05_02_2021
Love
No matter what type of love we are seeking, I feel confident in saying that it is not unusual for each of us to have moments when we experience some degree of feeling unloved, or not loved enough. Within the last week or so, I’ve come across the following Rumi quote several times:
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
I finally realized that my repeated meetings with this quote might be more than coincidence. I do believe in synchronicity and that sometimes we bump into wisdom guides or messages that can be helpful to us in our current circumstances. Hence, I have been thinking about what barriers we might put in the way of love.
There is so much work being done currently about the importance of finding compassion in our lives, beginning first with developing a healthy dose of self-compassion. I believe the premise that if we can’t find ways to love and accept ourselves as we are, then we are likely to feel really challenged in loving others.
I don’t equate accepting myself as I am as equivalent to saying that I am perfect. Instead, I see self-acceptance as a way of accepting my humanity, and that we humans while we may have wonderful qualities, we are by no means perfect. A friend asked me recently, “How do you know if you have compassion for yourself?”
I judge the quality of my self-compassion based in part on how I converse with myself. When I find that I have done something that can best be described as “not my best move,” I have gotten better at not beating myself up. The other day, as an example, I had a series of errands to run. In an effort to make good use of my time, I made a list of my stops. I arranged them in an order to avoid backtracking.
The first stop on my list was the dry cleaners. I pulled in and found the closest parking space which I took as a good sign since it was pouring rain. I jumped out of the car, opened the back door to scoop up the clothes I wanted to drop off to discover that I had forgotten to put them in the car. I immediately recognized this as a moment where I had a choice about how I framed this situation.
My conversation was simple: “Oops, you forgot to put the clothes in the car; let’s go back and get them.” I did spend a moment trying to discern what I might have been preoccupied with that led to me spacing out and overlooking the need to load the clothes in the car.
This is a good example about how self-criticism positions us to feel freer to criticize others. I’ve learned to pay attention to when I find myself judging others to step back and look within my own life to see if I have instances in my life that resemble what I’m prone to judge others for.
One big barrier to love to work on is to begin practicing self-love and compassion by simply realizing that we are all part of humanity. We all have cracks in our foundations, areas in our lives that need repair and nurturing, and while we’re doing that work we are likely to experience our shortcomings. Knowing that I am not perfect – at least in theory – allows me to make allowances for others.
I am convinced that one of the common barriers to love is our unreasonable expectations. Those expectations sneak into our psyches often without being noticed. We don’t necessarily recognize that we have these kinds of expectations until someone doesn’t meet them, and then we experience a series of painful emotions like hurt and anger that lead us down the path where we begin to believe that we are unloved.
I am fortunate to be part of a Unitarian community that consists of many people who are dedicated to living a life of compassion and service and who are willing to offer support to one another. Within these relationships, I find space to pay particular attention to my reactions to different individuals, and I have learned over time and with practice how to be open to people who approach living differently than I do.
Simply holding onto the realizations that each of us has a unique life experience and as a result, we all have a different kaleidoscopic representation of self-confidence, purpose, wounds, needs, support systems, etc. And each of us is trying to work with this colorful array of forces, some of which are random and some of which we’ve been able to tame and reshape.
I heard a podcast recently in which the author Elizabeth Gilbert was talking about a key relationship in her life. She used the phrase – “looking for the eternal soul” – of the other person in challenging moments within the relationship. When we have known someone for a long time, we have had many occasions to realize the beauty of that individual. We’ve seen their capacity for love and goodness in the way that they manifest it, and at least for me, it is within these radiant moments of insight that my heart opens, and I realize the love I feel for this person.
But then there’s the everyday moments, when someone is stressed, tired, not feeling well, or maybe just depressed or down on themselves and we don’t see their radiant light. I think of the title of one of Jack Kornfield’s books, and I believe it has meaning here: After The Ecstasy, The Laundry. In other words, we are at times blessed if we experience these occasional moments when all parts of ourselves are aligned and we’re at our best. And as we all know, there are the other moments that challenge us to find compassionate ways of holding those moments so that we don’t push away people who overall bring love and gifts to our lives.
And finally, there’s learning to ask for nurturance and support when we feel we need it, or it would be helpful to us. That’s a hard one I think for many of us. If we are able to see and appreciate the many gifts in our lives it can feel indulgent to complain or seek help. Instead, I think many of us expect that we can manage without bothering others.
There’s more love out there looking for a place to visit and land than we may realize. Going back to Rumi’s quote cited at the beginning, when we’re feeling down and possibly unloved, start by thinking about what barriers we might remove in order to let the love that is nearby join us on our journey.
