Love #4: All Is Full of Love - Learning to Stare in the Right Direction

For a long time, I didn't really understand what love looked like. Aside from romantic love, which I've already discussed at length in my earlier blog posts, I had a few very specific ideas in my mind. They mostly involved spending "quality" time together, but there were also specific definitions of what "quality" time was supposed to look like: deep, soul-scraping conversations; some kind of intense or meaningful experience being shared; a palpable feeling of being seen and understood.

Various resources occasionally helped me to reframe these ideas - my therapist, learning about the five love languages - but it was never a permanent shift. I didn't know how to see love in its many-splendored forms, even though I knew it was all around me. As Björk says in the song All Is Full Of Love, "You'll be given love, you have to trust it...[but] maybe not from the direction you are staring at...It's all around you, all is full of love...[but] you just ain't receiving."

Finally, thanks to Buddhism, I've at long last been able to put on my rose-colored love glasses and see the forcefields of love that were hidden in plain view all around me. Here are a few ways I've noticed it showing up that I would have never picked up on before.

My new Buddhism-inspired rose-colored glasses (image via https://funny.pho.to/through-rose-colored-glasses/)

1. Love as something freely given An important teaching in Buddhism - in fact, it's part of the Noble Eightfold Path, which is kind of like Buddhism's guidelines for living a happier life - is to not take what is not freely offered. I remember learning about this while I was at home visiting my parents and thinking, "But what if you feel 99% certain that the other person is more than happy to freely give whatever you're asking for?" I was specifically thinking about my mom. Suddenly it occurred to me that one very powerful manifestation of love is being in a relationship where you know that everything (or at least, many things) are completely freely offered. This is what is so magical about mothers and grandmothers (of course, some people have painful relationships with their mothers and grandmothers, but I guess I'm talking about the archetypal idea of mothers and grandmothers). They are some of the few people in life from whom we know we can ask just about anything and they will willingly do it for us. From having been hashtag blessed enough to experience this myself, I can say from personal experience that it's one of the most touching forms of love I've encountered. But we don't have to feel that only our mothers can give us this kind of love, or feel upset because we have a complicated relationship with our mother, or feel that we have to spend our lives seeking a perfect partner or friend who is able to offer this type of love. In a talk I listened to, a meditation teacher named Gil Fronsdal also explained that the guideline to take only what is freely offered is not only meant to prevent you from doing harmful things but also to encourage you to actively cultivate their opposites: try giving things even when they aren't offered and see how it feels. Spoiler alert: it feels lovely. There is plenty of research that spending time trying to make yourself happy will succeed more often if you do something for someone else rather than doing something for yourself. But you don't have to believe research; you can also confirm it for yourself. When I'm expecting someone to give me something, I feel closed off, defensive, I'm worried they may not give it to me, I feel at their mercy, there is a sense of scarcity. When I decide to give something freely, there is an openness, a feeling of expansion and connection. The whole point of the Noble Eightfold Path, like all of Buddhism, is that these teachings are a practice. I can't make anyone else freely offer me things, but the feeling is almost the same when you give as when you receive. I can create love around me by beginning to more freely offer things myself: my time*, my advice, my care, and so on.
   

2. Love as simply caring and wishing well I used to stifle caring unless I thought I could actually do something about it. My inner critic would say, "You don't really care about your dad being sick. If you do, then prove it and do something to help him!" In the West, we have a very problem-solving and results-driven way of thinking about things: "actions speak louder than words", intentions mean nothing if you don't follow through, and in Capitalism even actions are useless unless they bring profitable results (try telling your boss your intentions were good even if the product doesn't work the way the clients wanted!). I remember one of the first times I did a loving-kindness meditation and heard the teacher Sharon Salzberg say, "In this practice, we offer our wishes of loving-kindness regardless of outcome. We don't try to control how the person makes their life better, they may not even want our well-wishes. We just practice sending the kindness with no strings attached." She said this just as I was visualizing a friend and imagining what I thought she needed to do to be "happy and healthy," which of course implicitly involved a judgement that she was not doing it right on her own. This seemed like a radical way to think about love - in the West love tends to be very possessive, very demanding, very tied up with ego and desire for things to be a certain way. About a year later, another meditation led by Nikki Mirghafori, one of my favorite meditation teachers, helped me to even more fully embrace this unconditional aspect of love. The meditation was a classical Buddhist practice of offering loving-kindness to all beings everywhere. I've always struggled with this meditation. Offering loving-kindness to one person, or a group, is fairly easy for me - I can visualize them, so it's easy to feel a connection to them. All beings? How do you visualize that? And also, isn't it a bit crazy? What power could I as an individual person possibly have to bring happiness and ease to all beings? In this meditation, Nikki began by talking about the Bodhisattva vow. This is an ancient tradition in Buddhism where meditation practitioners - often monastics, although they don't have to be - vow to forestall their own personal enlightenment until they have worked to liberate all beings everywhere. I always thought this was a lovely but quixotic idea that kind of made my head hurt. I can't even free myself and the people I'm closest to from suffering; how could I possibly liberate all beings everywhere? But Nikki framed this vow in a way I had never thought of before: she said to think of it as purely aspirational. Regardless of results, regardless of outcomes, regardless of what actions you actually have the power to take, how might it shift the way you feel toward other beings, and the way you show up in the world, when you hold in your mind an aspiration for all beings to be freed from suffering? Like most of Nikki's teachings, this blew my mind and allowed something to finally shift in my practice. During the meditation, there was a point where I was envisioning city scenes (pre-corona) with lots of people going about their daily business, looking stressed or harried or frustrated, and I imagined myself as a floating ball of light that flew around and shined compassion on them. A lot of times, when I visualize loving kindness as light shooting out of my heart and washing over people, I imagine those people being transformed and smiling after feeling my love. This time, with a cityscape full of so many people, it felt impossible, and I also felt that the people weren't ready or willing to accept that love. The voice of my inner critic arose, saying, "What's the point of you offering them compassion? You can't do anything to make them feel better. See how their faces are still pinched with stress and suffering? It's pointless." But I recalled Nikki's invitation - to focus on the aspiration rather than the results - and, ignoring the voice, I tried to pay attention not to the effect my love-light had on the other people, but what effect it might be having on me. Suddenly it was very clear to me that, in imagining my light of care and attention shining on a suffering stranger, I started to see them differently: I felt sorry, I felt an impulse to care for them, I felt a genuine desire for them to be freed from suffering. This was a revelation. For so long, I would close myself off and become defensive when I met suffering, because I thought it was my responsibility to fix it. If I opened myself, it would mean taking on responsibility, and it would mean acknowledging that I wasn't strong enough to actually do anything meaningful or effectual for the other person. Nikki's meditation helped me understand that I will never be able to control what the effect is on the other person; but look at what the effect was on me and how I showed up. Rather than feeling closed off and defensive, I felt open and caring, I felt connected to the other person and felt a real sense of concern for their suffering. In concrete terms, this looks like me being calm and patient and holding space for a friend or family member who needs to unload about their problems, rather than my old habit, which was to either immediately offer advice to try and fix the problem or get angry and attack the person for not trying to do something about it themselves. It was subtle - again, it wasn't some grandiose, magical wave of compassion that washes over everything, transforming all those it touches, like at the end of Beauty and the Beast. But it was beautiful.
   

