What is Love?
As we approach St. Valentine’s Day, the collective turns its attention to love. Sending roses & cards, buying extravagant gifts, opening boxes of chocolates, lighting candles for a romantic dinner…many associate these things with love. But what is love?
In my life, I’ve thought I’ve known the answer to this question many times. And just as many times as I’ve thought I’ve known, I’ve realized that I don’t know at all! Through my studies of Kabbalah and metaphysics, I’ve come to understand that that is the nature of Love - just as you attempt to grasp it and hold on, it defies comprehension. And just as you let go, the vacuum it creates in its absence defines it more than its presence ever could.
For more than just a feeling, an idea, or an emotion, it is a force.
A force that moves us and moves through us universally. An unlimited, infinite force that illuminates the path of life’s many lessons. A force that heals. A force that can make anything possible and nothing impossible.
Now, to know this force of love, one must know thyself. Think about that for a moment. For unless love has the necessary conditions to grow and expand in your own heart, it won’t. Instead of the fortissimo swell of a symphony punctuated by a trumpet fanfare and cymbal crash, it will be perceived as a whisper at best. A favorite quote of mine from Rumi, a 13th century mystic Sufi poet, really drives this point home:
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
Which illuminates where so many get lost in the quest for love. They make love what they lack. They seek for others to rescue them from the darkness, to show them what love is by giving it to them fully formed, and breaking down the walls in order to fill the void within. But that isn’t how Love works.
Your capacity to give and receive love isn’t set by someone else. It’s set by you.
Not your parents, your family, your mentors, your friends, your spouses, your lovers - no matter what's happened in the past, what’s happening now, or what could happen in the future. The responsibility is yours to determine how much Love is in your life.
To do the work to know in your own heart that you are enough.
For you to choose to look in the mirror and love who you are, as you are, period. For you to focus the light within and seek out the stories and beliefs that empower lack, judgment, unworthiness, self-doubt, and separation from self and others and to heal them so love can have the space and depth that it needs to flow and thrive. So you can experience what it IS for yourself. Beyond the feeling, idea, or romantic emotion. The force of Love for which You are the form.
Which is hard, confronting, uncomfortable work!
Many choose to persist in patterns of hoping for the right person to come along and do this work for them. Why? Because it seems that that’s the easier way. But as the fruits of time and experience will prove, none of us can do this for anyone else but us. Even if you wanted to, you can’t. And by trying you actually block their growth and restrict their ability to experience pure love (like trying to help a butterfly out of its chrysalis). In the end, each of us must find our own way to navigate the unique series of pitfalls and hazards before us so we can unlock and discover the beautiful, unlimiting, and expansive force of true love in our life.
And as you unlock more and more of that force for yourself - to discover what it IS for you - that is what sets the bar for you to share that force with others (not the other way around). Embracing the force of Love wholeheartedly within you and allowing it to fill your core, permeating into all of your thoughts, deeds, and relationships and expanding reality to create new possibility, connection, and unity in your world. Seeing yourself as Love, and recognizing your reflection in others as Love, too - thereby creating a more love-filled World for all of us. Not because it wasn’t there or because you lacked love. But because you now have new eyes to experience it.
Love begins with you!
And the more you know who you are, the more you can open yourself to the truth of love. Not a love that binds, constrains, or passes judgment. But a love that frees, that inspires, and empowers. A love that brings you closer to the More your life was designed for. Which is my Mission as a Guide, Healer, and Human Being - to serve you by holding the sacred space and imparting the ancient tools and teachings from the lineage of King Salomon so you can remember the magickal truth of who you really are.
Have questions? Let me know. No matter how much we think we know, there’s always way more that we don’t. So don’t be afraid to challenge your present beliefs and consider that there might be more….much more. Thank you, as always for reading, and until the next time, may the force be with you and may the force be you!
