the love I give

is a quiet stream

a deep still pool

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum  x

It was Valentine’s Day a few days ago now. Well perhaps more than a few – ha. It’s just been a very full life lately what with increasing my teaching hours from 9 to 20, I’m still getting my head around the lesson planning. Early morning starts and lots and lots of practice of letting go of anxiety and the sense that I’m not going to get it all done.

Anyway I digress, Valentine’s Day. A day that focuses us on romantic love: hearts and cupids, flowers and cards and words of love, desire and yearning. Romantic love is good – it is wonderful to feel the love of, and feel the love for, another.  It is uplifting and reassuring, nurturing and enlivening. It makes colours brighter and heightens our senses to the beauty in all that surrounds us. To be in love is truly a drug.

Yet there is even a more powerful, more wonderful, more enriching form of love. This is the love we are capable of feeling for all others; for every single sentinent being. I used to think this meant having a feeling of love for all in a general sense – loving and caring about humanity. It does mean that I guess, and perhaps that is a good place to start, however that offers us limited reward.

What is needed to really feel the buzz, to really feel and know and experience life as this huge, wonderful thing that just keeps happening over and over is love for all in a very specific, personal and individual sense. To love all is to love everyone, every single one of us. Once we start to nurture this we start to transform our lives.

It is the most wonderful and simplest of feelings to feel love for another living thing. It transforms us, and it spreads happiness and self belief.  Practice feeling loving towards all  you meet – practice not  being selective. Love all instantly, spontaneously, unconditionally . Begin every interaction with a feeling of love and respect for, and interest in the other. All beings, wherever the are, whatever their circumstances. 

Wish then well, want them to be happy, free from worry, concern, self doubt and fear. 

So spread the message!! Love, love, love!! Love yourself. Love all that you are, all that you have ever been and all that you will become.

Love others – all others – all others. Every single one of us. We’re all here together. Love others and you will love yourself. You will feel the love grow.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

I woke in the night and looked across at Cari asleep beside me. Reached down and touched her hand. Closed my eyes and listened to her breath. I awoke early this morning knowing I am where I am meant to be. I do not feel different, I am different. I am relaxed and reassured.

I am close to a source of happiness and trust. I lie next to a spring from which as I inhale I drink long and deep. Within only days of returning here I feel that calming and rejuvinating elixir coursing through my being.

How to explain it? Love obviously. This modest and humble woman wraps herself around me, envelopes me in a shawl of light and love, and sets me free from all my fears. She is the word. She is all that I believe in, all I aspire to, all I want for myself and all those I love.

She makes it real, makes it safe.

Safe to be myself – all that I am and all that I believe I am not.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

Well, what a difference a day makes. Or an hour, or an evening.

Every moment is different, and every moment makes a difference I guess.

Anyway what all this is leading to is that I’ve bought my ticket back to Cari, back to the UK. Fly off on the 23rd, land at Heathrow on the 24th.

The delicious ambiguity is all but over (for now). What changed? Why did I do it this morning, whereas I have been struggling to do it for days. There is no simple answer. It was easy to do this morning – it has been the most difficult of things to do in the last few days.

I fainted again last night ( I do that every now and again) – and that probably helped me realise …. Before I fainted I recognised someone last night, and that probably helped me realise … Last night I realised just how scared I’ve been and that helped. Last night I experienced again the power of love and that definitely helped.

make love your goal 

My work here is well and truly done, well almost. I finish the course tomorrow. I will be partying with some of my course colleagues and students on Friday, having dinner with Kate and her family on Saturday, and then a whole week – maybe catch up with Lavinia, and maybe my brother. I am not sure what else there is for me to do now -  still a little ambiguity left then …

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

I ate gingernuts and crisps, read about tropical fish and fat bikers in Montana and in between listened in to two young men earnestly discussing the merits of different debating techniques. Then the train stopped tripping and I was walking through the star-filled night. There were no more distractions. I thought of you at the Fortitude Valley station, of you in my arms not once but twice, and walking away, moving again, is a difficult thing. My heart hurts. I walk alone, slowly through this dark warm night and you are here, right here, with me.

No more biscuits, no more stories, no more debating strategies, just shadows and the sounds of a strange Australian night. Love is painful. Real. Right here. You are here my son. You always will be. And tonight I saw you, for the first time in a long time and I saw some of what you have become, what you are.

 You are a big man, a big loveable mountain of man, and in you tonight I saw all that was good in my father. I saw his tenderness and enormous capacity for love. I saw once again his gentleness and his simple and easy knowing. He knew love, he trusted it, as you do my son. You have that, what a gift. You know where you stand, what you feel, who you are. You know that love exists. You know how to simply be in it.

 This is what I came for. This is what I travelled the world for, left the woman I love for, changed my life for. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for letting me see you Max. Thank you for knowing that that was all that I needed, and wanted. I am so proud of you. I am humbled. You are a wonderful young man, so strong in your heart.

 Love is painful. Real. I love you with all my heart. Until we meet again, goodbye…

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x