A fellow author and blogger writes: “The child will leave the nest. The best paint job will crack. The best play will become boring. The best work will grow tedious. The best art will lose meaning. The greatest creation will decay. Behind all this, lies my True Self. Self-love is essential. Until you learn how to feel love in an empty room, you will not feel loved for very long in any other room.”  Vironika Tugaleva, vironika.org, speaks here about the impermanence of all form and the formless love of the essential Self that transcends and yet includes all form.

Eckart Tolle weighs in with: “The recognition of the impermanence of all forms awakens you to the dimension of the formless within yourself, that which is beyond death. Jesus called it ‘eternal life.‘ It leads to nonresistance, non-judgement, and non attachment . . . the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living.”  If Gary, Vironika, Eckart, Jesus and a host of others live, teach and experience love and impermanence in these ways, why do most of us spend so much of our lives striving for and hanging onto the impermanent while mostly ignoring the eternal?

In an ancient text written to the Corinthians in the first century, Paul of Tarsus spoke of love in a profound way. He said: “Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it does not insist on it’s own way; is not irritable or resentful. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. Make love your aim.” I sense he was speaking about the invisible ocean of Love we all live in and that lives in us. Love is the ‘stuff’ of the universe. It’s not an idea or a feeling. It’s an awareness of the Essence of Life.

In light of all this, I’ve been reflecting on love and impermanence in ways I haven’t before. I’m seeing all I’ve had, done and experienced as a memory, dream and reflection of what I valued in the moment. I’m seeing love as an ongoing Life force that’s always here and now no matter what the circumstances. I’m also recognizing love as a choice we make and not with every thought, feeling, word and action. Mostly we make choices that allow us to play safe in life’s  games with the acceptance, affirmations and conditions of others. We call it love but it’s not.

The message we all get to one degree or another from others is not that we are love and loved without any conditions, rather that we are not love and we will be loved if….and only when we act the way ‘they’ want us to act, dress, talk and engage all their conditions. Does this sound familiar to you? Have you been able to identify the should’s, must’s, ought’s and have to’s that you were conditioned with and still suffer from? Have you also discovered how impossible it is to buy love this way or any other way? Love is not a commodity, it’s Life itself

What I’ve discovered along the way is our heart’s ache for Love and yet harden every time one of the ‘performance situations’ comes up. When our hearts harden, our heady default positions take over. We default to anger, desire, fear, anxiety, blame and vindication. We revert to the old conditioned self rather than take the time to stop the reactivity, soften the heart and tap into the infinite unconditional love that flows through our universe with every breath. We slip into our reactive conditioning and once again become a victim and perpetrator of love-less-ness.

The next time you find your old conditioned self tightening up, your heart constricting and your mind resisting, judging and attaching to a right/wrong position, STOP. Take a breath and soften your heart. Recognize what’s going on within your false self and come home to your True Self. Feel your heart soften as you remember who you really are beyond your conditioning. Allow this light to enter your heart through your wounds. Feel your softening heart smile at the joke you’ve been falling for all your life and feel Life returning through your awareness of this Loving Companion Presence. Love is always here, inviting you to be your True Authentic Original Self.

• Read the above paragraph again and make it an ongoing practice. Slow way down and soften your heart. Allow the smiling heart to teach you about Love and see what happens for you.
• When feeling resistance and judgement toward yourself or others return to your heart center. Breathe into it the Love that’s ever present as cosmic food. Allow your True Self to guide and direct you to let go all the conditions that tell you who you’re not. Your body and all things pass away. The Love you are, your formless Self is eternal. If you need a concept, know that God is Pure Consciousness, Love, Presence, infinitely relational and always with and for you. 
• A simple mantra might be: I Am Love. I Am Life. I Am Light and . . . i am impermanence.