Love

Today, I had planned to write about Love, imagining an exuberant piece on its joys and glories. But yesterday arrived and brought with it a swell of sadness.

By noon, work had taken me to a far~away mountain town to sit with five grieving women and tell them that their beLoved coworker died, not in an accident as they had been informed, but of suicide.

At dinnertime, my husband and I joined our community in a memorial for a five~year old child, offering what surely was scant support to parents gripped by a cruel and jagged grief.

In the evening, we attended a concert with a dear friend whose sorrow over the death of his wife of 69 years has burrowed deeply into his heart. And my father is just 13 weeks gone.

I have no complaints about my day. I wished to be no place other than where I was. But yesterday's events shifted the focus of today's musings. It is Love amidst the pain of life that interests me now. 

There is a Celtic saying, “We live in the shelter of each other.” When life’s harshness pierces us through, Love is often what makes it bearable. Simple presence. Touch. Listening. Bearing witness, soul to soul.

Yet even when we're alone, Love is there, too. This morning, amid an avalanche of technological problems that has me working from three separate computers~~don’t ask!—I was primed for a meltdown. I took to my cushion instead. I sat, stilled my thrashing thoughts, opened, and was, finally, soothed.

It was Love I opened to. In 1 John 4:8 we are told that God is Love. That Love, though, is not passive. It is a Love that infuses, envelops, holds, heals, and calms. God, as Buckminster Fuller wrote, is a verb.

We become expressions of that verb when we open and allow Love to not merely move us, but to move through us and out into the world. We drink it in in order to pour it back out.

Even when we don’t live up to this potential, Love waits. When I did finally melt down during a disagreement with my husband, it was Love that restored our bond and brought us back together again.  

Love shelters. Love envelops. Love soothes. Love restores. All verbs. All Love. All Lovely, indeed.

Love, Love and more Love for you and your day!

Loanne Marie

Love Is All

It was one of those evenings when, tasks satisfactorily completed, our conversation meandered through a plethora of topics. “I’ve been feeling recently,” my husband offered, “that love is the only thing that really matters. Everything else is irrelevant.” So began a delightful discussion of love, the meaning of life, the best way to use our limited time on Earth~~and optical illusions.

           

The Rubin Vase is a well~known illusion that demonstrates the distinction the brain makes between figure and ground as it processes visual stimuli. The eye naturally perceives the figure~~in this case, a vase~~but with practice can learn to shift focus. Two faces in profile then arise from what had previously been mere background.

           

Spiritual practice is a bit like that. We learn to shift our focus in order to attend more fully to that larger ground, while creating lives~~our unique vases~~that are in harmony with it. The word harmony comes from the Greek harmonia, meaning both “accord” and “framework”, and the verb harmozo, meaning “to fit together”. 

           

To live in harmony means, therefore, that we identify more completely with a framework of accord, in which all fits together with ease. Human actions which are in sync with that framework flourish. If, however, disharmony is the norm, the structure~~whether it be a political system, a family unit or a human body~~will weaken and fade away.

           

As we train ourselves to perceive that larger framework~~the ground that holds the vase~~we learn to love more purely. We come, too, to abide more fully in Love with a capital L, and to return to that ground more quickly when we stray.

           

In my work as a psychotherapist, I regularly see folks who seek a spiritual realignment, though they most often choose other words to describe their need. Often their disharmony is a legacy of the unhealed wounds of their parents. It may also be self~made, the result of having chosen to live at odds with their own values and greater knowing. 

And it can also be simply an expression of the human condition, as we are called individually and as a species to know more fully a larger Love, one that moves beyond and through the vases of our lives. Harmony of spirit is our birthright, and we can always return there. That greater field of Love that gave rise to us, that never went anywhere and continues to fuel our every breath, seems ever waiting to welcome us back, ever waiting for us to wake~up.

But it doesn’t really wait, not in any kind of passive way. It calls to us in each moment, in every spinning atom and twirling galaxy. It is we who grow in our ability to listen and to respond. It is we who awaken and decide to choose harmony again and again and again.

           

This was the result of my conversation with my husband. We both once more affirmed our commitment to a greater Love and to honor that commitment in all our actions. For, as my husband said, all else truly is irrelevant. 

So, this column ends with love streaming out to you, dear reader. Can you feel it? I hope so. I hope, too, that it reminds you of that larger Love that holds you always.

Loanne

To have some fun with the Rubin vase and some renditions, click here.

Meditation Prayer

In two recent essays, Shadow Play and Song and Flame. I referred to a prayer I often use during meditation. Many of you have asked that I share that prayer. So here it is!

But first, a bit of explanation. A few of the lines below came from a prayer that made the rounds on the internet near the Winter Solstice of 2010. You can find a link to the site that includes this original prayer here, though you'll need to scroll way down the page until you reach A Solstice Prayer. It surprises me to see how different this original prayer is from the one I now use.

I'm not one for rote memorization. When I work with prayers or affirmations, I actively engage with the words, the feelings, the concepts. They are quite real to me and, therefore, do not remain static. Words and phrasings change with the day, my mood, my sensitivities. I add lines and take those away that no longer fit well or feel inspirational. The phrases on love grew from a single line from A Course In Miracles some friends had on their bedroom wall. In this way, the prayer informs my life and my life informs the prayer. We are linked together. 

Rarely is every word spoken or thought throughout an entire prayer. Rather, I think the meaning or feel the sensation or connection, without it being encapsulated in the form of words. So it was a bit of a trick to lay them out here, to dress them in the clothing of our common language. And if I were to do so tomorrow, likely some words would be different.

What I offer is an outline of a prayer I've found very helpful in orienting me to meditation and throughout my day. Here it is, along with some asides that give a feel for how I work with the prayer.

I breathe with the universal forces of creation…

~~Pause for several breaths, experiencing the fullness of the energizing Yang inhale and the fullness of the releasing Yin exhale~~

…under the guidance of...

~~Name those who have been important in your spiritual development, pausing a few moments after each one. I recognize it as an invocation of energy, usually with a strong sense of Presence surrounding me on the cushion as I go. Here is my own list, but of course create your own~~

the Buddha and his earthly representative Thich Nhat Hanh; Jesus Christ; the saints and sages of all spiritual traditions; all those who have, throughout time and without fanfare or recognition, infused ordinary human lives with Spirit; all my personal guides; all who have brought me to this place and time. 

~~And this next passage is where you bring it all back home, where the magic happens~~

I open to you now, as well as to all others who at this very moment are opening to Spirit in whatever way. I join my small voice to your vast chorus, add my tiny flame to your glorious fire.

~~Here, I often envision the Earth surrounded by innumerable points of light,
knowing one of them as my own.
Enter meditation, sensing or knowing yourself linked with a multitude of others as part of a greater whole, a greater flow. Allow yourself to become one with it.

When my meditation time is over, I start again at the beginning and complete the prayer~~

I breathe with the Universal Forces of Creation. Divine Source fills the spaces and cells of my being with pure Love and Light. I am healed, whole, and renewed and ready to move out into the world as your hollowing reed, allowing your Light to shine through me to all I meet this day, especially…

~~Name particular individuals, those you anticipate coming into contact with throughout your day. This is also a good time to send Light to someone in need.~~

…Love is the voice I listen to. Love is the voice I honor with my thoughts and actions. Love is the voice I remember as my own. I gratefully accept my role as a force for positive change 
at this time in Earth’s history.

Amen

I hope this has been helpful. Feel free to use these words as I wrote them or, better yet, make the prayer your own with changes coming immediately and continuing as you move forward. Let this prayer, and others you create, inform your life as you inform them. 

Many blessings!!!

Loanne Marie