What is love?
At the age of eighteen I remember asking my friend Kristoffer: "What is love? I know everyone is talking about love, and everyone says they love this one or that one. But what is actually love? What is it that they are feeling when they're saying this word?".
Time went by and I became vegan. Was this love? The feeling I had for earth and animals and my self for chosing this way? Or was it fear, guilt and responsibility based?
Time went by and I got my heart broken so bad it would take me almost six years to recover. Was this love? Or had I just attached my self in something external, thinking that someone could be the remedy for a variety of undealt karmas?
Time went by and I got in to the field of healing. Studying massage, kinesiology and yoga. Was this love? Self love? To give my self space to heal physically, emotionally and spiritually. Or was it just that I was so run down and lost that, really, I didn't have any other choice.
It feels like I've been running to every corner on earth to find this love, that's suppose to be the one and only thing truly worth living for. Not the guilt or fear based feeling of possession or attachment or responsibility, but love. In it's purest form, love.
I wouldn't say yoga and therepies on it's own isn't love, nor is any other spiritual practice.
However, it can be a road to love and it taught me this:
Love is a deep sense of connection, a full presence, a nurturing of needs. But more importantly, it's a feeling so deep it runs to the very core of us, beyond logic and words. When you feel it you know it and it can melt away your whole life as you know it in a heartbeat.
Once you're connected to this feeling, it would makes sense to want to spread it to as many parts of the world as possible. That as much as possible is done with love.
Buddha said that the only thing standing in the way of love - the only thing truly worth living for - is judgement. So. When we see people with destructive behaviours we know that loving them would make them grow, and judging them would feed their downward spiraling cycle. So why do we judge? And. Do we judge those who judge? We can stop judgement by observing ourselves. Realising that this judgment stems from our own insecurity and pay attention to where we might be juding ourselves. Because in the end, as we know, that's where it all starts.
If you're angry, express it with love. If you need to stand up for yourself, stand up for yourself with love. If you need to talk, talk with love. Eat, eat with love. Have sex, have sex with love. Sleep, sleep with love. Hug, hug with love. And if it's not done with love, is it worth doing at all? And if it's not. Accept that with love.