FINDING LOVE WITHIN YOURSELF

I had a teacher who spoke of the difference between being in love with someone and simply being in love.

The egotistical love of self is a emotional/mental affair in which we are focused on the beauty of our personality. As with most egotistical functions it is usually driven by fear and self-doubt, and is not really a true self satisfaction, or a true love.

The great teachers have been aiming at something else, which is why there is no real danger of confusing the Love they advocate with an active ego. Our deep nature, our true Self, is Love. Simple as that. We have the ability to reach inside and find it, to call it forth, to feel ecstatic love welling up inside and overflowing into the world.

In the body it may feel similar to the love that we experience with another human being, and we often believe we need someone else to call it forth. Thus the need to love and be loved.

But when we can feel into our own being and accept what is there, including the fear, the doubt, the anger, and the sorrow, space opens over time, the temple is cleaned, and we open to love. When this happens it is the most powerful embrace you have ever felt, an acceptance of yourself as you would your dearest lover.

Perhaps it is easier to consider this an embrace of the divine, an ecstasy from God, or Goddess, rather than an embrace of self, but this is mental chatter. We are at our root divine, and the divine can come through us as much as it comes through nature, or a lover.

When you feel this you know that it is completely different from selfish ego love, for another or for yourself. There is no possessiveness, in fact the more you share it the more it grows. There is no underlying doubt or fear, though there is room for these in this temple and accepting them they are transformed. Love of Self is a state of being that encompasses the whole body, the whole being, and the ego mind is relaxed and lulled to sleep, though other aspects of mind may open and be crystal clear.

Experiencing yourself as Love is a joy that impels you to raise your voice and sing, that calls for you to lose your small self rather than celebrate it, knowing that it is not needed really, that you can do and relate from a different place. It is never selfish in the way we mean that term, as there is no small self involved. It is however, the Self,

If you are not sure of the difference, invoke the Love that is your Self. Ask with all your heart for it to come to you, and it will. Ask it to teach you and it will. Slowly perhaps, or swiftly, radiantly. With patience and perseverance this Love will deepen and grow, until there is no room for ego love; fear, doubt, loneliness or selfishness. Sing loud and call yourself home.
Blessings and enjoy.

(© 7/10)

THE WEB OF SUNLIGHT

The Colorado foothills are especially beautiful this year. Green and lush from the heavy spring rains they are spotted with the color of wild flowers. The day before the Solstice I was assisting a ceremony in the foothills above Boulder, surrounded by fields and pines vibrant and alive under a blue afternoon sky accentuated with the puffy piles of white that are summer afternoon clouds in over the mountains. The birds were signing and calling, a buck wandered across the opposite hillside. Waiting by a path that was the entrance to the ceremonial site I was smudging the participants as they arrived, letting the smoke clear their space, helping them to ground and release whatever didn't serve them, to be open to the celebration that they had come for.

Between greetings, I let my mind drift, opening my heart to the magnificent manifestation of Spirit and Life around me. I find that at times like these I often notice pattern and detail as much a grand scope. Focused on the grass and flowers near the path I heard a buzzing sound over my shoulder. Looking around I noticed a bee had landed on a flower near my feet. This little guy was busy appreciating the flower in a different way, collecting the sweet nectar that he would return to his hive to contribute to the making of the honey there. Perhaps it was the Solar theme of the Solstice, but in my open state a knowing welled up, taking the form of thought, but coming from a more intuitive level. I was looking at a small step in a chain of solar energy flowing through the world.

The chain expanded out from the bee and the flower to the sun shining its light, received by the leaves of this flower, converted into energy which was used to grow and generate the flower, with its yellow daisy petals, and the nectar that the bee was collecting. In the other direction the nectar would become honey, stored solar energy, to feed young bees, bears, or humans. These bees, bears, or humans having enjoyed the honey would convert its sweetness into movement, or muscle, or store it for the future.

Looking up and out from the bee and its flower I knew that the landscape around me was filled with similar flows, a web of moving, transforming energy, connecting all the visible pieces in ways often invisible to our usual sight. Awareness that the Sun we were about to celebrate is the source of all the energy that flows through this world came through me. The Sun that powers the vast and varied creativity of life on planet Earth. This energy changes into so many forms, is passed back and forth, from plant to animal to plant or human. It lifts the rain that powers the rivers. It falls on the Earth differently at different latitudes and helps to generate the winds. It raises the clouds and creates the lightening. It is stored by the plants, those essential gatherers on the front line of Earthly life, and is passed along as vegetables, grain, fruit, or falls with the leaves and nourishes more plants. In the seas and the swamps it was stored millions of years ago and became coal, or oil, or gas.

This world is literally a web of flowing, transforming, solar energy. I invite you to make some time to go outside, to feel into the clouds, the trees, the bees and the flowers, to open to an appreciation for the rich flow of sunlight in all its forms. Looking with your intuition and feeling from your soul, become aware of the life force flowing everywhere. Appreciate how you are held and supported in this web, and how precious and necessary it is for your life. Find the joy in being consciously alive, and give yourself permission to notice this level of life in the world around you, inside yourself.

Eat some honey, appreciate some amber, be blessed by the Sun in all its forms. Step into the sacred embodied in the world and in yourself.

(© 7/10)