We aren’t meant to withhold love. We are love itself. It’s our nature, our essence = our dharma. We can open our hearts and align with it. That’s all we have to do. So often we want to close our hearts because a situation doesn’t feel safe. We all carry wounds, and when something touches that wound, we want to close our hearts. We say we are protecting ourselves or protecting what is ours. But what we really are doing is protecting our wound.
It’s hard to open the heart, but in doing so, we don’t pinch ourselves off from the ever flowing source of love inside us and all around us. The mind in fear is the mind that closes the heart, that pinches itself off from love. The mind in love is the mind that opens the heart. Those wounds we all carry are memories. That’s all they are. And they prevent us from truly living in the moment. “Be here now” is a nice catchy phrase, but it doesn’t happen. It rarely ever happens because in every moment we are invoking and dragging memory along and memory is the past, or we are anticipating the future. The true moments of Presence are few and far between.
I truly believe the Great Work we are all here to do, in fact I know it to the core of my being, is to become the unconditional love we all are. And it’s work. I think life is a school in that way, and the lesson is unconditional love. We get to practice loving through family, school, friends, lovers, our occupations, pets, and all other kinds of situations. And a lot of times we fail, if we are truly honest. And sometimes we greatly succeed.
When we guard our hearts, we can come up with a million psychological reasons why we think that’s a good idea. But they’re psychological reasons, reasons of the mind, and love is beyond the mind. It’s what all the great saints have tried to teach us...love is all there is... love is inside you and all around you...become love itself...love everybody and everything. If it were easy, everyone would be enlightened, and I don’t think we would need to be here.
There’s contrast in life. Lots of unloving situations show up every moment. How can we know what love is unless we experience it’s opposite? How can we know love if we don’t have an opportunity to practice it? To experience it?
Does it really feel good for us to close our hearts? Does it really make us feel warm and fuzzy when we feel we need to protect ourselves? And I’m not saying anyone should put up with abuse. Not saying that at all. There is also self-love and allowing abuse of any kind is a transgression against one’s own self. What I am saying is that an abuser’s actions are a call for love. How many people can say that they love their abuser? And how many times a day do we abuse our own selves and our own source of love inside the privacy of our own mind? How many times do we transgress the love that we are? Can you love yourself?
“The love that you withhold is the pain that you carry.” We all carry pain, because we all close our hearts in certain situations. To not close the heart when the heart wants to close, to feel that burn inside, that is the deepest meaning of the Yoga discipline of Tapas, which translates often as “burning austerity”. We can feel that burn, and it’s the memories, the fear, and the karmas that are burning away in the fires of love.
To look at life, and everyone and everything in it, through the eyes of love, and stay open, is the deepest thing. When I was in acting school, I remember practicing an exercise where we paired up and sat super close to one another, legs locked, hands in hands and almost nose to nose. We stared into our partner’s eyes and the exercise was, no matter how much we wanted to look away or close our eyes, we were not allowed to. We had to allow whatever was going to come up to come up, and in the end, everybody was crying because everybody was wanting to close their hearts, but it was such a beautiful thing when nobody did and everybody was vulnerable. To love is an incredibly vulnerable thing to do. It takes great strength to be vulnerable.
Now more than ever love is needed. May we all notice where we close our hearts, where we pinch ourselves off from love. Hatred is one giant call for love. Withholding love from ourselves or anyone else or in any situation is hatred. We are all human, and we all do it.
Awareness is a beautiful thing.
