Part 1 - Crazy Little Thing Called Love...

Part 1 - The embodiment of love: Love as a choice...

Love is one of the most beautiful things in the world. It is the embodiment of all that is good and worthwhile. It is the highest expression of goodness anyone can ever feel for anything, anyone. It is also one of the most misunderstood concepts out there. When people talk of love, they usually talk about being in love, or feeling love for a specific thing or person. But love is so much more than that. That’s what I’m going to explore here in this first part – the greater embodiment love, not just the feeling, but love as an entity in itself, love as a choice.

When you break it all down, there are really only two root emotions to anything. For all that is good, there is love, the ultimate positive experience. For all that is bad, or that we perceive to be bad, you find that the root of this feeling is fear, fear of something.

In the never-ending battle of light and dark, we only make 2 choices. We choose love – in the form of happiness, unconditional giving, and pure goodness in the form of love itself, or we choose fear. Fear in the form of hate or anger or sorrow – any of the darker feelings that haunt us. When we are angry it is because we have viewed a situation as a personal slight against us, instead of accepting and letting go, we hold on to it for fear that there is no other option than to lash out. When we are sad it is because we have given up on the situation, we fear that there is no other choice and hopelessness, sadness settles in. We dare not look to love when we are caught up in these feelings, because to love would be to let everything go, to forgive, to accept what has happened has happened and we cannot change that fact, despite what we have experienced. Sometimes, we don’t want to forgive and let go because to do that would be to say it’s ok for someone to hurt us. Sometimes, we aren’t ready to let go of these things, because holding on, gives us a sense of justice that love does not, sometimes holding on gives us the illusion that it is the right thing to do.

I’m not saying that it’s ok for someone to hurt us, but why would we choose to hold on to the negative emotions, the fear based emotions when they make us feel dark and heavy?
Why would you choose to hold on to the hurt?
When we let go of the hurt, look past what has happened and feel love for the situation, we are accepting that situation as something that can be the greatest learning experience we’ve ever been given. When we choose to forgive and love the person or the experience regardless, we are choosing to be the bigger person, to be the more courageous person. We are choosing to grow from the experience, not wallow in something that is going to do us more harm than good. We are choosing to experience the light, to lift ourselves to something higher, to do the thing that makes us feel good, to experience love!
Love is such a simple thing, though appearances make it appear more complex than it really is. When we love we are saying that whatever has happened doesn’t necessarily have to be the ideal situation, but we are saying: you know what, I don’t agree with what you’ve done but I am accepting the fact that perhaps this is for you to learn from too. When we forgive and let go and send love to that person, we are saying I understand that you had your reasons, and that’s ok, you have to deal with the consequences, I however, choose not to be brought down by your choices. I choose to take what has happened, to look inside myself and do the right thing by myself – to be the embodiment of the good I say I am so passionate about.

Life is about choice.
Everything is a choice.

On the more conventional level of love, society has all these ideas as to what love should be, we say it’s acceptable to love certain people but not others. We build walls to try and shape who we love and what is acceptable to love and when it’s ok to love someone. We say it’s ok for a man to love a woman, but not for a man to love a man or a woman to love a woman. In my world, there is no distinction. Why should I pick and choose who is right for me to love based on what everyone else thinks is acceptable? Love should have no boundaries! It’s a free thing, something that feels fantastically wonderful!! It is my choice, not anyone elses! It concerns me and my world and we should be free to love as we see fit. We should be encouraging people who are perceived to do lesser things, to have done the wrong thing - to open up and love themselves. If a person feels worthy of love, if a person can look beyond themselves and see that there is another option, a better option, then we should be helping everyone to feel these things in themselves. Maybe, just maybe then they’ll see that there is a better option than trying to bring another down to the same level as they are because they themselves feel down or unworthy.

Half the problems in the world stem from issues people have with family and the other half seems to stem from religion because we say if you don’t act a certain way, there is something wrong with you. We say that family loves us for who we are, or God or whomever else we look up to on a spiritual level, loves us for who we are and in the same breath, we go and condemn people for being who they are. If we tried to be the person everyone wanted us to be, we’d be a blubbering heap of confusion, locked up in a room somewhere, trying to sort out our “issues”. It doesn’t take a genius to see how contradictory this is, how counterproductive and confusing this can be to someone who is probably already confused and reaching out to a society that says that they cannot be who they are, that they are not worthy of being loved, of feeling love.

The answer I think is to be true to ourselves and only ourselves and the only way we can achieve this, is to learn to love ourselves for being who we are - to love ourselves and be honest and see what we perceive as our imperfections and work on them if they don’t agree with us. If we choose to love ourselves despite our faults we realise that the only critic who’s opinion matters anything is our own. From there we can go a long way in realising that it is not only ourselves taking this journey, but every other individual on the planet that is in the same boat.
When we realise that we are all the same, we are all trying to sort through our own crap, then we realise that the only person who can really hurt you is you. When you realise this it becomes a lot easier to learn to love everyone for being exactly as they are. By making the highest choice, always choosing to see through loving eyes, we can step back and see things as they are. People don’t ever really hurt us! They may do something that affects us, they might even cause pain, but we are the ones that choose to view the situation as being something that has hurt us. We are the ones that fail to realise that there is probably a reason beyond ourselves that has caused this situation to come about. It’s not a personal slight against us, but the person who created the situation, reaching out in the only way they know how – even if that is by lashing out.

If we choose to love anyway, if we choose to love everyone, if we choose to love everything, every situation, then we are choosing to grow. We are choosing to experience that warm glowing feeling that lights us up from the inside, that draws other people to us because we are sending it out to the world. If we want everything to feel this good all the time, then it is in our power to choose to feel this good EVERY time. It’s not an easy thing to do and sometimes, it takes time to let go and accept what has happened has happened and that, that moment when passed, cannot be changed. But it is still in our power to do so. It is still in our power to choose love, to choose to love. We just have to stand up and be courageous, be different, be the bigger person regardless of what anyone else thinks. When we choose to do this, we choose to live as the creators of our own destinies instead of being driven into the depths of the darker fear based emotions on someone else’s whim.

When we choose love, we choose life. Don’t let anyone tell you who you can and can’t love, it’s your choice, it affects YOUR life and ONLY your life. Choose the option that’s going to make YOU feel good. Cause lets face it – something that feels as good as love does, that doesn’t require any external input or substance or anything but your decision to feel it, cannot possible be bad for you!!

I'm far from from the ideal I speak of above, but the difference between myself and many others is that I realise this. I can see where the choices I make are contradictory to what I speak of and I choose to raise myself up by learning and growing from it all. I'm wearing L plates on this like almost everyone else on the planet, but I know that I have the power in me to choose to be different.

Be honest with yourself, first and foremost and tell me - what would you choose to do?

Me? I'm gonna choose to spread the good stuff.