Love: Expansion

In Lesson 5 Love: Expansion, after our brief opening meditation, we acknowledge the many distortions of love which cause us to abandon ourselves. We see that the purpose of love is to live our true nature. Then our love is set free and our spirit expands. Includes the teaching story ‘Snowy Woods’. We close with the spiritual practice “Flowing Hearts.”

Transcript

Lesson five,

Love expansion.

We'll begin with a meditation as usual.

Sit in a comfortable place and picture yourself at the end of a challenging day.

Feel yourself welcomed back home in precisely the way you want.

That is what meditation offers you.

Every time you sit in silence,

Like right now,

You are welcomed home.

Love expansion.

Love could be at the top of the list of natural emotions,

Before grief,

Anger,

And fear.

Natural feelings are in no particular order.

Each is unique and described here,

Acknowledging the limitations of words.

Love makes the world go round,

And the world seems to stop when it is absent.

Without love,

Life can be at its blackest.

As hard as love is to describe,

We know it when we feel it,

And we know when we don't feel it.

Just as the other feelings exist,

Come and go,

So does love.

Love can be unconscious,

Yet the degree to which we are aware of it,

The better we can live its potential,

The more love we can give and receive.

The purpose of love.

The purpose of love is to express who we really are,

Our authentic self,

And share it with the suffering world.

We can do this in many ways,

In solitude and silence.

We can think loving thoughts and send them as energy out into the world.

We can choose words of love,

And affirmation to speak out loud.

We can take action,

Consciously take steps to manifest love,

To be kind,

To help others.

All this must begin with loving ourselves,

As self-esteem,

For we cannot give what we don't have.

To allow and experience love around us is another purpose of love.

Receiving love from family,

Friends,

And the world in which we live.

Love's two-way street is necessary to provide mutual support,

Nurturance,

And growth and development.

In family systems,

Children quickly learn the available sources of love,

And what they need to say or do in order to be loved.

This is clearly a valuable survival skill when we are young.

In this way,

Children learn how to survive in their families of origin,

Or for that matter,

In whatever environment they are in.

That's the good news.

We can learn how to survive.

The bad news is that most of us give up some part of ourselves to receive love.

That's okay short-term,

Because we have to survive in the family system.

We need to learn the family rules and roles.

To develop survival skills is important,

Even life-saving.

Unless and until we learn how to receive love,

We will burn out and fail in our efforts to be healthy partners,

Parents,

And caregivers.

When we are open to receive love,

Then we naturally expand and share our love with the world.

When I speak of the purposes of love here,

I mean unconditional love,

That is,

A pure love without manipulation.

This love is a gift to be given and received without conditions,

Qualifications,

Or requirements.

This does not mean that our loved ones can do anything they want.

We can love a person unconditionally,

Yet not approve of their behavior.

We love our children,

But when one of them picks up a black magic marker and heads for the white wall,

We intervene.

And yes,

We continue to love them,

If not their behaviors.

A crucial difference.

I love you.

It's not okay to draw on the wall.

Here's some paper.

Might be appropriate words.

I'd like to share a personal story here.

As my mother aged into her mid-90s and became frail,

She spent less time in her favorite light blue chair in the living room and more and more time in her bedroom.

There,

Her beloved books and family papers surrounded her.

To get her settled in her room,

We moved furniture around and I came across a painting I had made as a child around age 10,

When my mother encouraged me to paint.

As I discovered poetry,

I had been entranced by the image in Robert Frost's poem,

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.

It was the first poem I learned by heart,

And it created a powerful image in my mind.

I found an old piece of cardboard and some black and white paint,

And painted the image that came to me from Frost's words.

The painting shows a prominent black fence slanted in the foreground with a forest of bare black trees in back,

With big white snowflakes drifting down on the scene.

When I told my mother that I'd discovered my old painting,

Which she'd always liked,

She asked me to hang it in her room so she could see it from her bed.

I did.

It was there on the wall when I came to be with her when she was dying.

When mom died,

The room was suddenly still,

So very quiet.

I sat holding my mother's hand,

Still in the stillness with her.

We'd had so much time together as her health declined these last months.

I was grateful and felt full of my love for her.

My eyes brimmed with tears.

I looked over at my painting of the snowy woods,

And I felt the serenity.

I stayed right in the chair where I was,

And continued to hold my mother's hand.

Eventually my sister came in with my wife,

And then my son and his wife arrived,

And just as my mother's heart had stopped beating,

Our family had stopped,

As if by snowy woods,

To treasure a sacred final moment of quiet and peaceful love.

Let's look at the distortions of love.

When we give up too much of ourselves in order to receive love,

Our authentic self gets lost or destroyed.

Beyond survival,

Life can be much more than just getting by.

Love is a two-way street,

As I remind volunteers and professionals who are committed to giving time,

Energy,

And skill to their work.

They report this is the hardest challenge,

To receive love,

Unconditional love,

Without having to do or say anything to deserve or earn it.

Among the many distortions of love are love that smothers and love that demands.

