Being in Love and Its Many Manifestations

It’s time for more love-talk. Who can ever really get enough of that anyway? But as always, I’m talking about true love. I’m not talking about the watered-down version that’s been polluted by lies, codependency, desires, and expectations. So much of just about everyone’s path these days is to learn how to filter out this crap to find out what love really is. Sure, I can tell you; it’s complete and total acceptance with every ounce and fiber of you. But these are just words. You have to be able to feel this all the way through your heart, body, mind, and soul to really understand and embody love. Some of you are reaching this point or are at this point because of your awakening. Which means you’re ready to really give and offer love in service to the world. This is a beautiful thing because you’ll now know how to give to yourself just as well as how to give to others. You will stay healthy and in balance and won’t be lost in desires to help and the need to be validated by helping others. It’s a beautiful space to live in the world, and ultimately, this space is what I mean when I write “being in love.”

Being in Love Is a State of Being

Being in love is most commonly in reference to having found someone to focus your love on and who can focus your love on you. Of course, that’s not always what happens. Sometimes one person is focusing their love on the other, and the other person is just receiving all of it without reciprocating. Maybe the giver notices or maybe not. The giver may even think that the other person is reciprocating, but really, the giver doesn’t understand that he or she is just feeling his/her own love. This is part of one of the key things that many people have to learn. They have to learn that most of what they feel as love is just an internal feeling. Make no mistake about it, we definitely feel emotions–both good and bad–that others send to us. But when your lover’s love is just icing on the cake, you are never…well…cake-less if that lover goes away. Versus right now with how people react, when a partner goes away, people shutdown their hearts completely depriving them of their own cake. (I have no idea why cake is the metaphor for love right now. Just go with it.)

But when you truly understand love and it integrates into who you are, it is simply the state of being that you operate from. It can become like living in water if you’re a fish. It’s just how it is. It’s the same way that most people are used to living in pain and suffering. They can’t think of another way to live their lives, so they assume that this is simply how life is. That’s part of why the Internet is causing so much social change around the world. Information is getting out that there are other “states” that people can live in. It helps them to see that they can change things. And so too can you if you don’t have love in your life. Because ultimately what changes the water around you is you.

Opening Your Heart, Changing the World

Your open heart changes the world. It changes it because the energy of how you interact with others is always flowing and touching everyone around you in your life. As I mentioned in The Nature of Energy, energy just wants to flow. Love is energy. Truly, there’s no real difference between pure energy and pure love. They’re the same. But you don’t pour out your hearts on everyone. Every time something cruel happens, you don’t become a sobbing wreck. You have to learn how to hold your own space. But at the same time, you aren’t building hard calloused walls. The strong, open heart learns how to feel things fully and let them go. We don’t turn events and situations into stories that we play over and over again. There are terrible things happening to animals and children around the world. It would be totally ignorant for any of us to deny this, but crying about it doesn’t help them. Conscious observation and loving, focused action does. That’s where the open heart takes you.

And that’s what being in love really means.

Letting Go of Juvenile Ideas About Love

It’s going to sound really, really harsh, but most of humanity isn’t out of the cradle with their ideas of love. Some people have made it to somewhere in their teenaged years and gotten stuck. Some core ideas that are getting in the way include:

• Thinking there’s only one person with whom you can share total love
• Thinking you need a set of reasons or amount of time before you can open your heart to love
• Thinking love comes from the outside and not from within
• Thinking that being in love is only romantic and/or sexual
• Thinking that you always need to be giving love and feel guilty about receiving love
• Or expecting others to love you first before you can love them

There are many more ideas that serve no other purpose than to keep you cut off from your own love. These limitations don’t allow the fullness of love to manifest in your life, and truly love has many, many beautiful faces and manifestations.

The Many Beautiful Faces of Love

The more you are in a state of love, the more you see the beauty in all others. This isn’t naive. True love doesn’t put on rose-colored glasses. A rape is still horrible. You may see the beauty of the confused souls locked in that horrible circumstance, but you still call the police. In general, the many beautiful faces of love are more like fully loving your child’s kindergarten teacher for how she offers herself and works with your child. It may be fully loving writing emails. It may be fully loving cooking. It may be fully loving the postal carrier and your best friend. And fully loving doesn’t mean the romantic, sexual thing. Love has so many flavors, and part of awakened love is embracing those many, many different flavors.

Do you start to see how this is? Can you start to feel how this is? Ultimately, being in love is just being in love with each and every moment. It doesn’t necessarily mean you are enjoying the moment, but you completely accept it. You’re not fighting it. If you’re in a car-wreck, you are in love with the moment by fully accepting how you feel, which may be hurt or upset. But you’re not closing your eyes and denying it or getting lost in blaming the situation or other drivers. That’s what most people do. They try to blame their internal feelings on other people. That’s part of the juvenile understanding of love as well. You can tell how much you’re still operating from juvenile love by what happens if you partner does something that you don’t like. If suddenly you’re completely pissed off, then you are being shown where you are at. If you are willing to look at your behavior in those moments, however, you’re already taking a big step in expanding your heart and maturing into adult love.

Being in Love Constantly Evolves

Of course, love is always flowing and changing, so how you express love will shift with different people. At one point, love with a partner is about dating, sex, and walks on the beach. At another point, it’s letting them go and leaving the relationship. Because if you no longer want to be in a relationship, staying brings pain because now you are denying yourself. You are denying what’s in your heart in that moment. The heart won’t make you fickle, by the way. It is very strong, and it is no stranger to commitment. For many of you, as you tap into your hearts, you will find that it makes you stay in difficult and uncomfortable situations more often than naught. So don’t jump to conclusions that if something isn’t feeling good that that means it’s time to leave. That’s not how this is. Being in love isn’t about self-gratification. It simply is about being completely present and accepting what is. In being this in touch with yourself, you can feel the deeper flow of what feels right for you. That lends a quality of effortless to your life that is very beautiful and graceful, and it also offers others a chance to learn from that grace if they so choose.

Being in love is an amazing state to be in. Remember that you can always have this state of being because it always comes from within. Open up your heart to yourself, and you may be amazed by how much love you truly have to offer.