A Reflection On Love & Connection

Have you ever felt that something essential is missing, no matter what you achieve? In this audio, I share my own reflection - and invite you to reflect too - on the power of consciously connecting with the energy of love. Together, we'll explore how to notice the often easy to miss moments of magic in order to bring calm, clarity, creativity and connectedness. As we do this, we start to build the belief of what has always been true. This track is your gentle guide to finding a sense of belonging, peace, and empowerment from within, no matter what your current life looks like on the outside.

As always, keep a journal nearby in case you want to take notes, jot down your own insights and explore any questions that come up (highly recommended!).

Much love,
Rachael

Transcript

Hello,

Welcome.

Take a seat,

Get comfy.

So I'm gonna be sharing something that I feel is quite important for us humans to kind of live,

To recognize,

To feel,

To embody,

To create as a habit.

And before I do that,

I'm just gonna share a very brief little story.

So the other day I was hugging one of my cats very tightly,

As if it was the last time that I'd ever get to hug him,

Which thankfully it wasn't.

So I was just drinking in his adorableness and soaking in the feelings of love that I have for him and that I feel from him,

Which is a small practice that's kind of part of like a overarching conscious intention that I have to soften,

To open,

To essentially feel more connected to others,

To feel more loving and also to feel more loved myself.

And in that moment,

I felt such a deep sense of bliss and gratitude running through my entire body and like enveloping us both.

That something important became known to me,

Became very clear in my consciousness.

And I have to share this with you.

But first,

A couple of questions.

Have you ever felt like you're not quite there yet?

Like no matter how hard you work or what you achieve,

There's something more that's missing always.

Or perhaps you felt this overburdening sensation that there's something wrong with you.

Maybe that you don't belong or that you're not enough or you're not X,

Y,

And Z enough or that you're not doing things right.

If so,

You're not alone.

So many of us live for this underlying feeling of anxiety and fear,

Of lack.

So that's one thing.

And then when we look at the world around us,

This discomfort,

This feeling of discomfort only gets amplified.

We only have to look at the news to feel worse.

So there might be things that you're seeing that are really ticking you off.

For me,

It's anything to do with animal cruelty and the oppression of women,

War.

I mean,

The list is endless really about those are the top things.

I can get so wound up about those things and just think to myself,

What the fuck is happening?

If most of us don't want this,

Why does it continue?

So there's this kind of internal loop of not good enough.

And then there's all the stuff happening outside.

All the stuff that we see outside.

And it can feel sometimes like this is just too much.

It's just too much.

When this feeling of it's too much,

This feeling of lack of fear of frustration is exactly why it's so important for us to connect to something higher.

And why I'm feeling more and more is that the energy of love is all that we truly have and all that we actually need.

Now you might be like,

Well,

That sounds nice,

But what does that mean?

And I would understand why.

And I just wanna say,

First of all,

That I'm not talking about the Hollywood idea of love.

I'm not talking about grand gestures,

Marriage,

Holding hands in a circle,

Making friends with all the people that you don't vibe with,

Becoming a selfless saint.

Of course,

Those are all manifestations of it and they may be a part of your experience at some point in your journey.

But right now,

I'm talking about the day-to-day moments.

I'm talking about the moment-to-moment experiences of love that could be very intense or could be very subtle,

Very soft,

Very easy to miss.

The experience of love might be the result of small things that are done with an intention to make someone's life easier,

To bring more beauty into the world or to help someone or people feel less lonely.

It might just be a simple moment when you register that something or someone is valuable to you.

And we all have access to these moments.

That's the wonderful thing that we neglect to realize.

But I also wanna just mention that if love,

If the word love is difficult for you,

That that can be a thing.

It's quite a strong word.

And I think there are a lot of kind of unconscious connections that we make with the word love,

Like perfect families,

Heroic sacrifice,

Disney movies.

So one might feel like,

Hmm,

Love.

Yeah,

That's something someone else has.

So if that's the case for you,

Where you're experiencing,

Noticing some resistance around the word love,

Then I just invite you to explore other words that carry the same energy.

