This year on Valentine’s Day, how about being love instead of just showing love? In fact, how about being love 24/7, 365? What’s the difference, you may wonder. Well, to me, showing love often falls into the realm of expected behavior: cards, candy, flowers on a particular holiday. All very lovely, but there’s more to love than that—a deeper beingness that we are at our very core. Our soul selves, our universal selves, are pure love, connected to our hearts. When we live from the center of our souls, love vibrates outward from our hearts, however we are expressing ourselves, in words or in actions.
As human beings evolve into more open-hearted ways of inter-relating, love will become our modus operandi, whether on a specific holiday or on an ordinary calendar day. An unconditional love that includes love of self as well as love of other. In fact, truly loving and appreciating our unique soul self seamlessly leads to loving others’ uniqueness, too. Every one of us is here to be an individual expression of the universal love. When we recognize that, love and loving behavior become second nature. We won’t have to be reminded by marketing ploys to send flowers or chocolates to loved ones. Everything emanating from us will be an expression of the deep love that connects us all vibrationally in the web of life. You are me, and I am you.
So, on February 14, send out your loving heart vibes via U.S. mail or email, on line or in person, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing. Open your heart so wide that that love will shine throughout all the calendar days of this year and years to come. There’s nothing more important in life than love. And it’s not about doing. It’s about being.
When you let your soul guide your life, you are connected to essence, the source of all that is. Whether you call it God/dess, Spirit, the Divine, or no name at all, it is the cosmic energy of which we all are a part. As I live and expand outward from the time/space line of my life, that connection becomes increasingly important to me. Some time ago, I spent several intensive weeks on retreat focusing on my wish to be in continuous communion with Spirit. What I came to realize is that that soul connection is always present within me, and when my heart is open, I become fully aware of it. My soul speaks to me through my heart.
What I also found is that gratitude immediately opens the heart. Love follows. The more I appreciated everything in my life, the wider my heart opened, and the deeper the soulful communion/connection became. My soul, through my eyes, saw miracles everywhere, in every moment. Tears rolled down my cheeks, and goosebumps covered my body. Because I perceived miracles, miracles were what I experienced. Granted, this has not been a completely uncommon experience for me in recent years as I open more and more to Spirit, but the desire for the communion to be continuous shifted everything into high gear within me. It was as if my soul and the Divine were celebrating my wish for constant connection. And all of life became a celebration.
Soul-centered awareness comes into being when you let go of control and allow something greater to guide you, trusting in the eventual harmonic resolution of all things. Soul awareness grows whenever you feel grateful for the world around you—every person, every event, every experience, whether or not your mind/ego labels them “good” or “bad.” When you let your heart sidestep your brain, your soul can move to the forefront and shine its light. Other people will see the light in your eyes and feel the unconditional love radiating from your open heart. That light and love will open their hearts too. Thus is global consciousness shifted, one person at a time.
I believe there is a small child within each of us who longs to let go, to surrender the need to try so hard to control everything. When we were very young, our souls guided us daily in effortless flow, but fear-based social conditioning often blocks that connection. To recover it is not always easy, but it is increasingly possible in a world whose collective heart is gradually opening, just as ours are. Surrender is not a one-time event, though. It’s an ongoing prayer or desire, which unfolds into deeper and deeper layers of letting go. Our longing creates the connecting doorway, and gratitude and love open the door.
My first retreat was a 10-day trip to Tulum, Mexico, with Brooke Medicine Eagle and Angeles Arrien in 1997. Fifty of us stayed in palapas (stone structures with thatched roofs) next to the Caribbean and met daily for shamanic journeys and sharing in small groups. We visited Maya temples and also spent 24 hours in silence at the end of the retreat. That day/night was the most powerful part of the trip for me because I felt deeply aligned with something greater than my own life as I walked and sat alone in silent meditation. Upon returning home, I decided I would find a way to include retreats in my life regularly.
Since then, whether on a longer trip to a sacred site outside the United States or more locally at New England centers such as Kripalu, Omega, or Rowe, I have periodically stepped away from my life and gone inward to connect with spirit. Last month, however, my time/space apart took the form of an at-home retreat in combination with one of Panache’s Desai’s online programs. I found that if I formed the intention of “retreat,” I actually didn’t need to leave my home or travel great distances to get away. Instead, I limited social and online activities and spent longer periods of time in meditation and silence. Retreat became an inner place of the soul that I could access any time I took a deep breath, relaxed, and tuned in. The key was making space for that experience.
In our busy, multi-tasking lives, we often run from one activity to another and then fall into bed exhausted. We think we don’t have time for anything else, and certainly not a retreat, of any kind. Yet, it is possible to step back, even for a moment, and experience a quieter, unhurried part of ourselves. Your spirit is always waiting for you to connect with it. Find a quiet corner, close your eyes, breathe deeply, and you are there. The mind will try to keep you spinning along on a high-speed wheel of mental activity, but the breath can sidestep that compulsive tendency. View thoughts as passing clouds in the sky, or passing waves in the ocean, and gradually, with each deep breath, you will be able to rest in the space beyond thought—soul as silent witness.
