Love Has Its Ways

Those who believe and do good works, the Beneficent appoints for them Love. --Holy Quran

Many people think love is a "many splendored thing" or that "God is Love." We must know that love also comes in the forms of constriction, reduction and travesty, because the other side of those circumstances is expansion and an infinite possibility.

It could be said love is the possibility of ultimate expansion. We are excited to be in love because possibilities seem endless. In its expansive, infinite nature, however, there is the coil of life we must acknowledge. Love, in the spiral of DNA and quanta, will at times appear as pull-back, lowering, loss, and holding on when you need to let go. This is the principle Push as described in my book, Nine Principles for Loving Living.

Personally, as I got real about living my love life and "loving living," I knew I didn't grasp love or joy without the contrasting sadness or undertow of misery. I didn't know joy whatsoever until I smelled it in an oil blend of the same name! At first I was repelled, pushed back --but that's another story-- however telling.

On the way to finding big "L" Love, life gave me many experiences of Push (which precedes the last principle, Expand, in Nine Principles for Loving ). I went through rough push-pull back by getting into heavy business debt, dashed career goals by surrendering to taking care of my late mother, strangely tightened my grip on a raw deal marriage, and lost clarity and vision because I didn't know what I wanted from life.

Grief for loss isn't only confined to death of a loved one. I had to learn to take time to grieve my life of loss, which happened because I gave so much energy to the world, that it eviscerated my inner sense of self.

Fast forward to today, when even with Covid19, I feel more expanded than ever. Over the past year I made the decision to find my intimate Love connection and this has made all the difference. I stopped client outreach for my HealMobile business. My home became the base for relatives who needed housing. I concentrated on getting all my books on Amazon, lest I pass away and the messages I felt blessed to receive --that I Love-- would be lost.

I decided my energy medicine business was really for something else. I enjoy spreading good energy through what I call energeticism (described in Light on Reiki and Neo-African Mysticism). However, energy for energy's sake seemed like the proverbial navel-gazing, and I am averse to fads and individualism. I wanted the perennially powerful love energy that lifts me, those around me and humanity at large to be as painless as possible even as I appreciate that love sometimes hurts. Love for tough-love's sake, for Mighty Love's sake, I can invest in.

Maybe it is a tall order--that love will give us everything. I just think we as individuals, couples and families, have to PUSH through infatuation, attachment, lust, and whatever else may show up pretending to be what we want. The faces of love are part of it and won't be denied. Granted, we also mix up commitment with love and vice-versa, because they look very much alike. The self-sacrifice that seems to accompany commitment often presents a confusing twist. Pleasing another in the name of Love is tiring if it is not reciprocal, rooted and nourished.

Indeed, it is the imbalanced state --falling out of Love, going in circles for Love-- that must be pushed through or harmonized. This is especially true for people who are obsessed and call their tether to a sorrowful past, commitment. They want from others what they cannot give, and don't realize they are seeking outside of themselves that which is within themselves.

So, an ultimate expansion that results in True Love is the goal. This became my goal and I reached it, by the grace of the Love Supreme. Yes, love is a "many splendored thing" and of course "God is Love." But these cliches don't mean I ignore or don't love life that occurs as constriction, reduction and travesty. Instead, I love it more (and sometimes have to do so privately), because circumstances "beyond our control" do pass. Knowing this is opening my arms to expansion, infinite possibility and a new way to love my life.