Question #17: Are you in love?

Life has been asking me this question lately, so it's fitting that it would pop up here as well. Synchronicity speckles the landscape of an authentic life.

The more I do what I love, the more IN LOVE I feel. The more IN LOVE I feel, the more happiness just sort of radiates out of my core like some kind of rainbow care bear. My experience of every thing and every one is defined, informed, and inspired by Love. 

Love is the essence of The Big Hand/Great Spirit/Divinity/Source/God/Goddess/The Thing Itself/Present Moment/Mother Nature. To be IN LOVE means total connection, activation, and engagement. It is a space of infinite pleasure; a particular neurochemical nourishment for the body-mind.  It is a "Yes, please and thank you!" to life. The ultimate turn-on.

Sometimes a sense for Love comes through feeling fantastic. Other times, it comes through feeling like shit. Clarification via contrast.

Being out of Love is painful. In this space, one feels separate, disconnected, in fear, in stress, in worry, in anger. An existential eye roll, a folding of the arms, a guarding of the heart. Prone to seeking pleasure elsewhere, anywhere but here, where everything hurts. 

That's been me, much of the time, over the last five years.

Sources of Pain:

a.) Feeling out of Love with the adult closest to me, father of my children, primary partner in co-creating my parenting experience.

b.) Having motherhood SUCK so much of the time! Feeling isolated and under-supported and just generally ill at ease. 

c.) The years I spent as a child feeling miserable at home with my own family.

d). Thinking that I've recreated that hell, with new twists, for my kids. 

But guess what? Due to duality, inherent in the human experience, feeling out of Love is a trap door back into Love, the moment I become aware. Because after all, what's not actually to Love? What's not actually The Thing Itself? 

Yes, the pain points might pinch, when they hit. Let me feel them to heal them. The blessedness of it all, the sweet goodness and silliness and growth, the warmth and the realness, the many moments of pure and mind-shattering bliss, and the grace of healing ultimately outweighs any dead weight that sits up my sleeve, waiting for a chance to slip. 

Besides, as explored in the previous question, moving IN and OUT is the dance we signed up for. Might as well dig in and enjoy. 

P.S. A journal is a safe space to deposit dead weight; one of the best, strongest, highest capacity places available.