Want more? Then love more

What is it about love that captivated the quest of all the wise women and men for centuries? Rabia spoke these words of her Beloved: “I have found nothing in all the worlds, That could match His love, This love that harrows the sands of my desert.” “Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being,” wrote Rumi. “Half-heartedness doesn’t reach into majesty.”

Perhaps love is so central because it is the “bridge between you and everything”, like Rumi said. “It is everywhere. Between you and your god, between you and your goals, between you and everything you wish to achieve.” And so as you expand your heart and fill it with more love, you’re able to contain everything you long for.

As I continue my humble quest to expand my heart, and my love, I come back to report on two hallmarks of expanding love. If you’re encountering them, I guess you’re on the way. They are Confusion and Resistance. Both so necessary for us to love more. Can we learn to be brave in the midst of our confusion? Can we recognize how our own resistance is the very impetus to our longing to break free?

I wrote this below to myself in September 2021 as I was in the midst of my confusion over a “need” within me that camouflaged itself as love. I wrote it as I was in the midst of my resistance to love that didn’t arrive the way I expected it to. May this below help you find some of the places of confusion and resistance within you as it helped me.

“There are infinite frequencies of love. That’s why we get to experience so much of it. Love for parents, siblings, lovers, children, friends, pets, family and relatives, people we interact with on a daily basis, countries, lands, ancestors long gone, ones we’ve never met, concepts we admire, novels we fall in love with, paintings, songs, the friendly cashier at the checkout counter, the caring neighbor, the tree shading our favorite curb on our drive home, the flowers blooming in our favorite pot, the warm bread we just baked in the morning, the cool breeze of a spring afternoon.

Infinite encounters with love.

We are meant to engage love in all these interactions and moments, because each and every one of these interactions and moments attunes our hearts, expands them to a new frequency of love every time we do so. It’s the only way for our heart to expand to a level where it’s capable of holding in the universe and becoming one with it. Becoming everything and nothing at the same time. It’s the home-coming of the heart.

In these interactions and moments, nothing takes away from us fully integrating each and every unique frequency of love except for our own confusion and resistance. They come camouflaged in various ways: sometimes it’s a parent that didn’t live up to our expectations, a lover too harsh or careless, a sibling that’s too selfish, a friend that doesn’t get us, a child that doesn’t love us, a pet that’s too much work, a flower that needs yet more sun, a neighbor that’s too nosy, a country that’s too different than what it used to be, a relative that’s just weird, a novel that’s too long, a song that we can only listen to if we’re happy, or sad, a tree that sheds too many leaves, a slice of bread that turns hard too quickly.

This confusion and resistance interrupts our flow and expansion into the full realm of what these frequencies of love can give to us. Yet it is in this very confusion and resistance that we learn how important it is to flow, that we learn how to set them free, one by one, at our own pace, in our own time. Because when we arrive at the frequency of ultimate flow, we become one with all, and nothing on our own. Nothing and everything at the same time. We come home.”