An anecdote that I read many years ago keeps coming back to me. It is from The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment, and the author tells of his search for love...how to, in fact, love.
So he drops acid and goes on a harrowing, scarifying, ugly, awful, very bad trip in which a monster appears...comes after him...and he cannot run away fast enough and bad, worse, worst seems to be closing in on him. Finally, the bad trip is broken when he hears the monster say, What was it that you thought needed to be loved?
And isn't that...love...the answer to everything we resist? Or, not to put too fine a point on it, the answer to everything.
Which, I'm guessing, cannot be done until we redefine love and the act of love. Face it, love is a loaded word... it has high expectations built into it. The clarifying factor for me came with the realization that acceptance is love stripped of its promise of razzmatazz...fireworks in our heart, so to speak.
Acceptance neutralizes fear. We might not like it, and if we're being forced by life's circumstances to accept something, very often we're not liking it. But, as the overworked phrase goes, it is what it is. Quit the fight...move on. Who knew that could be a definition of love?
Love is just another emotion, and like the others it comes in a variety of guises and disguises. I contend that because it equates to "feels good," it leads in the elite category, and our subconscious allows only rainbows and roses as its standard-bearer. Which makes trying to think of ourself loving our personal monster a real stretch for our reasoning mind...love looking dumb in public? Seriously?
That's where love redefined comes to our aid. We can accept that we just said or did something less than brilliant by saying, with a smile, Oops and moving on. Or we can apologize if we've stepped on another's feelings. We can even love it and laugh...all are love, plain and simple.
Being the lead in the elite category, love encompasses love within itself. Proving love, straight up or redefined, is the answer to everything.
God is love. - John 4:8
Thank you.
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