Practice Your Love

“You don't need to justify your love, you don't need to explain your love, you just need to practice your love. Practice creates the master.” 
― Miguel Ruiz, The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship

It is hard not to walk away wondering what you could have done better. There is always a list of what could have been different or maybe even needed to be different. There is a process to understanding why something cannot work, but it all comes back to your love. 

We have subconscious patterns at play. Stories and reactions we play out as we move through the world. Some of them are good and we collect these. Some are not as good and we learn how to weed them out. As we continue to interact openly and honestly with our worlds, we learn them. We learn ourselves within them, and we learn how we love. Who we love changes, but how we love rests in some central core system of our being. 

Each person we love activates this core. We share pieces of our love with every person we meet whether consciously or unconsciously. When we seek to understand our love we become conscious in our action. Our love becomes an active love. We do not gain control over our emotions, but we learn how to live in harmony with them by accepting their role within us. When we align we our love we can start practicing it. When we practice our true version of love, we attract a version that we can understand. 

There is no rulebook for love. There are no guidelines to lead you to your most ultimate form of love. Love requires an alignment with your mental, physical and emotional self. The physical being the most easy to access, but also one of the most powerful. The body cannot lie. It responds to danger, to love, to comfort, to excitement. Understanding these reactions does not mean acting upon them. Certain people and situations will make you feel comfortable and accepted, while others will trigger tightness and a need to flee. These reactions are preprogrammed into us based on our experience, and are used as defense mechanisms to help us in our daily lives. Some of them are necessary and some of them are not. 

When there are uncomfortable emotions, patience is required. Fear is a strong player in the mind games, designed to keep us safe. Sometimes fear is important in life or death situations and can alert us when leaving is the best option. A lot of times fear is coupled with emotional trauma that does not currently apply to whatever event is happening. Identifying our fears allows us to consciously move away from the ones that don't serves. To thank them for their care and to set them aside. 

In love there is always a fear of loss. It is a human condition to be afraid of losing what we put ourselves into. Love demands our attention because it strengthens us. In true love, there is no fear. True love does not have space for fear because it trusts that all parties are acting from a place of truth and respect within themselves. It acknowledges emotion as fluid thoughts and accepts them as they pass through. When we rest in love we do not fight discomfort, but rather lean into it to learn what it is trying to teach us. 

Love is active. It is a state of doing. Of nurturing and then letting go of the outcome. Love is trust that all things will conspire the way they are supposed to and knows how to play its part within it. Loving another person allows them complete freedom to be what they are. Nothing becomes personal, all becomes reflection. We learn that each person reflects their world and not ours. We learn our worlds through them. When we practice this love, no explanation is necessary. Only presence and awareness.

Love is love is love.