Falling in Love

“The world is full of people who are unconscious, who are half asleep, who are wandering around in a kind of automatic pilot mode without giving serious deep thought to the big issues in their lives. While we live in a society that entirely encourages this kind of behavior – you can’t turn on the TV without seeing soap operas full of people who aren’t exactly being very deep – we owe it to ourselves and our existence to go beyond that level of simply functioning into a realm of where we really relate with the higher forces that are actually all around us, even if we choose not to acknowledge their existence.”
~Jonathan Cainer’s Scorpio week-ahead forecast through June 1, 2008

I’ve often been accused of over-thinking, over-analyzing and over-questioning my life. But in all honesty, I know no other way. This has always been how I’ve processed my life, turning over every rock and exploring every avenue looking for answers and clues.

Even my coming-out process was atypical. Instead of whisking off with some other 20 year old, I was scouring the university library looking up articles for my journalism class. Yes, for me coming out was a semester-long research project filled with articles, interviews and discussions about being gay. I had to have some sort of framework to explain the feelings I’d had my whole life. I needed a context. (Oh, and I made an A on the project and in the class...and eventually did run off with a girl. ;-)

In the course of a conversation last week, I told my good friend Delvora that lately I’ve been asking the universe to gently “reveal what needs to be revealed and heal what needs to be healed, speaking to me in ways I cannot possibly misunderstand.” (These phrases are part of Unity prayers that have always resonated with me.) She pointed out that even in that prayer, I'm still seeking proof of Spirit’s presence in my life. She went on to question whether I’m really open and patient to let my life be revealed or whether I’m still trying to direct when and how those revelations occur. To her, the journey itself is being aware and then letting our experience transpire in its right and proper time. Because as she aptly pointed out, sometimes we are unable to see with clarity what we need in a particular moment, so only as we encounter the experience again, or in time, can we absorb the lessons and learning we need to move forward.

The more I've thought about that conversation, the more I know she's right. At times, I still fail to remember that there's really no separation. There's no distinction between the physical and spiritual realms. It's all the same. I believe we are infinite spiritual, energetic beings having a human experience. So in living in that continuum, all is right and perfect in every moment. I know what I need to know at this particular moment for where I am at this given time.

Much like with that research paper, I still seek context, looking for signs and metaphors to help give me clues about my life. Unlike at 20, however, I’m now more aware of my part in creating it all. I do look for external signs because they are, in part, what I’ve attracted to help me move forward and help me learn. But for me, the only real way to uncover the answers isn’t by looking out there. It’s by safely diving as far as I can below the external, physical world to reveal my truth. And the more I visit that space, the more I understand that it needs no context at all. For what I’ve found there is a free-flowing, ever-present, infinite love that abides within us all. And it goes far beyond any rationale explanation.

I’d always heard people talk about loving yourself. Over the years that’s meant a slew of things to me – from getting a pedicure and buying a new shirt to losing 20 pounds. I’d always equated loving myself as conceit or vanity because I viewed it from a very physical space. Upon discovering Unity, I began to understand that notion a little more, at least intellectually. In my mind, it made logical sense that if there was one universal, loving presence pervading everything then it also resided in me. Yet, there was a part of me that still wasn’t buying it. It sounded too la-la fairytale great. I didn’t know how to love me. I was great at dolling love out to others but what did that really mean…love me?

Over this weekend, I got the reminder I needed listening to Louise Hay’s “You Can Heal Your Life” audio book (I seemed to have jumped right over this little gem before, but I guess now is the time I'm to hear it ;-). I'm finally starting to understand how in my physical life, there is no separation between the Divine love that by default (or rather, by design) flows in me and the love I'm developing for Lara. It’s the same love. Divine love is Lara love. So in loving myself, it is loving the Divine.

As the meditation says, Ham Sa. I am that. I am…

It’s so simple, really. While I’ve been consciously doing this work for about a year now in my journey with the Institute of Subtle Energy Education, something really clicked for me yesterday. I now see that it is through the very act of questioning that I’m more fully uncovering love for myself. I do know how to love me. Everything I’m doing right now is about loving me. And in asking the questions, digging through my mulch and uncovering those shadowy places, I am revealing the life patterns and untruths that have been running my life.

Louise Hay talks about how as little babies, we are pure beings designed to let the world know we are here. We freely express our emotions because we will die if we don’t get love. Yet, somewhere along the way, we convince ourselves we can do without love. We are conditioned to believe what we hear around us and assume that as our truth.

I agree with her. I believe that as babies, we are pure spirit, totally unaware of our physicality. As we grow and develop, we lose touch with that spirit and in turn rely solely on our physicality to process our lives. We think we are just these packages. But we are so, so much more.

A few months ago, I put a three-month-old baby picture of myself on my refrigerator. I wanted the photo of that smiling Lara propped up with shag-looking 1970s pillows to serve as a reminder that I am a pure spirit, a blank slate of infinite possibility, an energy of love. I looked at that little round-faced baby Lara for a while but then in the franticness of my life, I stopped. I went right past her, got the milk and eggs and went about my day.

This morning, I stopped long enough to look at that picture and as I did tears welled in my eyes. That baby is still deep within me. For me, it is only in turning off the TV dramas, asking the deep questions and tuning into myself for the answers that I can return to that little baby Lara.

Standing there in front of my fridge this morning with the coffee I’d just poured, I smiled and thought, “how could I not love that little Lara?”