The first time I went to Vipassana to learn meditation, they had a nightly discourse derived from Buddha’s teachings. This I might add was after 10 hours of meditation and being up since 4.00am, no wonder they made us sit cross legged, as otherwise would have surely fallen asleep.
Anyway, one of the points I remember reacting to was this concept that you can not love another human being, or anything else for that matter.
Ah say what…
I’ve got 3 kids and a wife and I’m pretty damn sure I love them. Oh and not to mention our family dog too.
The message was that all love is nothing but self love. And I certainly had a tough time swallowing that concept. Especially in the culture I was brought up in, where a concept of “loving yourself” was not a positive one.
But fast forward to today 14 years later, and I reckon I get it.
And this lesson came thanks to my meeting my horse Lenny. Now I hear you, say what, your understanding of love came from a horse and not your family.
Hmm, yep. Sorry kids.
Now back to it. Now since I couldn’t surf during covid due to recovery from surgery, and being as isolated as everyone else, my wife was trying to drag me down to hang out with her, Sienna (my daughter) and our horses as she had just inherited big Len (at the time a neglected 12 year old race horse). Reluctantly I started to go down and hang out. I’d try to take him for a walk, which was a crack up, as he’d just dig his heels in and go nope, not moving for you pal. Safe to say at the beginning there was not a lot of love for this stubborn 650kg beast.
Over the next few weeks though things changed. I actually started to really love hanging with him. I would actually feel an energy being around him that was hard to explain. It was just super warming. Now loads of people who hang with horses express a similar sentiment. There’s a healing power with these beasts.
Would I label that feeling love?
Maybe, not sure. It was a super cool energy to experience.
Now back to the concept of not loving another person or anything else. My take now is that, I do get it.
Woo, what Rich you saying you don’t love anyone.
Now I won’t go that far, but let me rephrase it. I feel that the people in my life that I once would have thought as the source of my love and that I loved are in deed not the source. But an excuse to express love.
The source of my love for others is firmly withinside myself. Think of love as your highest personal expression of your life. All the greatest moments of your life I could most likely bet are when you are in a heightened expression of love and joy.
And as for others, they give me an excuse to express this energy, emotion that is within myself.
And when 2 people come together and both experience this expression together, it is a magical energetic expression. So amazing. A collective expression of love.
Let’s also take it one step further, we’ve all had experiences where perhaps we felt we really loved another human. Yet it was not returned. Or perhaps we briefly loved someone with all our heart, they were the one. But a few weeks in we noticed they were no longer worthy of such love and we stopped loving them. Hmm, how’s that work, did the love just disappear…
But if love is an expression of self, that works. They temporarily showed us something that enabled us to express this state within ourselves. And it was wonderful. Then they pissed us off and we downregulated that expression to a lower vibration emotion.
Like we’ve got 12 keys on the keyboard from dark low notes to light high notes. And our interactions with others have in the past been the trigger to express different notes.
But what if we could cultivate that high frequency energy of love in our daily life and just directed to the experience of being alive. To express love while sitting eating your lunch, to express love to the person serving you coffee, to express love to the asshole who cut you off and stuck his finger up and so on. Ah Rich you’re sounding like a love ideologist! And I hear you, I am certainly nowhere near that ability. Heck when my dog barks and goes nuts, it’s the last expression I am thinking off.
But I feel it’s worth pondering, hence why I’m putting it out there for you to ponder.
If this is the case, it is so empowering. No one can take love from you, no one can influence your love without your permission. We can come to a place of deep love for ourselves. And from that express that to where we wish to express it and to whom we wish to express it.
Just like big Lenny, he let me give myself permission to express this vibration and feeling of love. .
And now I choose to send you an expression of love, or I give myself when thinking of you all, a sense of love within myself…
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