"Love is not an emotion and it's not a feeling. When you love someone, it can make you angry, sad, happy, or frustrated. Love is an existential mode — it is a way of being!" ― John Vervake
You were born in love.
They say that the universe is made of stories. If so, then the greatest story is a love story. It is a story that plays out over and over again. It is the story that brought you here!
As we grow up, we lose touch with our being — we get caught up in becoming and in our sense of unworthiness, we forget about love. The story is always right there, but we are too afraid to accept it.
If you did accept that you are love, then your light would shine bright — you would become a wellspring of life again, just as you were as a child! But the path back to love seems perilous — we would much rather put our head down and keep a low profile.
“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.” — Elie Wiesel
We think we’re being indifferent, but we’re actually being lukewarm. We can choose hot love or cold indifference, and that would be fine. But we settle for lukewarm mediocrity!
When you love with a burning passion, you are also indifferent to everything except the subject of your devotion. Your beloved is alive and the rest of the universe might as well be dead. And in this way, love expresses itself as attention. What you pay attention to is what you love.
But the beauty of love is that it lights up the whole universe! Love is generous and abundant — the more love you give, the more love multiplies! It flows and grows forever, encompassing the whole universe in its embrace!
But it is easy to confuse love with other things — to dilute its sacred fire. We think that attachment is love or that jealously is love. We go through life with these false notions of love, not being present to the sheer awesomeness of the fact that love is who we are!
“As you love yourself, life loves you back. I don't think it has a choice either. I can't explain how it works, but I know it to be true.” ― Kamal Ravikant
The way back to love is to start by loving yourself.
This is a challenge for most of us — we feel like we aren’t good enough! Our body feels dirty or ugly or weak, our mind feels cluttered and messy, and our actions look stupid and thoughtless. How could we possibly love ourselves?
The first step in loving yourself is acceptance and forgiveness. Before you can feel true affection for yourself, you need to forgive yourself — you need redemption! Once you have that, you can begin to treat yourself like you are someone you love — truly and deeply!
What would your life look like if you treated yourself with the same affection and care that you would give someone you were madly in love with? This is the question that we must all find the answer to.
And when we stumble our way back into our being — when we find our home in love again — there can be only one response: gratitude!
“On this day, I promise to myself to love myself — to treat myself as someone I love — truly and deeply! In my thoughts and actions, in the choices that I make and the experiences that I have, each moment I am conscious, I make the decision: I love myself!”1
Adapted from Kamal Ravikant’s Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on it
Meaningful. Love you 💖