So it could be words like warmth,

Softness,

Tenderness,

Care,

Or it could even be a word like fun,

If that feels relevant for you.

Compassion is also another word that one could use,

Which is essentially love in the presence of suffering.

It's like a willingness to feel the pain of witnessing or experiencing suffering.

Coupled with a wish,

Wish that that person,

Whether it's you or someone else,

Be relieved of their pain.

And that wish and willingness make the pain quite beautiful and give it power.

So it's kind of like a rainbow in a way,

Like a spectrum.

There are different shades of love,

I guess.

So what I would invite you to do is just maybe jot down,

Like,

What does love mean to me?

I always think it's important to make connections,

Especially when we're dealing with quite big topics,

Like to break them down into what does this actually mean to me on a personal level?

Because then you can really connect to it and put it into your own words.

So you might ask,

Like,

What does love mean to me?

Or what feels like an accessible quality of love that I experienced actually quite often?

Or maybe you can reflect on a recent interaction where you felt included and valued,

Understood,

Or maybe just this feeling of being at one with something or someone.

And then just noting,

Like,

What did I feel physically and emotionally in that moment was some descriptive words that resonate.

So the more we tune into our own experiences,

The more we can start to make our own story about love,

Rather than just accepting or kind of feeling like we're competing with what the culture that we live in,

The society that we live in says it should look like.

So why do we wanna tap into the energy of love?

Well,

Love is a profoundly strengthening feeling and energy.

It's both ease and strength.

It calms the nervous system,

Helps us to think more clearly and creatively,

And it brings with it this feeling of connection and belonging,

The sense of union with the thing that we are loving,

The thing that we're appreciating.

It's a moment of remembrance.

So,

Oh yeah,

I'm not this separate self.

I'm not this thing that's limited to this physical body and a list of positive and negative attributes.

Like,

I go beyond this.

You know,

When we're not identifying with this idea of I'm a separate self and there's something wrong with me,

We're not fighting.

So we're not at war with our thoughts or with our circumstances or those around us.

In that moment of experiencing the energy of love or whatever word you like,

We are in alignment.

We're our truest selves.

And when we're our truest self,

We are our most powerful self.

Our truest self has all the energy and all the resources required to do whatever it is that we feel called to do.

So love is a strengthening,

Calming,

Connecting energy.

And,

You know,

It feels good.

So what more could we ask for?

But to be at ease,

To know that we have the resources that are required to say yes to what calls us and to feel good in the process.

So I invite you to reflect for a moment on a stressful situation,

Maybe something that tends to happen in your life or something that you tend to deal with and you get a bit flustered over it or you get a bit triggered.

And so as you bring that to mind,

I want you to imagine that instead of wishing that this situation could be different,

Maybe that people could be different or that this thing could just go away,

You didn't have to deal with it anymore,

That instead of that,

That you actually just set an intention to be tapped into the energy of love as you engaged with it.

What do you think would be most powerful to you?

Most helpful for everyone?

Would it be the wishing things could be different?

Or would it be engaging from a place of groundedness,

Tapped into the energy that connects us?

Connects you with all the resources that you could possibly need in this life.

So we can do this,

We can tap in to this energy through simple presence,

Through being a grounded presence.

Because the grounded presence is us without the fear and the judgment and the busyness and the resistance.

And without all of that,

What is beneath that is love,

Is our true self.

I did this practice intentionally the other day while I was working.

So I was just kind of intending to be as fully present as I could be as I was sitting at my desk working.

And I was observing these moments of anxiety,

Anxiety or frustration as they came up.

And instantly in that moment when you have that first contact with whatever it is that's grinding your gears,

There's this kind of like you're with it,

Like you are the thing,

You are the annoying,

The energy of being annoyed or anxious or whatever.

And your thoughts start kind of like going in that direction.

And there's this momentum that starts to build.

And what I did is just noticed that because it happens even if you intend to be present,

There is this first moment of like of a reaction.

And I noticed that and then I just went back to a sense of like being a grounded presence.

So I was observing the feelings of anxiety,

The thoughts of frustration and whatever it was,

Not as if they were me,

As if they were part of me,

But seeing that actually they were just floating elements of my experience.

