Love is NOT enough?!?!

I saw a meme posted in my feed created by a blogger I respect (#Necessary Blackness). He often offers some rather poignent thoughts about the experience of being a person of color in this country that I respect and enjoy. However, this particular meme really grabbed my attention as it read: "Love is what we seek and settle for until we have the courage to develop and consider a more beautiful possibility."

Having been called the "Love Guru" and "Love Goddess" for my consistent advocacy for the development of our spiritual self through our understanding of Love as a spiritual experience, I IMMEDIATELY started responding to NB about this proclaimation. What is more beautiful than love?

He was kind enough to respond "Love is insufficent" and to then link me to a post (which you can also read here), which essential proceeds to downgrade love, to attachment and acceptance of pain that has become a "religion" rooted in "fear, individualism and contradiction."

The individualism, I get to a degree, but fear and contridiction may be more within the writer than in the experience of real Love. I agree "love" and "fear" are on the same spectrum of emotion, but opposite ends of ONE experience (not something we feel simultaneously). The attachments we create to the idea of a romantic partner as the source of either of those feelings is unrealistic because no one can "make" you "feel" anything. What we feel is a direct result of how we perceive, not based upon our relationship to another person. You and I can have the same experience at the same time and have completely different perceptions about what has happened, therefore the experience is uniquely defined within each of us.

Love extends far beyond the limits of the attachments of a romantic relationship. It is an "experience" not a destination. It is not somethimg you "seek" or "wait" for. The idea of Love as a spiritual experience (that some might call God) comes from the knowing that it is something WITHIN each of us. It is not something you give or receive, it is something you SHARE and extends outside of the confines of romance which many of us spent a significant amount of time in our lives trying to "find." 

I most appreciated what love truly is when I had children, because there is a purity in the Love we share with kids (who share their Love so unconditionally) that help us to finally "get it." However, unconditional love can be experienced as soon as we are open to the understanding of who we REALLY are and being in a place where we take full responsibility for our lives and the relationships we choose to create. It does indeed take courage to realize and accept that love is something within, and I agree that this discovery is amazingly beautiful once found.

Blessings on your journey of self discovery ... 

I love you ;) <3

Acu

Carmen Rodgers "Love"