We can allow ourselves to become smothered by our need for love,

To be so needy that we will do anything to be approved of.

Then we have lost who we are and what we naturally feel and want.

We learn to modify,

Adjust,

And distort our own truth.

Because children are smart,

Intuitive,

And have built-in survival skills,

They know how to answer demands from caretakers who say or imply,

I will love you if.

.

.

Children quickly learn to say whatever their caretakers want to hear.

Children use their natural intellect to figure out how to respond when parents say or imply with their behavior,

If you love me,

You would.

If we do this over time,

That is,

Past our childhood,

We abandon ourselves.

We give up satisfying our needs in order to please others.

On the surface,

It might seem like a working relationship,

But when we look closely,

We see that it is built on a shaky foundation of deception and pretense.

It is a lose-lose manipulation.

No one can know what we feel but ourselves.

We are responsible for meeting our own needs.

When we take the time to know what we need and speak our truth,

Expressed as our true and natural emotions,

That courageous act creates a solid foundation for an honest relationship.

That foundation begins when we love ourselves,

Own up to what we feel inside,

Who we are and what we need,

And have the courage to speak it out loud.

Then the miracle can happen,

The delicious and affirming experience to say and show who we really are,

Our spirit and our essence.

Often,

To our deepest surprise,

We can be loved precisely for that essence.

We don't have to pretend or scheme or remember what the other person likes or dislikes about us.

We truly can be our unique self and be loved.

Really,

This is the only way we can be loved,

For our self,

For who we really are.

This is the necessary foundation for healthy relationships,

To ourselves and to other people.

In the five-day Kubler-Ross workshops,

We encouraged the participants who either had life-threatening illnesses or were caring for people who did,

To express their natural emotions.

They poured out their grief,

Anger,

Fear,

And love.

We shared and witnessed deeply moving stories.

This emotional sharing and externalization continued for three full days and into the nights,

Sometimes until after midnight.

By Thursday morning,

The emotional expression was over,

And the topic was spirituality.

When I walked into the meeting room to greet the participants,

I felt as if I were walking into a spacious cathedral full of love.

Even though it was the same room we'd worked in all week,

The room now felt enormous,

As if it had tall ceilings and stained glass windows to let in the morning sunlight,

Transformed into many colors.

I felt a deep sense of wonder and peace,

An abundance of acceptance and love.

This kind of transformation begins with individual responsibility and awareness,

Because no one in our families,

In our circle of friends,

Knows what we are feeling.

No one else can determine our unique and specific needs,

Only ourselves.

As adults,

We are no longer dependent on others to meet these needs.

It is our responsibility.

When we love ourselves,

It offers us the permission and encouragement to speak and act the way we want and need to.

When someone else objects to how we speak,

What we say or how we act,

What we do,

And it will happen,

We need to ensure that we be true to ourselves.

Then it is time to take a deep breath and honor ourself.

What the other person says or does is not our problem.

We certainly don't,

At this critical point,

Want to fall back into the trap of changing who we are in order to get the love of the other person,

Even if they express love for us.

We'll look at this again in Living Our Essence.

We are capable of loving from a solid place of self,

Where we appreciate who we are,

Love our essence,

And believe that we are lovable and have love to offer the world.

In those meeting rooms on Thursday mornings,

Love was shining from many faces.

We'll close this lesson,

As we do,

With a spiritual practice.

This one is called Flowing Hearts.

Find a peaceful time and place to sit as you are.

You do not need any special props.

Imagine that you are in the presence of wise and loving people,

Guests from the spiritual realm.

These guests are spiritual masters,

Women and men from the ancient traditions and tribes,

Who come now into your awareness for the sole purpose of loving you.

All of them,

And there are many,

Surround you physically and wrap you in their love,

A pure and powerful love flowing from their hearts into your heart.

Your only task is to receive what is freely offered.

Breathe this abundant love into your heart.

Let it join with the blood of your heart and be distributed throughout your whole body.

This love floods your being and brings reassurance,

Abundance,

Comfort,

Energy,

Strength and confidence.

And as long as you keep breathing and remain aware,

Your spiritual guests continue to bring you all the love you need.

Thank you.

I'll meet you next time for Lesson 6 and a Model of Awareness.

Reviews

Jacob. Hello. 🙏🙏🙏.
I love you.
Orly
Israel

Loved this!!! Sat for 5 more minutes at the end receiving all the love so it’s abundant in me to give away. Thank you. Sending love 💗

Thank you... that moved me. I'm a caregiver to my Mum. I can see that I have abandoned myself by not loving myself first. Enjoyed your story about your painting. ❤🙏

Powerful message in receiving love.

Thank you!! This was so powerful and beautiful.

So right..thanks for the gift ❤️

Extremely useful! Your tribute to your mother was quite beautiful. Thank you for sharing it.

Wonderful talk. Thank you. ❤️

Beautiful reminder of what love is and how to be at peace with receiving and giving love ❤🙏

This is a challenging and kindly presented message. Thank you.