The Love Gift series: Love is...

In contemplating Margot's invitation to share some heartfelt thoughts about how Love fuels my artistic and spiritual life, I found myself remembering a little book my grandmother owned when I was young called "Love Is...." I have to be perfectly honest, I don't remember the content of the book, but  I remember that I loved it and read it over and over, daydreaming about the power of connection made possible by our ability to feel Love for one another. 

Over the past week, I've also found myself full of statements beginning with "Love is...." Love is Gratitude. Love is appreciation. Love is good will and intention. Love is ecstatic and painful. Love is fragile and invincible, ever-shifting and always present, it never dies. Love is playful, mischievous, kind, soft and tough. Love is everywhere and only within. Love is our creative life force and fuel.  

Love is all of these sentiments ~ all of them perfectly true, all of them perfectly incomplete. Love just cannot be contained – by words or otherwise. The list of feelings it inspires is endless and infinite because, simply put... Love Is.

Yet, in my reflections for this post, I found that my heart came back to three core ideas that resonate deeply for me and my own relationship with Love. The curiously beautiful part is that while Love is Margot's proclaimed deep devotion in life, these three whispers in my heart speak with a soft strength from what I consider to be my own devotion. They are, indeed, so intricately woven with Love that they are indiscernible from it in my experience. And I Love that this invitation has brought me closer to that awareness.

Where I am able to find and experience Love – within myself, within others, within my art and experiences, within each moment – that is where I am meant to be. That is the pursuit of my soul. That is my compass for moving through life. It is the direction I pursue. It is my guide.

Love is a feeling – I think we can all agree on this umbrella of understanding. And feelings are so much more than just experiences in our minds and our emotional centers. They are actual physical sensations in our bodies. Love is an experience that presents in many forms... some more obvious than others. It is ever present within us, and we can even cultivate our ability to recognize it in the ordinary, the difficult, and the not so obvious by listening to the messages of our bodily sensations as we experience our life. 

I experience Love, first, as vibrating energy in my body – in the form of sensations that are comfortable and exhilarating or uncomfortable and activating. Think of tingles and impulses, tensions and aches. Sometimes it feels like desire and want, sometimes it feels like the light of good will and gratitude cycling through me, sometimes like compassion, joy and ecstasy. 

In contrast, to fully know Love in a holistic, intimate way, we have been gifted with the ability to feel it as the weight of loss, pain or deep empathy and sorrow.  As artists, we know that to emphasize the light of something in an image we must find its contrast in the shadow. Even the shadows hold beauty and opportunity in our pursuit of Love. And despite the potential for heartache, or the inevitability that Love often leads us to sensations of disappointment or tension, to pursue Love is to pursue a Life rich in motion.

Whether we express it in silence in nature, holding the hand of a sick loved one, in the arms of our beloved, in a career, to strangers we meet throughout our day, or in a multitude of other ways, the truth is that there is no end to Love, and no beginning. It is a vast sea of energy around and within us, always there, waiting for allowance and theactivation of our awareness. As we choose an awareness of its abundance and creative potential, it becomes our portal to experiencing the inherent connection of All that is. In this way, Love is simply divine. In our ability to experience it and activate it in our lives and the lives of others, we, too, are divine potential. 

Painting has become a spiritual practice playground of activating the awareness of Love within myself.  Intuitive painting can be like looking at a piece of your soul under a microscope. It can also be light, playful and energizing. At times it is as difficult as it is simple. I know I am in activated awareness when I begin to feel Love and ease in my gestures and body during a painting, or when I feel a wave of emotion released in my process. It is hard to describe, but it is a surreal experience that I imagine to be similar to how it would feel if light could shine like a breeze right through the molecules of your body. It is a release of my mind into the sensation of living in harmony. That is Love.

There is an irony I have learned in my experience about the compass of Love that is worth mentioning. Sometimes it tells me where to go and I follow that sensation, and sometimes it shows me Love right where I am at, in the unexpected darker places.  When my body is often experiencing resistance, tension, sorrow or pain, if I simply muster up the ability to Surrender to the shadow side with a kiss of breath and courage, Love rises to the surface and transforms the experience for me. That's right – transforms the experience for me. But the key – and this is so important – is that I offer myself completely to the uncomfortable experience, to the will of a Source unknowable to me. Just in the act of offering, flow is generated, and in the flow, Love is able to seep into my awareness again. 

That is why today I say 

Love is my compass  

Love is the activated awareness of the universal connection of All

Love is Surrender

I believe that every time we are able to listen to our sensations as guides, activate our awareness and surrender to the many faces of Love in ordinary life and activities, we are expanding further into our essence of self  and connection with each other. 

I'll leave you with this poem about love:

Perfection cannot be attained,

but it can be noticed.

If you pay full attention

to what seems flawed and ordinary

you will notice the perfection

hiding beneath appearances.

If you pay full attention to each other

you will notice how perfectly

you are each becoming who you really are.

By seeing the perfection in what is

you allow the creation

of what is not.

- William Martin

Love and Light to you and yours,

~ Hali

Hali writes about various forms of art expression, spirit, nature, love, life, death, change, sensual awareness and connection, energy, vitality, healing, other inspiring creatives, and her own journey at www.lilywheelslide.com