TO LOVE IS TO BE ONE WITH

Much of what is called love today is in actuality a mental concept that inadvertently prevents a deep and abiding experience of true and felt-sense Love. I whole-heartedly believe that the greatest fear we individually and collectively possess is the fear of love. I know it won’t make sense to your mind, for it is indeed nonsensical. The unconscious fear of love began before we were cognitive beings. We fear the giving of love, the receiving of love, and, in particular, the unguardedness and vulnerability that the direct experience of love requires.

When our hearts were most open and unguarded was in the period from infancy to late childhood. We were then primarily emotional beings, and we at a deep level believed we were the energies that were coming at and moving in and through us. We could also in the early years still hear the faint murmurings of the celestial voices that speak only of Light and unconditional love. When we are attuned to that Spiritual sound we are entrained within our hearts, and we expect to be met and received with the all embracing energies of pure and boundless Love. We are at Essence pure and boundless Love. When we are instead met with judgment, criticism, shaming, closed-heartedness and indifference, our tender hearts become veiled and we begin to wince, flinch, and pullback where we once were open, receptive, and unprotected. This emotional imprinting distorts our truth and deadens our senses. Toward the end of childhood we begin to live within the stories we have been told and are now believing and telling about ourselves. We take on false identities and begin to live from pretense rather than from our natural loving presence. The veiling around our hearts becomes our shroud. We can no longer feel the energetic experience of vibrational Love and so the default is to think love with the dualistic mind. It becomes a concept that we try and get and even earn. As much as we crave the experience of love it also terrifies us. We do not want to re-experience the pain that came from the early rejection and shaming that occurred in our most open state.

Love requires that our hearts be open. Love requires that we be unguarded. Love requires that we be totally available. It is only experienced at the felt-level. You cannot think love. You cannot get or earn love either. It is a vibration that is extended from the open and intimately engaged heart. To love is to be atone with. It is a verb. To love is to consciously join and merge with the objects of our love from the subjective level of our authentic self. Dropping out of the mind is a prerequisite. The heart must be active, alive, and engaged. It must be totally open. As the heart is consciously activated loving atonement will be the natural experience. This atonement is in fact the activation of the authentic self. It is the engagement of what is Essential. It is in a literal way the practicing of the One Presence.

When our hearts are closed and we are not feeling the vibrational experience of love we are quite literally asleep to Who and What we are. We are lost in a trance of separation, illusion, and dislocation. The emotional veiling clouds our vision and deadens our innate vibration. In this state of amnesia we feel separate and alone instead of unified and atone. We think we have to get love by behaving in ways we were taught were acceptable and loveable. Love becomes a mental commodity, an ego-barter. In a very real sense, love is a one way dynamic. We are always living in and experiencing the level of love that we are currently capable of giving. This doesn’t mean that we are not to receive love. Of course we do. It just means that love is always a choice we ourselves must make. We cannot make anyone else love us. It is also only as good as the present moment. We are required to constantly feel into the heart-space to insure that it is open and activated. Is my heart open? Am I choosing to extend love, regardless of what seems to be coming at me? When I am awake I am energetically feeling and extending love. No exceptions. Love is Who I am and extending love is what I do.

To love is to be atone with. I look at you, and I choose to relax open any guardedness. I choose to allow my heart to stay open and my eyes to remain soft. I invoke the love that is always present in my Sourced sacred heart center and I embrace you in and with that Love. Within that heartful merging is heaven itself. In that atonement is my liberation. I breathe into the Love, and I vibrate at the frequency of that Love. I meet you in that Love and realize that we indeed IS One. If I flinch, I choose to re-open into love. If I pullback, I choose to move forward within the love. I come to know myself as I choose to stay in Love with you. I come to know my Source when I give atone within the Love I am.

www.taylorestevens.com

MY ODE TO ALYX

It shouldn’t have happened then.

Sunday is a day of life, renewal, of resurrection; not a day of depression, despair, and death.

It shouldn’t have happened there.

The oceans edge is the birthing bed of the cosmic womb. Every wave is whispering "live." The beach is where the infinite potential meets and gives way to the manifest expression. It is not where endless potential is brought to a bitter end

It shouldn’t have happened to you.

You were a being of incredible beauty, endless creativity, boundless generosity and compassion. You fed those who were hungry, and encouraged those who had lost hope.

It shouldn’t have happened like that.

You were a woman of passion and also of peace. Violence was not in your weave. You captured photos of it and yet it didn’t capture you.

It shouldn’t be your legacy. It will not be your legacy.

You lived a life of adventure and courage and imagination and givingness. You inspired others in countless ways. You called forth the suppressed creativity in others, and you saw splendor where others only saw the ordinary.

And even if it shouldn’t have been we are left to know indeed it is. That was the day, the place, the way in which you chose to leave this world. Your memory is now surrounded by endless and well-deserved accolades, even amid the stunned and ravaging disbelief. Did you not know of the love that constantly surrounded you? Were not able to see through the dense, impenetrable fog of your despair the gifts that you were giving to the world? Could you not from within the illness catch a glimpse of how much you mattered to those around you? Did you not for even a moment see your beauty that was reflected in the admiring eyes that looked upon you?

If only someone had known in time. If only someone had been in that place, on that day, and at that time with oh so beautiful you. To stop you. To stop you from stopping you. To tell you how wondrous and important and valuable and precious you were. To remind you in your self-amnesia how much you mattered. Someone that could have shined the light of love through the darkness of your engulfing depth of despair. To tell you that life is meant to be lived, to be loved, to be cherished, and to be preserved.

And yet it was for you to return to the realm of eternity. Your departure has startled and disturbed us in ways we are only beginning to comprehend. The waves of grief are just beginning to lap upon the shores of that place that is now so empty without you. And even in the vulnerability of this current emotional state I am opening to the gifts your living and indeed your dying have given to me. You remind me of the dark and dismal day I too stood ready to end my own depression, darkness, the despair that then so colored my life. You remind me that as self-destruction was not to be my chosen path, I must now choose that every day be a precious gift in which to give my love and live life to the fullest of my potential. I am a voice for those who are now voiceless as a result of succumbing to addiction and mental illness. You remind me to cherish every encounter, and that no meeting is ever by chance. You remind me to be liberal with my praise, and sparring with my criticism. You challenge me to transcend my internal darkness, and to continually tap into the Light of my Source. You inspire me to fuel my creativity with the passion of my Soul, and to touch others with the enthusiasm of my expression.

And mostly you remind me to stay connected to my love, and to energetically, verbally, physically, and vocally always share of this priceless commodity called life. I relish the memory of our every encounter. Many of them seemed quite by chance. And yet they were always contained in warmth, laughter, affection, and heartfulness. Those encounters mattered to me. You mattered to me, Alyx. You still matter to me and you will always matter to me. You have left an indelible legacy of beauty, creativity, and love upon this earth. And that is what will be remembered most.

Rest in Peace, my friend. Rest in peace.

www.taylorestevens.com