Love is the Doorway

Many years ago I had an instantaneous healing experience that followed weeks of praying for an ailment to be healed with no result. At the point of the healing, something was communicated to me from spirit that enabled me to see that the prayers had been offered in more of a rote fashion than with a sense of faith in the outcome. Praying was simply what one was supposed to do in such cases, but I had no real sense of them being received and the request granted. The day the healing occurred I received the message that if I truly believed I could be healed, I would be. The moment that really clicked in me the pain and other symptoms were gone.

I think that in a similar way I have created my own barrier to awakening because of some basic misperceptions. I have held the notion that to awaken fully and completely meant giving up everything of this world and I made a pact with God to do just that when I was in my mid-twenties. I think on some level I assumed that included loving partnerships, because I equated that with attachment. I think the deeper truth is that this was a convenient way to avoid vulnerability and potential pain.

It’s amazing to me sometimes how the most profound understandings are really so darn simple, and get lost in all of the other conditioned beliefs. What I think I am finally grocking is that waking up depends on loving fully. Just as with the instantaneous healing I think I had the core understanding about awakening backwards. I assumed that I had to be fully awake to be an embodiment of love. I’m sure the conditions of each awakening are different, but my sense is that creating a practice of being present to love each moment is more important than a letting go of the world. I’m not talking romantic love either, I’m referring to the hardest kind of love—to love everything as it is. Any parent also knows that what is offered from love may often not feel like it.

Some of the most profound experiences I’ve had as an “activist” involved seeing beyond surface appearances into the essence of someone perceived as the enemy and loving them. The reactions against that both from fellow do-gooders, and from my own internal judge, are that if I love someone in this way they may forget that I don’t agree with them. They may think I have forgiven them and that we are no longer opponents. It may be taken as they no longer need to feel the guilt and pain over their actions that I’m intent on eliciting or reinforcing in them. I think the bigger question here is, What does happen when we truly forget that we are enemies or that we have different ways of being in the world? Please don’t take this to mean that behaviors that are not supportive of the whole go unaddressed, but rather that true transformation results more from love than judgment and rejection. (I will include fear in this also, because I strongly believe that lasting change is not brought about by fear).

On the level of personal relationship there is a lot of hesitation to use the word love, particularly between adults because there is a fear that the depth of that will be misconstrued. We also withhold our love until we have deemed someone worthy. Personally, I sign the bulk of my communications—Lots of Love and I mean it. I refrain from this only when I feel someone doesn’t know me well enough to understand that it is simply a statement of where I am coming from. It does not, however, define a type of relationship, or any expectations I have with that person. If there is any confusion or concern around what I mean, just ask me to clarify.

Lots of love,
Dawn