What arises within us is either the recognition of love or the fear of love's absence.
Isn't that fascinating?
Like in every emotional experience,
Be it joy,
Gratitude,
Anger,
Jealousy,
And everything in between,
I'm recognizing love or I'm afraid love is not there.
And the beauty of I'm afraid it's not there is the truth that that's impossible.
Whatever it is that's moving inside of us,
We can view it through a lens of this is serious or a lens of curiosity that shares a bit of compassion.
Like,
Hey,
What's really going on here?
Gosh,
I was having this conversation with somebody earlier today.
I was talking with about anger and the energy of anger and how at least what I see for myself and the people I talk to about these things is underneath it is an incredible sadness.
And so often the anger is trying to avoid the sadness.
It's trying to cover it up.
So I play this sort of game with myself when I'm available to play it,
Which is when I feel myself getting angry,
I ask myself,
What is the sadness here underneath it?
Because I can't find that anger can even be possible without some flavor of sadness being there.
And what we were kind of talking about is so often when we unravel these senses of sadness,
They point to some version of a fear of abandonment,
Fear of being left behind.
We could even say it's a fear of missing out.
And then we can trace it back to so many experiences when we were growing up,
Right,
Where we felt that sense of being abandoned or that we didn't belong.
And it's so interesting to me how that sadness that seems like it comes from my childhood,
Which was a,
You know,
A deep fear,
Right?
Like a real deep fear comes and shows itself in my adult life.
It's really sweet.
It's really sweet.
It's like,
Oh,
You're still there.
It's like,
Oh,
You're still terrified of being left behind.
And to connect with that sadness,
You know,
Really presents an opportunity to meet that child in myself that felt so hurt once upon a time.
And to share with that child the wisdom that I see now,
Right,
Which is also a wisdom that holds a space that says,
You're okay.
I see you.
I love you.
And to help that child see what we might call the complete misunderstanding of abandonment,
Which is essentially,
I took other people's actions personally,
Right?
Like their capacity or lack of capacity to show up in a particular way doesn't mean what I thought it meant about me.
Again,
As much as I can see that clearly,
And it's so obvious,
There is still so obviously an aspect of my humanness that doesn't see that,
Right?
You can call it that child inside of us that we bring with us is still terrified,
Which I think is beautiful too,
Because in some way,
You know,
We wish that would just end,
Right?
Like we wish we could just get rid of it,
But isn't it such a beautiful story that you have developed the capacity to hold space for that child rather than exerting some demand that it should be different?
Like what's the more beautiful human story here?
That you beat it into submission and now it does everything you want it to do,
Or the child is still allowed to be a child,
Still allowed to be confused,
Still allowed to be scared.
For me,
That seems like the real growth.
Because again,
On the surface,
We can have our idea of human growth that says,
Oh,
I'll never be scared again.
I'll never be confused.
I'll never feel lost.
I'll always feel confident.
And yet for me,
The deeper beauty is I can hold space for it all.
Which is also like saying I can hold space for all human beings.
You can look at this in the dynamic of a relationship with another human being.
Do I want another human being that's happy all the time?
That doesn't get scared?
That doesn't feel insecure?
That doesn't experience the raw intensity of being human?
Or do I want to grow into my capacity to love the totality of the human being?
And of course,
For that to happen,
I need to experience the totality of the other human being.
And again,
Speaking to another or speaking to yourself.
And I guess to share another insightful moment from that talk that I had earlier,
This other person was noticing a resistance in themselves that effectively in some way was kind of scared of anger because of their experience when they were a child and seeing other people that were angry.
And so understandably,
They saw it as something dangerous.
They saw it as something that shouldn't be.
And then we kind of explored that a little bit and said,
Okay,
Well,
Let's discern the difference between the raw reality of anger,
Which is an energy that's arising and then the different ways we deal with it.
And what it sounds like to me is that what you're sort of pushing away is the ways in which people dealt with it,
Right?
Which is the projection of it onto other people,
Which is also like saying,
I don't want to deal with it.
And so it wasn't so much the reality of anger that is the problem,
Because again,
What is anger other than some internal acknowledgement that I'm sad?
And what a beautiful alarm mechanism that arises up like a fire that says,
Hey,
Something needs your attention.
How beautiful is that?
And isn't that the truth with all of these human experiences that we have?
You see,
As I've said before,
What arises within us is either the recognition of love or the fear of love's absence.
Isn't that fascinating?
Like in every emotional experience,
Be it joy,
Gratitude,
Anger,
Jealousy,
And everything in between,
I'm recognizing love or I'm afraid love is not there.
And the beauty of I'm afraid it's not there is the truth that that's impossible.
You see,
The fear that it's not there is the misunderstanding.
The misunderstanding that we are working our way through to see things more clearly,
Which is to meet ourselves and see,
My goodness,
The love we crave is the love that we are.
Waiting for ourselves to hold that space of love.
Because of course,
And yeah,
I'm just repeating myself,
The confusion,
The conditioning,
The misunderstanding was that that love comes from the outside.
And yet as we journeyed through our younger years,
My goodness,
Speaking for myself,
How difficult it was to get that love from the outside.
What a disappointment.
And then ironically,
To discover that it's on the inside,
I find an infinite supply of that love that I can share with anyone and everyone who I thought at one point was withholding it from me.
When I innocently,
Because I was learning,
Was withholding it from myself unknowingly.
And that's fine.
That's such an epic twist.
Right?
Like if the experience of being human was a story,
What an epic twist to find out your whole life,
The love you were chasing,
The love you were demanding from others,
You had it the whole time.
And not only that,
Everyone where it looked like they were withholding it from you was literally doing the best they could with what they had.
They weren't withholding it.
What an epic twist of forgiveness,
Yeah?
It was all an innocent misunderstanding.
Oh my goodness.
I love you.
And whether it's with another person in our past,
It's with ourselves right now.
Oh my goodness,
I love you.
And the ego part of me doesn't want that love.
It says it does.
The ego part of me says I'm not ready yet.
Let me fix myself.
Let me be the right version.
I'm just,
I get so beautifully human.
Like,
You know,
To indulge in my own life reminds me of the comedy when my girlfriend feels a little confused when I tell her that I love her.
She's like,
Really?
Why?
Right?
Just super classic where we get in that face like,
I don't,
I don't understand.
Like,
But I'm not perfect.
Like,
Yeah,
And that's exactly why.
Adorable,
But imaginary fear.
It's time to show up.