3. Love as feeling comfortable around someone (aka forcefield of love) I had a further insight about love in yet another meditation by the aforementioned Nikki Mirghafori (I highly recommend checking out her recorded meditations - like the Grinch, they have helped my heart to grow many sizes larger over the past year!). In the practice, which she called "wrapped in a blanket of loving-kindness," she guided us to imagine ourselves holding a small bébé and feeling the tenderness, care, and protection we offered it. She then guided us to imagine that same care and affection enveloping us like a blanket of loving-kindness. Instead of a blanket, I remember imagining a warm, glowing light, like a forcefield of love that enveloped me. It was one of the most nourishing and nurturing practices I had ever done, and it really shifted the way I started to think about love and care. After doing the visualization practice, the next time I was with friends or family, I tried to recall that image of a forcefield of love enveloping me - and them - a forcefield emanating from both of us in which we held each other. It really worked in a profound way, but it's hard to describe exactly how or why. My intuition is that there were two things going on:
   

   1. It got me to start paying attention in different ways: rather than looking for love to show up in a certain way (staring in the wrong direction) or being caught up in my own stories that I had brought to the interaction or being caught in patterns of conversation or behavior or taking for granted that may have grown up like weeds in the relationship over time, I would just notice how nice it felt to be around that person. What a joy, a comfort, a nourishment to be in the presence of someone with whom you feel completely comfortable! But it's so easy to miss, because it really is a subtle feeling, and most movies and media depict love as a big, grandiose, dramatic thing, not something soft, quiet, and subtle.
      

   2. It involved me focusing more than I ever had in the past not only on receiving love one-sidedly but also giving love: remember that the beginning of the visualization started with us nurturing the bébé. This almost could have been its own bullet point, but one of my biggest learnings this year has been that, when you want to feel love, you don't have to go and demand it from someone; you can go and offer it to someone, and the feeling is almost the same. It's pretty magical. Everything you need is already inside you, but you have to learn to unlock it (which of course society not only doesn't help with, but tries to actively block us from doing - dissatisfied consumers are ideal consumers!). Ever since then, if I'm with a friend or family member (even virtually) and I remember the blanket of loving-kindness, I'll try to just briefly bring a felt sense of the forcefield of love and care that's already present in the room. I can feel a subtle but profound difference; I can feel beautiful emotions palpably in the air: connection, gratitude, joy, love.

Feeling the forcefield of love (image via http://www.pearltrees.com/tuinanice/human-energy-field-the-auric/id12050921/item103225453)

With only about a year of meditation practice under my belt, I am amazed at how much has already shifted for me in the realm of love. I spend so much less time staring in the wrong direction, expecting a white knight on a fiery steed to sweep me off my feet and solve all my problems, and have gotten so much better at picking up on the forcefields of love that are already all around me - not to mention getting better at intentionally creating my own forcefields! And, what's even lovelier is that I've had more than one person in my life tell me that they've really noticed a difference as well in what it's like to be around me.

Björk was right; all is full of love. I hope that hearing about my journey will inspire and help you to connect more fully with the love in your life, whether through Buddhism or another path. I genuinely wish for you a version of the Bodhisattva's vow, immortalized in the beautiful words of Dolly Parton:

I wish you joy

And I wish you happiness

But above all this

I wish you love

Footnotes:

* As a fun side-note, reflecting on time being freely offered made me think about my coworkers and realize that they are all extremely generous with their time, almost always willing to stop what they're doing to answer questions or help me. I'm not sure if this should be considered love, but it is at least a form of generosity and positive interaction on this planet (especially given that it's happening in that battleground of Capitalism we call the workplace), and the more we can acknowledge those positive moments and seek to grow them, rather than taking them for granted, the better off we will all be!