Tuesday, September 26, 2006

I Am Therefore I Love

"I am therefore I love" came to me while walking in the park one day. So many "hits" come to me in the park -- Central Park, that is. I love this park, smack in the middle of Manhattan, and feel that its preciousness -- (how its exquisite natural beauty incessantly serves the city) -- is incalculable.

So there I was briskly walking along, breathing in the trees and grasses, listening to the many bird songs, and I hear the words: "I think therefore I am; I am therefore I love." What was that? "I think therefore I am; I am therefore I love." Oooh, I like that, thank you. And I've been living with this phrase ever since, particularly the "I am therefore I love" part.

It's clear to me that we've all got "I think" down pretty well. We know that we are conscious beings, perceptive to the world which we inhabit and able to choose and, in many cases, manipulate certain aspects of our lives. It's also very clear to me that it's time to raise the bar.

"I think" is not nearly enough, "I love" is what we're up to now. And this can make life as wonderful as it gets.

I'm not talking about romantic love here, though that's a beautiful expression of this energy. I'm talking about our living in the context of this "glue of the Universe" love -- the energy that we're intrinsically connected to, couldn't get away from if we wanted to, that pulses through every cell of our bodies, vibrates in everything that exists everywhere, energy.

Just for a moment, stop, be very still, as if you were deep in a forest listening to the silence there, and notice your beating heart. Really stop reading for a moment, just let your vision go soft and be ultra alert to these pulsations. Allow yourself to be overwhelmed with gratitude for this most pivotal organ in your body and the invaluable contribution it makes to your aliveness. I perceive it as such a miracle, this physical heart. And now with my training, I daily acknowledge and let my consciousness come to rest within its housing -- the entire chest cavity, metaphysically referred to as the heart center.

My email signature quite spontaneously became "Whenever in doubt, Come Home to your Heart" probably because I know that the love and spirit indwelling our hearts is the ultimate panacea. And what coming home to your heart feels like is abandoning all the buzz in the brain and just sinking into the heart center as if the entire chest cavity were this cradle of tender love energy ever available to embrace and renew us. It is!

Sometimes, when I close my eyes to do this, I imagine myself on a dock on Lake George (Lake George is right up there with Central Park for me -- it was responsible for my first spiritual opening). It's a balmy summer evening, the moon is casting a path of shimmering light on the still waters, the fragrance of pine trees in the delicious clear air refreshes my body with every gentle breath I breathe, and I'm completely relaxed into a chaise lounge made of soft pink down. This scenario of beauty plays out within my heart center, and I'm enfolded in its love for a time. So renewing and healing. Try it. Or create your own "relax into love" scene.

As far as I'm concerned there's nothing more important than love. And regardless of our personal vocations in life, I feel that our core purpose is discovering what a force this love is and expressing it everyday, everywhere to everyone and everything. It's a choice, it's a gift, it's the healing balm for our earth. In the musical comedy Plain and Fancy there's a song called "Follow Your Heart." As a singer I was very drawn to this song -- the wisdom in these lyrics by Arnold Horwitt touched me so.

The heart has reasons the mind cannot know
Follow your heart wherever it wants you to go
Lost in the night you wonder what path to take
Till a whisper comes through Come out of the darkness into the day
Your heart knows the way -- Follow your heart.

Because of my own healing experience, I know the heart is the way. I feel that it's our higher intelligence and totally subscribe to our learning to think with our hearts and love with our minds. When we follow our hearts we're being guided by love, the Universal Force, and not by our societal conditioning and knee-jerk reactions to life. The wisdom of the ages is available to us the more we listen here; and regardless of the prevailing winds in our lives, we find ourselves responding with care and compassion to the relentless flood of stimuli present in our everyday encounters.

The truth is we already are Love. We just don't know it. So the trick is deciding every morning to be a lover, an anonymous lover. No proselytizing, no placards -- quite unassumingly having our modus operandi be love and kindness and excellence, and giving and living from our hearts each day. Winston Churchill words ring so true: "We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give." For me, giving love is the only way back to sanity and wholeness. And the best news of all is that as we give, we receive. Love is its own reward.

Imagine what a fund of love we will amass for our lives and our world when we invest in our loving hearts each morning by embodying the resolve that:
Each and everyday I am giving and receiving more love. Here I am, world, and I am here to love. Simply because I Am -- I Love.

Whenever in doubt, Come Home to you Heart
Elizabeth Hepburn

Originally published in The New Sun Newspaper - http://www.newsun.com/