This Moment is where I find love.
I feel love in this moment, as I step back and watch my feelings like a movie, detaching from their drama and staying curious about the show. If I look away for a second I lose it.
Inside the awareness is the love.
All I have to do is stay awake. All I have to do is recognize I am asleep.
What am I talking about?
I am asleep and think I am the miserable maze of my thoughts and feelings. I don’t separate myself, so I react from that miserable place. Instead of watching myself, I react from the feelings inside of me. And the feelings inside are based on old, outdated, conditioned fear that triggers me into those feelings and reactions. And that hurts, literally, physically in my body.
I get caught in a vicious cycle of fear, emotion, reaction and pain, which sucks me into more fear. I defend myself and my beliefs and I will do that until it pulls the last breath from me, to avoid feeling. Pride and ego get in the way. Fear gets in the way. Avoidance of shame, vulnerability and pain gets in the way. I get small.
Are you with me?
It’s okay if you aren’t.
I am just beginning to understand this in myself and try with mere words, to describe it to you. The more I step outside of myself and look on as an observer, the more I can think and respond. The more I observe and stay curious, the easier it gets. The longer and better I observe the more I feel love.
I wonder how I’m supposed to act to find the love I’ve lost with my husband. I keep wondering what is going to make us happy. Will I have to sell my soul? Will I have to compromise my spirit? Will I have to feel this ache in my chest forever and keep diving into my pit of misery?
The love is in the middle of my awareness. I felt it yesterday. The love is in that pause where I took a step back and watched myself, heard my own voice and felt the ache. Love was in that moment I detached from that gross pain and tightness, my reaction to him, and watched the scene play out like a movie. In the noticing, I could step back from the ache and realize the feeling was something old and unhelpful.
I know about awareness. I’ve practiced it daily for years. I have read books about it, listened to mentors talk about it and written my own words about it. That doesn’t make me an expert, or better than anyone else. It just means I have made it a habit. This time I feel love in it.
I never connected it directly to love before. But…that is where you will find love. Smack dab in the middle of your fiercely alive moment of awareness. The good stuff is in there. But sometimes it feels really crappy.
I sat yesterday, like I have for the last two weeks, listening to our therapist talk about this. I feel her looking into the place in me that connects with what she is saying even though my face probably doesn’t give her a clue. I think I get it today, more than last time. I turn to him and then her and say, “That is where we will find it.”
I am talking about love. And awareness.
All of a sudden, I feel a tiny tingle, a little, golden sparkly light of hope somewhere in the middle of my chest. It is accompanied by a small, new, excited knowing which allows the shrink wrap around my heart to melt a little. I think I get this. This is important. I think I can do this.
I need that good feeling to survive. It feeds me, and might keep me going for the next seven days. If the energy runs out before then I will starve and fall asleep again. I make a plan to remember, a way to shake myself awake when the ache starts again and all I want to do is scream or run away.
I make a plan to find love again. And again. And again.
It is the only plan.
Love will be in that space I make when I remember I am not me. Who I am is the presence that watches, hears and feels me. When I remember she’s there, things get more interesting. Easier. Effortless really. When I am alive in awareness of that presence, watching the movie of my life, detached from the outcome, I find love.
Finding love is her only plan.
“Oh look at you, little Laura, all tight with anxiety and fear. Look at how you are reacting to that ache in your heart. The way you shrivel and cower and run away from it. Look how you are triggered and rage, puffing out every feather of defense against someone who says you are wrong. Look at you, suffering the pain of unconsciousness.”
When I stop and breathe into this moment and watch how that little girl tries and tries to deal with her pain, I find love. It is the very act of shifting from little girl to observer that makes this possible. Waking to the moment of the me who sees it all, notices it all, understands it all, is the way to love.
Tenderly wrapped up in the awareness of the warm, open, peaceful freedom of this moment lies the brilliant relief of love. A constant, infinite source of love awaits the soul who shows up, awake, for the stuff of their life and fights for every moment, like it is their very breath.
Laura Probert, MPT has practiced the art of physical therapy and awareness for over 20 years. She writes to Feng Shui her soul. Her passion is to show you how integrating mind, body and soul can lead to transformation and healing. Her workshop, When Your Soul Speaks, Healing Moves for 2015 debuts on March 15, 2015. Reserve your spot here:
Connect with her here:
www.facebook.com/warriorlove
