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.