Perhaps you’re expecting some sappy stuff here. But it’s actually quite serious. Maybe not so.

Love is guiding me

“Even if you’re lost you can’t lose the love because it’s in your heart.”

I needed a value that was going to be my emotional guiding force. It would tell me what feels viscerally right. I could have picked something like happiness. I often say that is what I (and probably everyone) wants from life.

However, my experience with meditation jumps in and reminds me that life is not always happy and that cannot be controlled. So I often correct myself in this context and say that instead of happiness I want to minimize suffering. But that doesn’t have the same punch as a value: minimize suffering.

What minimizing suffering practically means is that whatever emotion you feel, happiness, sadness, anger, fear, excitement, you should embrace it. This is a specific type of embrace. It is not an attached embrace. I should not try to hold on to happiness. Likewise, it is not pushing anything away. I embrace the negative emotions as well.

This unattached embracing of everything, as it appears, is what I call love.

The goal is to live in the space before judgement to what is happening and just to witness and embrace it. Perhaps that is what love feels like in the body.

Temporary is my time

Ain’t nothin’ on this world that’s mine

Except the will I found to carry on

Free is not your right to choose

It’s answering what’s asked of you

To give the love you find until it’s gone

Ill With Want – Avett Brothers