Love Is What You ARe

I remember as a young child feeling such a strong sense of love for those around me. It's natural to feel that way about one's parents but I felt it for everyone, still feel a slight tinge of what it felt like at times. It was so strong, so yielding, trusting. Little by little aspects of it ebbed away as I was taught and learned to protect myself…..to be safe.

Certainly I'm still capable of love. I feel enormous love for my children. This probably comes closest to the feeling I hazily remember. I love my friends, humanity in general. But now there's something held back, some caution tints its' clarity.

Yet sometimes I find myself in the midst of a sensation so similar to that childlike innocence of love. It comes up unexpectedly, feels like pure delight for those few moments before I'm fully aware of the experience. Once I realize I'm in the experience of it, it seems to alter, morph into something slightly less exuberant. Then as I examine it further, it loses much of it's' shimmer, it's magic. I'm left with a memory of that childlike love from the past that has flown away as I tried to capture it.

I'm grateful though for these times, these instants of remembrance. It acknowledges that the distant memories are real, not simply figments of my imagination.

I realize that love now comes tainted with protection. I see a friend shining as though their soul's light is fully revealed in all its' glory. A moment later I'm cautioning myself to find some flaw, some fault I shouldn't overlook so that I'm safe from vulnerability. No one's perfect I remind myself, then a list of their imperfections starts to run through my head. If it's someone new, I begin to brace myself for the inevitable something that is probably there that I don't yet see.

Of course, most of this is an unconscious process; I've only recently become aware of what I'm relating now. As I bring it up out of the shadows I'm beginning nto understand how deeply our early life experience impacts our belief in who we nnnnare as love. We come here as beings from and of the Light, as an essence of love still remembered, untainted. Regardless of the life plan we may have designed or how it will unfold dependent upon future choices, we all begin as love. Pure untainted, without caution, we come here and to varying degrees, we forget who we were, who we really are.

We re -capture aspects of this with those closest to us but certainly not with most or with strangers. We've been taught by people, experiences, life…. that love given too freely can cause pain.

Do we ever challenge ourselves to acknowledge the loss this entails, this protective stance aimed at making ourselves invulnerable? Do we shut out much of what is potentially good with our caution? Do we dim the light of love with our need to escape pain?

I've been challenging myself in my interactions, even if only for a few minutes to look more deeply at others. I want to experience that feeling of beauty more often to a greater degree. Not just as a memory tinged by time, but as an experience I can choose consciously to embrace now.

When I look at you I want to see you, if only for an instant as you truly are. A shining light, another face of God. I want to love the soul beneath the outer covering. I hope that when you look at me, you look deeper and really see me. I promise to try. Will you?