True Love

“Training is needed in order to love properly; and to be able to give happiness and joy, you must practice deep looking directed toward the person you love. Because if you do not understand this person, you cannot love properly. Understanding is the essence of love. If you cannot understand, you cannot love…

What must we do in order to understand a person? We must have time; we must practice looking deeply into this person. We must be there, attentive; we must observe, we must look deeply. And the fruit of this looking deeply is called understanding. Love is a true thing if it is made up of a substance called understanding.” 
- Thich Nhat Hanh from True Love

This quote makes me reflect so much on the nature of love.  It is something that I’ve considered, experienced and explored for a big part of my spiritual journey.  What is love? What isn’t it? Even the question can drive one into circles and away from its truest sentiments.

Is it the smile and embrace between a parent and child? Is it the feeling you get when you miss someone? Is it having to do something out of protection, even if it doesn’t feel super kind? 

To consider true love as understanding is a whole other level.  It means stepping out of ourselves and really looking at what another needs to feel safe, loved, cared for, appreciated, seen and heard. 

I know I have failed many times in the realm of human love. It could be that I don’t pay attention long enough to someone and they feel snubbed, or I don’t take care of myself, or there is an outright fight and argument that just can’t seemed to be resolved – no matter how much understanding I claim to give.  Or I feel guilty because I have to let a relationship go, even if I still love the person but it's for the greater good of freedom and harmony.

Love is what I appreciate about doing soul readings with people. I find when I go into a meditative state with those who come to me, and really connect to them at a soul level, the barriers of our human egos disappear and the exchange of love happens. Simple understandings come through, deep wisdom about our fears, concerns and areas where we haven’t been loved show up. Total acceptance comes in and we can finally breathe with the feeling that “everything is going to be alright.”

To be with another, simply in listening and coming into a great awareness of who they are, is one of the best opportunities to grow in love. From personal experiences with friends and past partners and my current love, I have been fortunate to meet people at such a personal and intimate level which has made me a kinder, more understanding and wise person.  Through their personal journeys, I’ve understood the pain of prejudices of all kinds, their aches of illness (physical and mental), and the challenges that life circumstances like economic problems and dysfunctional family dynamics make us face.  I came to really see that we each are wanting and desiring that common feeling of being loved, accepted and cherished and most of our wounds come from feeling rejected, taken for granted or down right treated with cruelty. 

Through my work and travels, I have had the chance to meet and come to understand those many would deem terrible (and who I honestly was scared of myself).

I’ve met charged criminals and found that soft spot within their  humanity that made them do what they do. I’ve met drug dealers in Mexico sitting next to me at a local café and could see their deep predicament of being stuck in a system bigger than them and was grateful I didn’t somehow get influenced in such a fate. I’ve met people with serious addictions and mental health issues, and saw the desperation and their feelings of inner imprisonment and was powerless to help them heal and all I could offer them was respect.  These are the moments and times when I have had  to remember that the only approach to interacting with another person who is suffering is through the simple nature of compassion.

Each of us have our karmic fates, and some of them way more grueling than others, and it takes mercy to really get that we are each people wanting the same things and we may just go about getting those needs met in different ways.

So in this month of Valentine’s Day, let’s take some time to soften our hearts and gaze, and love a little bit harder to find a place of compassion even for those who seem unloveable. It doesn’t mean we’re excusing bad behaviour or needing to be best friends, but just realizing underneath the madness or suffering lives a person who somewhere along the way could have been seriously broken.