I was speaking with a friend about love, true love and the experience it brings to our lives. When I hit middle age, I realized that I had been holding onto a sacred belief about love and that belief had kept me from truly experiencing love at all. I was bound by my history and hoping for a future where love was concerned, and living without love.
Byron Katie said, "As long as we believe any negative concept about one person ("He's selfish," "She's arrogant," "He should stand up for me," "She shouldn't do this," "He should do that,") that we're going to project those negative thoughts onto everyone - our husband, our wife, our parents, our children. Sooner or later, when we don't get what we wont from them, or when they threaten our sacred beliefs, we're going to impose that concept onto them. This is what we humans do.
I don't understand other people. I only understand my perception of others - my story that I've made up in my mind about them. This is played out so beautifully in my relationship with my dear husband. When I'm centered, totally conscious and aware, I am love and I experience love with my husband. When I'm unconscious, unaware, playing my "story", then I get angry with him because he's not fulfilling my story correctly about him. He's selfish, he's distant, he's...he's... Well you get the idea. He really doesn't have anything to do with my love story about him. It's not personal, because I'm the projector.
More importantly, as I'm learning, if I don't love myself, the projector lens is dusty. I can try to move the screen, to better light, to a more romantic spot, to a darker room, but if the lens (read: my thoughts) about myself are negative, then that picture on the screen will show the dust. When I've cleaned the lens and found home in reality - that I am love - then the whole world reflects that love and the whole world loves me - even though they might not realize that yet.
Once I find that healthy self-love, not the narcissistic, needy story about love, then I can be intimate and present with anyone. And I do love everyone I meet when I'm in love with my self. There's always been talk about us boomers; that we are the "me" generation, and selfish, greedy, totally self-absorbed. It has taken some evolution of those baby steps we took in the 70's at self-actualization to be enlightened (at any given moment - now - it's gone - now - it's gone) and realize that self love encompasses the whole of everything.
When I get angry with my husband because he "isn't there" for me, what I'm really saying is, I'm not there for me. It's so much easier to see it in another person. In truth, I'm married to reality - to God - and when I understand that, and feel that love, then it does not really matter what others do or don't do, think about me, or anything.
For my Christian women friends, Mathew 22: 37-39 states this eloquently:
37Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind
.
Kindness and compassion come when we surrender to the love that we are. Love is This means this is one sweet world when we drop our stories about ourselves and about other people. This is kind and benevolent, and totally safe.
Byron Katie said, "As long as we believe any negative concept about one person ("He's selfish," "She's arrogant," "He should stand up for me," "She shouldn't do this," "He should do that,") that we're going to project those negative thoughts onto everyone - our husband, our wife, our parents, our children. Sooner or later, when we don't get what we wont from them, or when they threaten our sacred beliefs, we're going to impose that concept onto them. This is what we humans do.
I don't understand other people. I only understand my perception of others - my story that I've made up in my mind about them. This is played out so beautifully in my relationship with my dear husband. When I'm centered, totally conscious and aware, I am love and I experience love with my husband. When I'm unconscious, unaware, playing my "story", then I get angry with him because he's not fulfilling my story correctly about him. He's selfish, he's distant, he's...he's... Well you get the idea. He really doesn't have anything to do with my love story about him. It's not personal, because I'm the projector.
More importantly, as I'm learning, if I don't love myself, the projector lens is dusty. I can try to move the screen, to better light, to a more romantic spot, to a darker room, but if the lens (read: my thoughts) about myself are negative, then that picture on the screen will show the dust. When I've cleaned the lens and found home in reality - that I am love - then the whole world reflects that love and the whole world loves me - even though they might not realize that yet.
Once I find that healthy self-love, not the narcissistic, needy story about love, then I can be intimate and present with anyone. And I do love everyone I meet when I'm in love with my self. There's always been talk about us boomers; that we are the "me" generation, and selfish, greedy, totally self-absorbed. It has taken some evolution of those baby steps we took in the 70's at self-actualization to be enlightened (at any given moment - now - it's gone - now - it's gone) and realize that self love encompasses the whole of everything.
When I get angry with my husband because he "isn't there" for me, what I'm really saying is, I'm not there for me. It's so much easier to see it in another person. In truth, I'm married to reality - to God - and when I understand that, and feel that love, then it does not really matter what others do or don't do, think about me, or anything.
For my Christian women friends, Mathew 22: 37-39 states this eloquently:
37Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind
.
38This is the first and great commandment.
39And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
So if we first see God as reality, "what is", the beginning and end of everything, Love in Action, then we can love our neighbor as we love ourselves. (This last part can be hard on Christian women because we've believed other people's (Paul's) stories about us! <grin>) We have to know that God is it, is in us, is with us, is Love, then it's easy to drop our stories of ourselves and each other and experience the greatest love we've ever known.
Kindness and compassion come when we surrender to the love that we are. Love is This means this is one sweet world when we drop our stories about ourselves and about other people. This is kind and benevolent, and totally safe.
Leave a comment