And as I did that,

The more I tuned into the space in which those things were arising,

More I connected to myself as awareness,

I found that my capacity for compassion was higher,

Compassion for myself.

It was easier for me to just feel calm once I looked at things in that way and I embodied this groundedness.

And also compassion and love started to be infused in what I was doing.

Gradually,

I started to notice like that my inner reserves of compassion and love,

Like I could access them easily because I wasn't so caught up in my stories about things being annoying or whatever it was.

And I was having interactions over email and I could start to see how I had a choice.

I could actually infuse this exchange with love and there was a lightness and it felt great.

And we can choose this.

We can choose to ground ourselves in spaciousness and access all of the inner resources that we need and infuse the interactions of our life with those qualities,

With love,

Whatever words that you're wanting to really embody.

And the great thing is it will be felt when we do that,

When we make that conscious choice,

It will be felt by whoever it is that we're interacting with.

And it's gonna be reflected back to us and we start this positive cycle.

No,

There are no losers.

It's win,

Win,

Win for everyone.

So we don't have certainty.

We don't have forever.

Nothing lasts forever on this plane of existence.

We don't have a guaranteed formula for success although people try to make it out like there is.

And we don't have a guarantee that the things that are on our vision board are gonna manifest.

We might have faith and trust and maybe certain things that are really truly part of our soul's mission that we actually want as well will manifest,

But we don't have a guarantee that things will turn out how we want them to or how we think we want them to.

And in our daily life,

We probably don't have a trigger-free workplace or family or live in a perfect home or neighborhood or whatever.

So there's a lot of things that are not in our control,

But what we do have is the capacity through our consciousness to choose to tune into the energy of love again and whatever words resonates with you.

And that is our true power.

And it's available to us,

But a lot of us have this assumption that we're not worthy of love.

You know,

Maybe you think to yourself,

I'm hard to love or I'm not loving or I'm not ever gonna receive the kind of love that I want.

And if you have ever felt like that,

I just wanna say that it's not abnormal.

It's actually quite normal to feel like that.

But if we don't believe that love is available to us,

Then we're not gonna see it even when it's there.

So again,

If love is a strong word,

Maybe it's easier to believe that we have the capacity to feel warm towards someone,

To feel safe in a certain place,

To feel happy and uplifted when engaging in something or receiving something.

And if we can sharpen that awareness,

This is gonna help us to notice when these moments arise.

And the more we notice,

The more we can start to build new beliefs around love,

Around warmth,

Around connectedness,

Belonging,

Safety,

Support.

And also remember that just like the trees and the sky and the animals,

You're put here for a reason.

You're a being of this earth.

And by nature,

You belong here.

By nature,

You have the capacity to feel and to receive and to also give love.

Now,

Your mind can certainly bring up a lot of good arguments to the contrary,

Because that's what the mind likes to do.

But the ultimate truth is that you are both the giver and the receiver of love.

Yesterday you gave love,

You just might not remember.

Yesterday you received love.

Again,

You just might not remember.

You might not have been aware of it.

It's like breathing in and breathing out.

And you can't see oxygen,

Can you?

But it's there.

And likewise,

Love is there,

It's available.

So where do we find it?

Well,

There are many sources that we can tap into.

So if you can't get it from,

Let's say,

Your family of origin,

Go to your favorite place in nature.

You take a moment right now,

Just think,

Where do you feel love?

Where do you feel loved,

At peace,

Connected?

Is it in the sea or walking through a forest?

If you don't feel the love from your work colleagues,

Are you in receipt of it from your pets?

I've got two cats and they are a huge source of love for me.

There's no way it's an accident that we cross paths.

Or maybe it's an older friend that you know who you sometimes have dinner with.

The point here really is that there is love available.

It's in the air.

These micro moments of interaction,

Whether it's with nature or other humans,

Whether it's from music or art that touches you,

Or listening to a podcast that uplifts you and shows you that you're not alone in the things that you're challenged by.

Anything that you appreciate,

Anything that you can kind of shift your perspective to look at like a gift,

Because it is a gift,

And that something or someone somewhere created this thing that you are benefiting from,

Just knowing that that is a source of love.

