error to think that we could all just wake up tomorrow and decide to live in peace. We have so much to both relearn and unlearn first. It's like we're all suffering a cumulative stroke that has rendered a very essential part of our being damaged. Healing isn't sudden. It isn't miraculous. It takes work, patience through the set backs and frustrations. But I hope that, since I'm a day late on this, that everyone did take a moment to think about peace and love yesterday, to give a little extra, let a little extra in.
Think about this: What is it, really, that holds you separate from the rest of the world? SKIN. Skin and only skin. About 2 tiny mm of flesh hold your blood and bones and organs back from the rest of the world. But are you your blood and bones and organs? Or are you something more? And if you believe you're something more... can that something more really be contained by 2mm of skin? We aren't as separate as we imagine. We're in an open system here. Whether we like it or not, we're in an open system physically and spiritually. Physically, we take in food, water, air, and put out waste, carbon dioxide, physical warmth. Spiritually, we take in attitudes and thoughts, transform them a bit inside, and put something else back out into the world. I'm focusing on the spiritual here. We may not have a lot of control on what we take in or the inevitability of putting something else back out, but we are transformers. We control the middle process. We can take what we're given and change it according to what we want to see, to what the world needs.
Remember... a candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.
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