The Ground Of Our Being
This is the last of a three part series. The first is Double Blind. The second Flirting Dating – Contraction Expansion.
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How does one discover that love and awareness are the ground of Being?
We’ll focus just on love for this piece.
One caveat before I attempt the difficult answer.
This understanding cannot be learned through the mind.
It’s a felt understanding, a felt knowing.
Not amount of cognitive gymnastics will grant us entry.
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Love is sold to us as an emotion, a surge that arises from other people and then is reflected back by us.
This is partially true but misses the true scope of love.
Consider your love for someone non-romantic.
A sibling, a parent, a friend, a pet whichever is easiest.
Focus on the feeling in your body. Where does it arise?
Then where does it come from?
It comes from within.
Somewhere inside you is a pool of love.
A reservoir of tenderness, warmth, care and kindness that can gush as love.
The other person does not create it. They awaken it.
They give it a direction. But the source is you.
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To discover that love is the ground of your being, start there.
Try again. Bring someone to mind.
It could be a child, a friend, a parent, a pet, anyone for whom love arises without effort.
Once you feel the wellspring of tenderness, feel what happens in your body when you think of them.
Notice the warmth in the chest. The softening in the belly.
The openness in the throat. The impulse towards kindness.
That is not coming from them.
They are not inside you, pumping warmth into your body.
The love is yours. It is rising from within you, directed towards them.
This is not conceit or narcissism.
This is the first recognition: you are not empty, waiting to be filled by another person’s love. You are a source.
Now practise awakening it.
Sit quietly. Bring that person to mind again.
Feel the love that arises. Do not analyse it. Do not ask questions about it. Just feel it, stay in the body let go of the stories.
Then, while holding that feeling, slowly withdraw the image of the person.
Let their face fade. Let the name dissolve. Keep the feeling.
What remains?
A warmth. A tenderness. An openness. A capacity to care.
It may feel smaller without an object. It may feel unusual.
But it is still there. That is love without a target.
This is the very beginning, love as a state of being.
Place a hand on your chest. Feel the aliveness there.
Can you fill your body with it? Allow every cell to steep in this soft warmth.
Observe the mind.
Is it possible to let the whirlwind of thoughts simply drift on the surface of this thick tenderness?
Can you draw on this reservoir to soak your emotions, holding every feeling exactly as it arrives without the need to name or judge it?
This is an invitation to explore. Feel what happens.
This is the doorway.
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The world says love needs a direction, an exchange, a dialogue. That’s partly true.
But what is far more wilder and more liberating is that it can also exist without the exchange.
It’s counterintuitive from a lifetime of being sold in books, films and stories as a feeling available ‘only’ between two people.
But we don’t always need another human. We can explore it within ourselves. It requires persistence, stillness and openness to investigate.
It swims against the stream of every story we know.
From this new felt understanding, that a target is optional.
What if we could return to it at will? What if it could eventually become effortless?
What if we could wake in the morning and find it waiting?
What if I could go to bed at night in the warm embrace of our own love?
A soft, humble awakening to the deep pool we thought was scarce and only reserved for others deemed worth.
A deep felt confidence that I’m already worthy.
Worthy of my own love?
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So from here we might consider a new model of love.
First and foremost we are love. It is the ground of our being.
Our new commitment is to never abandon ourselves again.
Then we can come to the deep-seated human need to offer love and to have it returned.
To hold another human’s heart and to have ours held with tenderness, honesty and sweetness.
The old misunderstanding that one could eclipse the other dissolves.
And with this the opportunity to love more freely, openly and securely.
To love with less fear and contraction.
Still human enough that some persists but no longer driven by a deep sense of lack.
From the inimitable Thich Nhat Hanh -
You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.
Love is not possession.
A slow stumbling towards embodying that truth is challenging but ultimately worthwhile.