Could just be like the fruit at your local greengrocer.

That's love from the earth,

No?

And also the people who did the work of getting it to your greengrocers.

And another great source is internal,

Like just through presence of your own emotions.

So if you're having a difficult time and you feel like you need some support,

Like just tuning in,

Pausing and feeling how you feel.

Placing a hand on your heart and just being with yourself,

Being with your emotions,

Not trying to change anything or fix anything,

Just allowing yourself to be a human.

Human who is having a difficult experience.

Just giving yourself the space to feel it fully.

I'm so afraid to feel,

But it's the best medicine.

So there are so many ways we can receive love,

Even if we haven't had a traditional picture-perfect life.

Meditation is also a great portal.

My mom died about 20 years ago and that has been quite a hard thing to have lost that source of love for my entire adulthood.

But I had an experience the other day where I was doing a meditation and this meditation is about kind of really absorbing feelings of love from moments.

That you either kind of imagine or just remember.

And so I was remembering moments with my mom.

One particular day,

We were just laughing our heads off at Ikea while she was trying to read out one of the words of this piece of furniture she was looking for.

Moments of just like watching the comedy channel together.

Laughter was a big thing for us.

And yeah,

Just a lot of moments came to me that I haven't thought about for a long time.

And I was really just tuning into those feelings of receiving that,

Like being in her energy.

And I realized,

Wow,

I actually get to experience my mom's love again,

Just through my mind.

And the thing is that if you're,

Whether you're experiencing something in the actual present moment or you're just thinking about it or imagining it,

Creating it in your mind,

Your body will have the same physiological response and also the brain centers that are active when that thing is actually happening are the same centers that are also active when you're just imagining it.

So something is happening.

So there's a lot of power that we have.

Don't get too hooked up on like what the world looks like right now,

Because A,

You're probably not seeing things that are actually there.

And B,

Just through connecting to your own essence,

Your own self,

You can feed yourself with the things that you hunger for by connecting to yourself in the moment.

So the energy of love is available to us all and it's the most powerful energy that we could tap into.

I believe with every fiber of my being that if we really let love in,

If we let ourselves feel it and merge with it and become it,

Everything will flow in our lives.

We will be guided and supported and whatever it is that we feel called to do,

The journey will get easier.

Now,

Obviously we're not gonna be without challenges because that's part of this game,

You know?

But the challenges can really be shifted and alchemized into something like really cool.

Again,

Just through our presence,

Our consciousness,

Our awareness and our willingness.

So when you are experiencing moments of warmth and connection and care and joy,

Humor,

Whatever it is,

I encourage you to drink it in.

Okay,

So even in the most subtle things,

Maybe someone just said something nice to you in passing.

You know,

Instead of brushing it off,

Just take a moment like,

Oh,

Thank you.

Like touch your heart.

Notice the little ping,

The little jolt of electricity and enjoy it.

Or maybe you did something nice for someone and just stopping to notice,

How does it feel when I do this,

When I embody this?

It's love,

So drink it in.

Savor it,

Feel it in your entire body,

Dissolving into you.

Because love is a relief.

Love is perspective,

It's joy,

It's creative power,

It's strength.

And it's always available,

No matter who you are or where you are.

Okay,

So notice it,

Let it in,

Merge with it,

Embody it,

And let it be mirrored back to you in the external world because the world is a mirror and that is exactly what's gonna happen.

All right,

So don't worry about all the things,

Just embody this.

If nothing else,

It will feel good for a few seconds,

Minutes,

And that's decent.

That's worth doing.

Well,

That's it for now.

Thank you so much for listening.

I'll speak to you soon.

And just wishing you lots of love,

Warmth,

Peace,

And presence.

Reviews

Really beauty of a share, being open with what is, and allow, accept it as it is , gives ground for listen what is really there, and not always what you did expect by reacting based on how it should/ could be expectations. Step back, Just be in the moment of being open to the feelings, which helps to remember what loving being you are.

This!!! The balm my soul needed on an anxious night. I cuddled up to my dog and we listened together. Thank you. Much love to us all.