Lose Yourself in Love

Tonight I went to chant with Krishna Das in the company of my dear friend Beth and my new friend Michael.  I don't know why I don't just take tissue with me when I go to these things because inevitably the performer says something profound and I start to cry.  You think I would learn to expect tears of some sort, tears of joy, tears of understanding, tears of sadness but no, I still think I'll get through an evening of kirtan without crying and it hasn't happened yet.

Tonight KD shared a story about advice his guru gave to a new Westerner who had come to his temple to learn.  When asked why this new person had come to the temple, in desperation to find something to say he asked the guru, "Can you teach me how to meditate?"  Neem Karoli Baba told him to meditate like Christ and then sent him to the back of the room with all the other Westerners.

As the Westerners all got to know each other they asked this newcomer what Neem Karoli Baba had said to him and when he told them, none of them knew what it meant.  So later, Ram Dass asked his guru what he meant by meditating like Christ.  How did Christ meditate?  Apparently Neem Karoli Baba became very still and silent.  Then two tears fell down his cheek and he said to them, "He lost himself in love."  That was it, I was undone.

I know what it means to lose yourself in love.  Not in the inappropriate, pathological way, but in the deep, boundless, encompassing way that we all have access to in every moment, in every breath. I know what that is, I know what that feels like and I know how to do it.  I just had so many people telling me over and over again that I shouldn't feel that way that I started thinking I was doing something wrong. I would hear, "Not everyone deserves love and compassion, some people don't deserve what you have to give them." Oh yeah?  I disagree.  I was called Joan of Arc, Pollyana, tree-hugger and co-dependent.  My desire to love and care for people caused problems in my family and in my relationships because no one could understand why I did the things I did and I was at a loss to explain it.

Don't get me wrong, I did eventually cross the healthy threshold and go into a place where the love I felt became toxic and where I cut myself off from the boundless love of the Divine and then everything went to shambles.  I lost sight of who I was, I didn't know how to be someone who didn't move from love so I put my new identity in the hands of others and let them create a Christi I did not recognize and I did not understand.  Was it their fault?  No, I'm the one who shoved myself aside in favor of someone else who didn't belong to me and I did it all in the name of acceptance and love.  I wanted my family to love me, I wanted the guy I was with to love me.  If being kind and compassionate caused so many problems to so many people close to me then maybe they had a point and I needed not to feel that way.

So fast forward to now.  Here I am a 37-year-old woman, single mom, unemployed, still (always) on my spiritual quest and having to figure out who it is I am.  You know who I am?  I'm love.  We're all love whether we are able to see it or not and that loving energy that we all seek so desperately is out there all around us just waiting for us to see it.  We take it in as easily as breathing.  It's not hard, we just think it is but we fool ourselves thinking we have to do certain things, achieve certain understandings, become better people, blah, blah,blah, blah.  At least I thought those things.  Well, we don't.

All that keeps us from love is ourselves and the lies we tell ourselves every day.  We get so caught up in who we think we are and what we think we're doing that we lose that connection to our true selves.  It's easy for it to happen, there's so much input every day from the people close to us, the media, our own crazy internal dialogue and we lose our connection to the understanding that we are love.  That's why meditation is so important because it gives us that quiet space in which to reconnect, where all the messages that pass through our awareness have no place and have no voice, we can sit in the truth of our authentic nature.

As I sat in the hall, chanting with tears falling down my cheeks I thought to myself, why?  Why did this happen and why has it taken me so long to remember?  Honestly, if I hadn't gone to chant with KD tonight how much longer would it have taken me to get back here?  The question of how long doesn't really matter, that's ego talking, the important question is what kept me from getting here in the first place?



So tonight I have embraced love and the loving self that is me.  I know the difference between losing myself in an unhealthy way and losing myself in a healthy way, I have experienced both.  I surrender to love in every way possible and I'm going to change my meditation practice to include the lovingkindness meditation because that helps me stay connected with that loving energy.  We are all love, love is our birthright.  We just have to stop fighting it, surrender and lose ourselves in love.  It's okay, we'll still be here, we'll just be more loving, happier individuals.

Namaste.

Everyone Needs a History

The phrase "Everyone needs a history" came to my attention recently.  I couldn't help but think that was a silly phrase because everyone has a history and more often than not we don't even want the whole history.  We want to pick and choose the parts of our history that we like the best and which we think others will like the best while we try and discard the more painful, less pleasant aspects of our lives.  I know, I've done that and it usually has to do with my inability to accept the reality of my life; I really don't like some parts of it.  I want my story to be different than what it is, brighter and happier with more successes and fewer failures, more joy and less sorrow, more security and less fear.  But no matter what my desires are for my personal history the story is already written and the outcome of my story unfolds now and also is currently in the making.

I think it's an important moment when you realize that you are standing at a point between, a place in which we constantly abide but with fluctuating levels of conscious awareness about what it really means to be at the balance point of our past and future. All that we have been, our experiences, our thoughts, our physical bodies, our emotions, our roles have synthesized to help shape who we are in this very moment and the life situation in which we find ourselves.  If we aren't happy with the view of that past vista or our present position we only have the current moment in which to change it.

That being said, we can't effectively change our lives or ourselves without truly embracing our past.  It is not only the bright, shiny things that make up who we are and denying the dark, scary things doesn't make them go away, ameliorate their effects on our lives or change the fact that they happened.  You can't amputate a part of your life experience just because you don't like it and refusing to acknowledge it only makes it cry louder to be heard and to be embraced.

In my own experience I've talked quite a bit with people about my past relationship and the fact that it was abusive.  I could talk about the relationship being abusive, I could talk about my partner being abusive.  I couldn't talk about myself as an abused person nor could I admit that I took a hand in my own abuse.  When I finally did come to see that I was angry and I thought I was angry because it seemed as though here I was kickin' down the cobblestones of life when once again an ugly reality from my past came up to bite me in the ankle.  How dare that happen!  I've been processing all this stuff, I've been talking about it, I've moved on.  But in fact, I had just avoided taking my processing a level further and really seeing myself and my contribution to that experience.  It wasn't a new piece of information that I had come across, it was the same old thing rearing it's ugly visage because I hadn't dealt with it yet and it was time.

As I work to reclaim and rebuild my life I'm aware that all I have is now and yet my history doesn't escape me.  I can choose the aspects of my past that will help to shape my future only if I embrace all of my past, otherwise my past specters will silently wend their way into my future creation and undermine the foundation I am so carefully trying to build.  Denying our history we become prisoners of it.  Embracing our history frees us from its confines and pathological influences.  Upon reflection the phrase "Everyone needs a history" doesn't seem so silly anymore.