I’d like to share a deeply personal story with you today… You see, in the past, I was someone who needed a lot of space. Intimacy scared the bejesus out of me. I felt like I wasn’t good enough, lovable enough, and could easily feel abandoned or rejected.
I’d keep people at arm’s length, sometimes with a hardened exterior, or I’d judge or criticize others as a way to protect myself.
My best friend, Angela, was a huge example to me when it came to opening my heart more. I observed her meeting everything and everyone with a desire to experience love, acceptance, and live without judgment.
As I’ve watched her over the years, I’ve seen her grow deeper and deeper into her expansiveness, and I too experienced a shift in my heart energy.
I learned that when you love—you transcend all fear.
I’m not just talking about falling in love… although that period after the fairy dust wears off, when you learn to love each other’s shadows, can be one of life’s greatest lessons.
I’m also talking about Big Love. Existential love. Loving loud. Loving bravely. Loving for the sake of love for ALL things and persons.
Love is what happens when we step through fear.
Most of us, if not all of us, are more comfortable with what’s familiar. And what we know best is fear. Love scares the shit out of us, so fear is the most pervasive.
We’re actually more afraid of having love than of living in fear.
Elizabeth Kübler Ross, author of On Grief and Grieving writes: If we’re in fear, we are not in a place of love. When we’re in a place of love, we cannot be in a place of fear.
Over the last few years, I made it my focus to choose love over fear. If fear arose, I told myself to open.
I’d talk myself through a contraction:
Open, open, open, surrender, let go, trust—you are SAFE in love. No matter what happens, even with abandonment or rejection, when in love nothing can hurt you, nothing else can have its power over you. You not only survive, you flourish.
I literally forced myself to relax, to let my arms, jaw, hands, inner ears, eyes, throat and body let go into the ever-present expression of love.
I’d tell myself:
Don’t run. Don’t shut off. Don’t crawl into a hole. Don’t fight. Don’t push. Widen. Open. Expand. Breathe. Get bigger. Get as big as you can. Be a warrior. Stare that bugger, fear, down. Meet the infinite expansion of love. Spread. Spread wide. Give and receive. Let love in.
While learning to love, I discovered that the only truth there is, is love itself, which embodies us all, at all times, whether we realize it or not.
So why not love? Simply because LOVE brings us our greatest joy?
Wishing you infinite love!
