Love | Born to Be

“Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there – fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge – they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion… love actually is all around.” Prime Minister, Love Actually

Whenever I feel depressed or downtrodden myself in regards to life, I love to put on a film that will help me gain perspective and turn things around. It’s like that moment in the movie Reality Bites when Wynona Ryder’s character feels herself sinking as the elevator is going down. She realizes that all the roads she is attempting to take for her employment are going nowhere and she is beginning to fail miserably in her quest to validate her hope in the world she had created in graduating from college. “Love Actually” is one of those films that always helps me gain perspective, especially when I hear the opening quote by the Prime Minister. Just watching the scenes from the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport I begin to tear up.

And now, whenever I’m actually at the airport I have the same experience! I think the most catching part for me was when the quote goes into the planes hitting the Twin Towers. The writer gives insight into the beauty of our human connection and our purpose as human beings- to express love and learn from it.

“When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge – they were all messages of love.”

When I heard that piece of the quote for the first time, it was like someone opening the curtains and letting the sunlight in my heart. Whenever I hear the quote now- I have the same experience. My experience never changes no matter how many times the television comes clean with the same statement about messages of love. If you knew you were about to die and you had a chance to call someone- who would you contact to convey a message of love? Who would you forgive as well as apologize to? I know it may sound cliché, but life is short and we could very well die tomorrow. The person you want to apologize to could die tomorrow as well. There is a temporal aspect to our experience and we have to embrace every opportunity we have to clean up all the regrets and resentments we carry around in our hearts, our minds.

When I was training as a life coach, we were given a great assignment- to go through all that baggage and clean it up already. Every person I had wanted to so desperately apologize to for something I thought I had done to them- I had the opportunity now to write it all down in a big list and purify it all with love. Facebook became the greatest invention on earth for me! I was able to contact so many people and just say, “I’m sorry.” It was one of the most liberating experiences in my life. I felt so light, free- so filled with gratefulness for the opportunity to just simply let it all go. All of us have that opportunity and it is up to us to do the work, let go of our stubbornness and desire to point the finger in someone’s face.

We have a great opportunity and I recommend that everyone do it at least once in your life! One of the most interesting insights I learned through the whole process was how much weight I had placed onto my experiences all by my lonesome self with shame and regret- when the other person did not even have a clue nor did they even think I had really hurt them. We feel shameful and embarrassed for behaving certain ways in our ignorance or incorrect state of mind and don’t realize how much this baggage really affects us. When you grab your past by the reigns and really plunge into the future with full-on releasement you free yourself from the grasping of the mind that perpetuates karma. You give to yourself, as well as that other person, a great opportunity of freedom and joy. And, it is beautiful.

If you feel scared in your attempt to nullify an uncomfortable situation, simply remember, “…love actually is all around.”

When All Is Most Right With The World…
By: Jessica Burnham

“Oh, life is like that. Sometimes, at the height of our revelries, when our joy is at its zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.”
Ralphie, A Christmas Story

As a young child I remember seeing the classic film, “A Christmas Story.” This quote from the film, “Oh, life is like that. Sometimes, at the height of our revelries, when our joy is at its zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us,” had a profound effect on me. I always loved the dance of the words, and how true it felt when I was most down on myself. But the big question for me these days regarding this quote has to do with that unshakeable part of being. That part of us that exists regardless of joy or unthinkable disasters. That part of us that always knows “all is most right with the world.”

Why?

I know it is mid-July, and Christmas is nowhere near our thoughts in this moment. But as I sat and pondered a recent experience regarding awareness and what it means to be free of attachment- I heard Ralphie’s famous statement echo from my heart to my mind. I knew it was the perfect statement that related to how I felt. I was exercising when it happened. As I ran, with the beautiful mountains and blue sky in my view, a breeze touched me ever so deeply. In the breeze I truly felt non-attachment and how it frees us from thinking that nothing is ever right in the world.

I had been dwelling on a news piece as I ran, and this burst of energy just whipped through me with the understanding that no matter what I thought about that situation, it didn’t matter. And any emotions I put into the whole idea that something was just plain wrong didn’t matter either. Next, I thought- what if I just acknowledged that it didn’t actually matter? That is when I had that feeling, that understanding, which all really was right with the world. My feelings, my thoughts, my desire to be angry- really didn’t have any consequence to that situation directly. Suddenly this burst of joy just ran through my heart, and I knew the only thing that did matter was my love and how I chose to express myself as divine love in this world.

As humans, we have this great gift that I always yammer on about. Choice! My choice had nothing to do with this deep feeling of everything being right in the world. This feeling was simply there, always- and the minute I knew from my deepest innate nature that no matter how I chose to color the news piece, I would always be unchanged as my awareness. Nothing can change what we are made of, our essence, our being. We are blank coloring books underneath all our projections, thoughts, viewpoints, perceptions. As we grow, we choose different colors to experience a new picture. But underneath all those colors, we simply are awareness.

This glimpse was a beautiful gift. And, it gave me a reference point whenever my viewpoint begins to get out of hand. Each time we find ourselves traveling down that familiar road to defensiveness, judgment or troubling perception, we have the ability to take a deep breath and just act as the witness to this mind activity. There is something deeper that is always simply witnessing without any of these attachments. That is who we truly are, and the more we open our hearts to the possibility of fully engaging in this beingness, the more we will regularly go there without all the drama.

Inner drama, outer drama- it is all the same. Anything we experience inwardly as a rocky experience and attach to will eventually manifest in some perception and/or interaction with the world around us- usually in an unfavorable way. We are the commander of our vessels. Yet, our vessels are part of a larger picture. When we look at a painting, we can see various subject matters. A ship in the ocean is taking part in something. But, the ship is also just there. There really is no place for it to go, except simply be in that moment. And when we stop to enjoy the painting of that moment, we become a part of it. This is life. I am grateful for the beauty of moments. Being present and recognizing that all is right with the world yields a gracefulness that is surely connected to the purity of our beingness, our awareness, no matter the unthinkable disasters.