Over the past few days Hilary and I have been talking about the idea of love.
It is difficult to talk about love itself because our minds are too full of ideas, beliefs, assumptions, and interpretations of love. We need to clear some of those away before we can be quietly analytical. Most of those ideas have been constructed through our experiences of love and the suggestions about love that we have accepted over our years.
Thinking and talking about love is so valuable. Yet, words are so inadequate. They are symbols of symbols twice removed from reality. We all use the same words but often don’t mean the same things when we are using them.
In the English language we have only one word for love. The word love stands for a multitude of experiences and actions. Other languages have multiple words for different kinds of love. In English we use modifiers to qualify or typify different ways we love and different relationships that are based in love. Romantic love, familial love, platonic love, brotherly/sisterly love. This really limits us when we want to talk about the highest vibrations of love or the true nature of love.
But it is not really language that limits us as much as our internal programming that constructs an often-ineffable understanding of love. Not only is it hard to express, but it is trapped inside all the things we have been told about love and all the experiences we have labelled as love. This is our programming, and it does more than inhibit our ability to discuss it. It actually puts limits on what we can experience.
Pausing to see what we hold as truth, and casting it away if it is not truth, can clear the way for love to come to life, and be active for us.
Our beliefs can mislabel simple actions as love. Our beliefs can inhibit the freedom we may have to express and feel love. Those who teach and guide us can pass along some unhelpful ideas about love and because we love and respect them, they can become part of our programming. That is why it is beneficial to examine our ideas about love and see if we really believe what they mean to us.
Pausing to see what we hold as truth, and casting it away if it is not truth, can clear the way for love to come to life, and be active for us.
Despite these limits, confabulations, and well-meaning lessons, we still have the ability to question and consider. We retain the ability to examine our own minds and deconstruct how and when we arrived at our understandings of love. We can survey the parameters we have put on this beautiful idea and choose for ourselves what love is, what love means, what love is capable of accomplishing, and how we want to express and receive love in our lives.
Is it a noun or a verb? Is it something we have, or something we do? Is it both?
Can we send love? Can we receive love? How do we do these things?
How many kinds of love do we have in our life? How many forms does it take?
Is love active and flowing in your life? Do you want it to be? What could you do to have and show more love?
I think we can just enjoy thinking about it and planning to express it a little more. Just thinking about it opens the doors.
May love be yours to enjoy.
Les