Love Check

Tender, tender, how full my heart is; how much we love and are love.

I am remembering my wardrobe senior year of high school, 1990–1991: a black armband pinned on religiously each and every morning in private protest of the Gulf War. And weekends spent on intersections holding handmade signs of protest with my friends. I remember the heartbreak and outrage at humans’ lunacy at that sweet age of 17.

Today my activism feels just as passionate, but worked from a different vantage. The reality of our interconnectedness is so clear that I feel my greatest service is to shine the light of love through my cells here where I am, knowing that this contributes, cellularly, to the collective at this moment on planet Earth.

Strangely, when I surrender to my tears and heartbreak, I feel complicit with the wounding; I long to be complicit with its solution. (And of course, crying is good too—a love warrior is in a constant state of heartbreak on some level, and knows how to surrender to even more love as the heart breaks open more and more.)

Think “the butterfly effect”: a butterfly’s wings in Brazil facilitating tornadoes in Texas. In complex, interconnected systems like weather and human societies, small events cascade into enormous effects. When enough of us choose to embody true love here on planet Earth, our whole collective field reorganizes. The collective field responds to these small awakenings; personal transformation contributes to collective transformation.

We know this.

It’s why I am passionate about my work as a couples therapist. When we can do love in our homes and in our own skin, we will lose our collective appetite for violence. I dream of the day our collective stories are of powerful, transformative, illuminating, seamless love—and that it deeply offends and mystifies us to see one human hurting another, whether in our fiction, our kitchens, or our global politics.

I was in a session recently with a wife sharing her devastation about the war, and the actions she was taking to send funds to humanitarian organizations and petition her government representatives. I could sense she was willing to move mountains to do whatever she could possibly do to help. I rejoiced and supported her passionate actions.

And internally, I knew there was a cold-hot war between her and her husband taking place inside their home—and more insidiously, a chronic warring within herself. I gently encouraged her to also take a stand for learning how to be a beacon of peace, collaboration, and mutual respect in all arenas of her life. To commit to being a force of peace inside her own life, her own mind, and her own heart. Because this, too, is a way we positively influence the collective.

What is the climate of your internal terrain these days? One of beauty, strength, well-being, and love—an abundant garden with fruits to share? or low-grade dissatisfaction to downright angst?

When I contemplate the atrocities occurring on the planet in this moment, I feel incredulous. But then I think of the internal states of most of my clients, friends, and myself—without exception (albeit all in our unique ways and along the continuum of recovery and rehabilitation)—we are waging mini wars against ourselves and the people we love, a little to a lot, throughout each day.

Most feel entitled to treat themselves harshly, to speak to themselves in ways they would not, in their wildest imaginings, consider speaking to anyone outside of their own mind—to denigrate themselves in service of theoretically helping themselves do better. And a similar license, oddly enough, tends to get taken with our partners.

But guess what? It doesn’t work this way, bless our sweet hearts.

If we want to see a loving world outwardly, we must be impeccably enacting love in the internal spaces—the places no one visits but ourselves. We must hold ourselves accountable to this, because no one else possibly can.

This is not easy, obviously. We all come from a lifetime—and a lineage—of warriors and warring habit patterns, unceasingly fruiting within our unconscious and conscious minds.

So I recommend a cross-training approach. We are kind and supportive to our friends; people would not want to be around us if we weren’t. So initially, let this be the bar for our self-talk. And I recommend going a step further: if we are ready to put effort into building new internal habits, why not be the most supportive and encouraging friend to yourself you can possibly imagine? Be your own beloved. Sweet-talk and love yourself up unabashedly. Why not? Generating love states is generating love states. Whether we do it with others or with ourselves, our cells vibrate similarly—and impact the collective similarly.

Or look to the natural world for perspective and support. Animals teach us to be in our naturalness; they are not trying to be something other than what they are. They are not aggressing against themselves or their circumstances in the ways most humans do.

Or commune with the elements, each of which reminds us of our size—both small and large. There is nothing like communing with the sky when our internal state begins to feel tight and unpleasant. Sky puts us back in relationship with our own internal space (of which we are 99.9 percent comprised).

I like to put a subtle grin on my face. This naturally relaxes and increases the parasympathetic nervous system. This, along with deepening my breath and inviting myself to place my attention on what feels pleasurable in this moment—or on someone I feel deep appreciation and love for (animals count)—supports arriving in a state of well-being, presence, and love.

What works for you to enter into a land that feels like love inside your own precious mind, body, and heart, in this precious moment here on planet Earth?