Hello everyone,
Over the last few weeks I’ve had mails from people I haven’t seen for many years and all of them filled with palpable love, lighting up my day and my heart with the beauty of love that extends over time and remains as it always was, or sometimes, like vintage wine, has even ripened and become more sweet because it has lived for so long.
When, years ago, I was writing ‘Affairs of the Heart’, (later became ‘Unlocking the heart chakra’) I remember spending long hours thinking, meditating, wondering how on earth I could write about different aspects of love, and I then came to the conclusion that maybe love was an experience that on some level hopefully we had all shared, that at least some aspect would have been felt by every human being and that all I could do was write it from my point of view- what love has meant to me. But I also needed to acknowledge that some people would have been so hurt that maybe they couldn’t even countenance love as existing… some might feel that love was just a romantic silly notion and that only fools would believe in it.
One person, who was in prison at the time for a horrendous crime, did indeed have that opinion, and was scathing of the concept of love, ridiculing of the fact that I could believe in such a thing. The concept then of divine love was, in his eyes, just stupid. But this week, he wrote to me and after all these years, talked to me of what a difference being loved – if only by the psychiatrist that visited him – started to change his life.
There has been much wonderful writing about the power of love in healing those with serious illness. The wonderful Bernie Siegel, Dean Ornish, Marianne Williamson have written about this and many more of course. The difference in outcome of illness and surgery – recovery times shortened, complication rates lowered, survival rates higher- in those who are in loving relationships or who have love as part of their lives is well documented. So we can help those who are suffering by giving them love, which is really the purest form of healing.
We can also help resolve conflict, bring peace and heal divisions, for love extends not only over time, but space too.
And, of course, there are benefits also for the giver… It heals our hearts to love and helps keep us joyous and healthy.
So nothing is wasted – love extends and survives over time and space. We don’t need to have the kind of mail I’ve had in this last little while (though I am so very grateful for it all ). However, let’s be sure that it is love… no demands, no requirements, no expectations… given without codependence, in absolute freedom, often in silence, wanting nothing but the other’s higher good and always letting go of the outcome. And sometimes it includes saying ‘no’, setting boundaries, being unwilling to collude, standing for truth even if the other doesn’t want to hear it. Sometimes its face is strict if that’s what’s necessary. It needs no gratitude, no recognition, no fanfare. It just is.
For me, the last bit of my definition of love is that I want you to be free to be the best you can be, even though that may not include me.
I love you all. Go well, go happy, go in freedom and become all that you are.
Brenda
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