Where Love Prevails

Photo: The exquisite shades and textures of a desert landscape, Phoenix, Arizona (2012). Copyright SJPhotography

Where Love Prevails (Includes Guided Meditation)

The arc and ache of life move between Love and hate – between peace and the wars within and without. I know this ride well. This space of back and forth, uncertainty, a nervous system on high alert, the desire for healing and to feel the weight, and light of Love’s embrace again. As a child, I had a deep inner knowing of the ever-present space of Love and grace. Yet, life, others’ agendas, trauma, and my own fears and need to survive developed a space that became more shadowed, jaded, harsh, and cold. It was my mind and body’s way to balance the pain and uncertainty of life and brace for what would come next. Yet Love always found a way to bring softness, and light back into my everyday life, meet my aching heart, and remind me of the truth.

I know this arc and ache of life is true for so many – this desire and place within that is exhausted by life and all that is happening, and the deep knowing that your own inner being is aching for Love’s presence, and longing for grace to find you and fill you with its warmth, mercy, peace, and certainty of being. We ask for relief and to rest in the grounded space of tranquility and spaciousness as we move through life – despite all that is unconscionable, unfair, and absurd in the world. When we feel lost to the realms of Love’s presence, and our reactions to life and others become tense, cynical, and our focus narrows it is time to look again, and open back up to the mystery of life and see again with clear eyes and an open heart all the places where Love prevails.

Love is often thought of as a fleeting thing – a personal feeling of adoration and a spark of connection between one and another. It is often used as the singular word that sums up the emotional bonds between ourselves and others, pets, places, things, or possessions. In this limited form, it can provide a powerful expression to explain to others how passionately we want, need, desire, or are connected to someone or something else. We feel its warmth and its magnetized pull. It can bring a smile to our lips and warmth to our hearts just by thinking about it. Love has a power that is known to all. It is the feeling that can break and heal hearts, grow, and stunt relationships, endure and fade with time, shift and change or remain dedicated and committed depending on how it is used. Yet, Love is so much more than a personal feeling towards others or things. Nondual teacher and author Rupert Spira says:

Love is never the property of an individual. Love is the recognition of our shared being. Love is the natural condition of all experience before thought has divided it into a multiplicity and diversity of objects, selves, and others.

_Rupert Spira, “The Transparency of Things: Contemplating the Nature of Experience”