What does "Love" mean to you?!

Recently, I wrote a bit about love:

"So what does "love" mean to you? Does it evoke an expansive, bright feeling of aliveness? A state of being and awareness that is transcendental? Or do you feel fleeting happiness, or even anger, guilt, or shame? I invite you to explore "love" as a state of being, as the Oneness that we all share, Universal Love. This is different than human, romantic love. While romantic love can also be wonderful, it lies in a transitory place, a duality...one moment love, the next hate. What's it like to transmute, transform and purge our old ideas of love into the infinite energy space? One that empowers us to be our fully authentic selves! Love as a state of being!"

...and then invited a deeper exploration at the Temple Community Gathering.  An inspiring man, a client of mine I will refer to as PS, reached out, unable to attend the Gathering in person, and shared a bit of his story.  I shared his story at the Gathering, and the response was overwhelmingly resonant!

It has been such an honor to work with PS over the past few years, I am impressed by his body awareness and willingness to slow down and notice it's messages.  His personal growth and brightness has bloomed over this time as he's embodied the very concepts we work with and integrated them into his life's path!

Many people at the Gathering that day asked to see the email he shared.  I am grateful to have his permission, and am happy to share his words here (the color emphasis I've added)!

Sure Leslie,

Thank you for the opportunity. My personal discovery has been that as I started connecting more and more with my body on my journey over the last few years and listening to my body's signals to me I realized that love was not what I was taught my upbringing it was. Through my surroundings and popular culture I was taught that signs of love are 'being struck' by somebody, butterflies in the stomach, anticipation of how the date will turn out, will the person like me as much as I do them etc, increased heart rate, shortness of breath, even difficulty sleeping etc... Well, it turned out, at least for my body, that those are symptoms of fear.  So I realized that what I was always told was love was actually fear - exact opposite of love. I also realized that the language we use to describe this is more fear-like than love-like. We say 'fall in love' - I would now much rather like 'ascend into love'. I have had women tell me in the past that I am so handsome that 'they get weak when they see me' or that their 'knees get weak' thinking they give me a complement - I would have preferred that they had told me that they get strong when they see me. That would be more like love.

It has been the truth in my life that the origin of the fear is the energetic resemblance between the person and those that, although they loved us, actually hurt us most - our parents. The spirit in me recognizes the energies of those that attempted to disconnect us from the source and the body reacts with fear. As I have not been raised to understand what love is and what joy is so as to get my life energy from them, I learned to get energy and the feeling of being alive from cheap thrills and fears - one of them being the fear of those that look like those that hurt me. So I used to go for it - I would get the buzz of feeling alive - like I always do from any fear inducing event. Naturally those relationships had to 'go bad' at some point. Actually they were 'bad' from beginning - they started with fear!

Love is entirely different and is a state of being and it can be heightened by the presence of another person and I try now to seek those types of relationships - that will help me ascend to love, not fall into fear. I am also trying to understand what the role of 'exclusivity' is in relationships which to me feels more like ownership or tax-beneficial societal arrangements rather than love enhancing arrangement.  I don't have answers yet that would give me certainty with which I can organize my life but am continuing my journey.

This is an important topic for my growth and thank you for the opportunity to write a bit about it. I wish I could be there at the gathering - hope to do it next time.

With love, PS

Explore how love feels in your body, and please share your comments!

Namaste,
Leslie