Of course, the goal is not to abolish thinking entirely (unrealistic for most of us) but to become aware of it. In so doing, you are seamlessly connected to the part of you that is witnessing your life peacefully and without judgment. That experience alone, whether a minute, an hour, or a week, can provide you with a renewed inner spirit and refreshed physical body. Suddenly, the need to rush through every task on your to-do list seems less urgent, and you begin to allow other possibilities to arise. One or two consciously centered deep breaths can make that inner space available. A retreat is as close as your next inhalation. Give it a try, and the edges of your life may begin to expand in all directions. Make space for the infinite within and without, and your spirit will be forever grateful.
We are living through Judgment Day. Not God’s judgment of us, but our own judgments of one another. What can possibly come of judgment except more judgment? Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, we are lost, wandering through the forest of our own separation. There is no wizard or wicked witch or emerald city, and the flying monkeys and munchkins are our brothers and sisters. Close your eyes, click your heals together, and the illusion disappears. There is no place like home, and this planet is our home. This universe is our home. And every person we meet is family.
Can we open our hearts and surrender our judgments to that profound realization? Maybe the key is to look inside ourselves to where we are judging ourselves. Love and acceptance of others begins with loving and accepting our own humanness. What parts of our identity are warring against other parts of our identity, angry and abusive? Are we turning our inner turmoil outward? At the deepest level, our souls see no separation, within or without. All is infinite spirit, existing in spacious loving acceptance. Individuals who have journeyed beyond this lifetime to death and returned to tell about it (Eben Alexander, Anita Moorjani) confirm this truth. Though not in a near-death experience, I too have been to that place of infinite love, without separation. No you or I, just oneness.
Perhaps we are here on Earth to have the experience of separation, realize it, and then consciously return to oneness. Perhaps the tipping point is closer than we think. In times of great fear or disaster (hurricanes, bombings, mass shootings), people drop their otherness and reach out to one another with compassion and love. Isn’t it possible to live like that every day? How many crises do we have to endure before we recognize our common humanity?
The other day, as I was walking down a Boston street on my way to the dentist, I passed a homeless woman holding out a styrofoam cup for change. Her oversize sweatshirt read “Field of Dreams.” I went by her, thought twice, and then reached into my pocket for my wallet. Turning back around, I saw her also turning and walking toward me, as if she knew my thoughts. As I placed a dollar bill in her cup, our eyes met and she said, “Bless you. May it return to you a thousandfold.” I smiled and blew her a kiss as I walked away. That 30-second exchange opened my heart completely and lifted my spirits for the entire day. For a moment, we both stood in that field of dreams together, no separation. May I remember, may we all remember, that that field is always present. We need only open our hearts to see it.
More than 20 years ago, I became a bird-watcher for none of the reasons mentioned above. I loved birds, that’s all. I loved their colors, their songs, their marathon migration flights between South and North America. Everything about them was awe-inspiring. Gradually, however, bird-watching also became a spiritual practice for me. Because my interest in birds developed simultaneously with my interest in meditation, the natural similarities became interwoven in my consciousness. Both meditation and bird-watching involve focus and quiet; they also require awareness and presence. I found that whether I was sitting in meditation at home or walking meditatively outdoors in nature, my inner consciousness and my outer behavior were almost identical.
Over the years, the peace that I feel while meditating or bird-watching has brought with it an underlying joy at being alive. In fact, the distinction between meditation and normal waking consciousness has blurred for me. The practice of centering my awareness in the present moment makes all of life a meditation. And never more so than springtime in Massachusetts, when birds by the thousands fly from the tropics to mate and raise families in North America. Every year, bird-watchers eagerly anticipate the magic of this relatively small window of time when the birds are passing through in a parade of colors and sound. Why the excitement, you may wonder?
Well, to me, their brightly colored spring plumage (reds, oranges, yellows, blues, greens) and their varied spring songs are just plain thrilling to see and hear. One of the first sounds signaling the coming seasonal changes is the ringing-telephone song of the red-winged blackbird (photo above). He lifts and spreads his wings to show off his colorful wing patches when he calls. As migration begins in earnest, the songs of the wood thrush and veery fill the woods with an ethereal flute-like quality that make me feel as if I have been transported to a sacred outdoor chapel. Two of my favorite birds are the orange-and-black Baltimore oriole and the red-and-black scarlet tanager, whose saturated colors often evoke audible gasps from bird-watchers when sunlight hits their feathers. Then there are the tiny warblers, in a class all their own, with an infinite variety of markings, colors, and songs. I especially love the blackburnian warbler, whose throat radiates a deep neon-orange in the sun, and the Canada warbler, whose lemon-yellow chest and throat are accessorized with a delicate black “necklace.”
It’s each bird’s unique beauty that captures my heart and transforms mere watching into something deeper. Meditation, contemplation, Zen peace of mind/spirit—but also more than that. There have been times when a bird has landed on a branch directly in front of me and begun to sing, looking directly at me. A thread of light, of living attention, links bird and human for a moment in time. It is then that I experience that miracle of connection that makes me believe unequivocally in the familial relationship of all beings on Earth.
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