Love and the outer gaze

 Dear friends.

 This last Monday we Monday we explored the presence of love. We began the evening with the question. 'Tell me a way you resist love?'

 How often has our natural sensitivity, our openness, our lovingness  been betrayed, misunderstood, ignored, judged? Many, many times. Especially early in our lives when we were so defenseless, so dependent. Those betrayals, those times of deep mis-attunement  left us deeply wounded. And naturally enough we began to stiffen, to pull away from the openness of love, ours and the love of others. It was simply too risky, too frightening too painful. So as much as we long to love and to be loved we find ourselves resisting the vulnerability, the utter sensitivity of our hearts. We flinch, or we grasp. Either way the heart closes and we develop a hard shell, or an agitated shell around our heart. There is neither the trust nor the ground  which can allow our hearts to settle and open.

 You could say that that the heart is an organ of sensitivity, the capacity to be touched. The mind is the organ of true discernment, intelligence, illumination. And the belly is the organ of centered presence.  Each of the centers brings different and vitally important flavors of wisdom. This is why the practice of presence, especially in the belly and the legs is so important. Centering and grounding offers the heart center  desperately needed holding and support. It is what we needed from our parents when we were too young to know this support as our own ground. The true mind brings the objectivity and clarity that the heart needs. In concert then, the heart becomes the seat of the integration of heaven and earth: loving, luminous, strong, courageous, mature, transcendent, personal. This is a far cry from Hallmark sentimentality, romance, attachment, codependence. Jesus called this the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

 We then explored the question: 'tell me something you love'. There is so much we love, especially our pets! And as we discovered the multitude of our loves, we began to feel more and more love. There were  many sweet tender smiles in our circle on Monday night. We began to  see how our love is always about something  'out there'. This outer orientation  starts from the earliest moments after birth. We associate our love with mother or the care-taking person, her breast, her holding, her care. This is hard wired in order for our survival. This basic template is the utter conviction that in order to be loved, to have love we have to find the someone or something outside of us. And when we believe we have found it how tight we will grasp to keep it. And gradually what began as love becomes attachment, possession, dependency, even addiction.

 When we find it out there, we may rest for a moment or two and then the search begins again. Over and over. And what we forget is that the source of love is within, it is the nature of living presence itself. It is us!  We can't help but look for it out there. And thank God we find it enough out there to get here.

 As we engage spiritual work, and as we practice the return  over and over to our immediate experience,  we may begin to discover that what we long for is our own heart, a heart of living presence. This is not emotional intensity, nor the grasping of something, nor the attachment to something outside, but our own presence. This love has no desperation in it, no drama, no pursuit. It is simple, tender, intimate, gentle love. At first it is often quite subtle. We are used to big emotions, big attachments and we may ignore the silk-like undulation of quiet precious intimate love. Or we may have numbed ourselves, so hardened ourselves that we have to endure much deadness  before the sweet taste of love begins to subtly arise, almost like the whiff of perfume. With time this love grows, fills out, deepens and is our unmistakeable presence.

 The heart center, this organ of sensitivity, of being in touch with our experience  is what is needed to feel the  subtle flavors of love. Practicing presence is what allows the ground of support to develop but also cultivates the refinement of our ability to perceive, recognize and sense  the subtle perfumes of love.

 And when we finally open to this inner secret source of love it goes away. And we are bereft; we try to get it back; we judge ourselves. And so the pursuit starts up again. This turning inward, away from the outer gaze, away from the original template of mother is a radical turn. We are turning away from the unconscious habit of seeking love. The turning inward takes us into the wounds and all the protective armoring. So no wonder we resist, no wonder we turn away. But you may  find the insistent call of your heart irresistible. I hope so. In the meantime we practice the coming back to our embodied experience. This is the way home to the source of what we long for. This longing is the whisper of your own heart, your true heart, begging you to come closer. 

 Last question for the evening: explore the movement of your heart as it moves from the outer orientation to the actual felt sense of your inner experience of your heart. How does the feel in the moment.

 Next Monday we will focus on beauty. Please bring an image or an object that you find beautiful and which inspires and opens you. Warmly, Alison.

 

Alison's Musings Blog at alisonhine.blogspot.com

Alison Hine, LMSW
734-668-0475
Psychotherapy and Spiritual Guidance