The ABC’s of Self-Love: R is for Release

This post is part of The ABCs of Fierce Love, by Stratejoy. When Molly suggested I write about Release, I knew exactly what wanted to be written. I’m honored to be one of 26 writers sharing wisdom about fierce love. 

First, a story…

Over the first ten days of February, I attended a silent retreat with Adyashanti, an American-born teacher of awakening. For each full day, along with 231 other people, I was silent. We meditated much of each day. This isn’t the first time I’ve done a silent retreat, but it is the longest one I’ve done…and it was the most profound.

Adya shared with us that the Divine is constantly and continually revealing itself to us in every moment. And everything it reveals to us is exactly what we need, when we need it, for our liberation…liberation from our own minds.

There were many ups and downs during these days. Just like in life, there were moments when I was confused as hell, moments when profound insights would come, and moments when nothing much seemed to be happening at all.

One moment in particular, though, speaks to the word release. I was sitting in the dining room drinking my chai, nibbling on my breakfast, and staring out a window that overlooked a green meadow and the pacific ocean. It was a beautiful morning.  I’d just finished the morning meditation, but nothing in particular was up for me. I was feeling very open.

Suddenly soft tears began to fall as I felt what seemed to be gentle waves begin to wash over me. At first, I felt some resistance to what was happening, but then my eyes instinctively closed as these waves grew stronger and caused me to turn within. The waves became deeper, and so I drew even more deeply inside, letting go into the waves. These were waves of love….sweet, silent, pulsing waves of love. It was as if an ocean of love was rhythmically washing over me, just as waves kiss the shore.

I’ve never been loved so deeply, so softly, so generously, so undeniably. Love washed over me, into me, around me and through me. I was immersed in an ocean of love…all in the midst of a silent yet bustling dining hall. This beautiful moment lasted close to 45 minutes, and at the end I knew I had been released into love.

It was a two-way love affair. The more I trusted what was being offered, the more I began to open to this love. The beloved loving the lover. The lover basking in the beloved’s love.

What keeps us bound up from this love?

Now, I imagine many of you have experienced what I did in some form. You don’t have to be silent or at a retreat or even thinking of love to experience such love. There is not necessarily any rhyme or reason to how, why or when such experiences show up.

We are always being loved. The divine is always offering itself up to you. Always. Always showing itself. Always revealing itself.

Which brings me to release, and you, and the Divine.

If this is so, what keeps us from knowing this love?

What keeps us from releasing ourselves into this great love?

While on the surface our reasons may seem different and unique, I imagine at the root they are pretty much the same. I know for me, what kept me from knowing this love as an experience were my deepest fears that who and what I am was somehow other than this divine love…that my basic nature was not love, that it was somehow broken, dark and not worthy of this divine love.

I imagine somewhere deep inside, you have similar fears.

Just for a moment, imagine this…

Imagine being set free, completely and utterly free to be you: the you you know you really are; the you you hear calling to you, the you your rational mind can’t begin to fathom exists.

When I ask you this, does it cause tears to fall and your heart to quiver? Or, perhaps there is an immediate response inside that this doesn’t pertain to you?

I know that so many of us are kept in bondage by beliefs and fears that who and what we really are is somehow not enough or okay or … fill in the blank. I also know that there is a deep instinctive drive to wake up to who we are. As the years of our lives pass by, this drive to wake up becomes stronger, while the bondage becomes more painful.

The drive you feel inside to reveal and release yourself is a natural, sacred, organic drive to heal into wholeness, to be the soul you truly are, to live a life of truth. The drive you feel inside is to know this Love, this sacred Love, as who and what you are.

No matter what, you are Loved

No matter what has happened to you in your life, your innocence and basic goodness have not been, and cannot be, diminished. 

No matter how your body has been treated, by you or by others, you are loved.

You are beautiful because the core of who you are is beauty itself.

All of you is loved, even those parts of yourself you’ve told yourself could never be loved. You are loved in your softness and your hardness. You are loved in your shyness and your ferocity. You are loved in all the ways you are.

Even if it feels like it will, your heart will not break if you feel all that you’ve feared feeling. The bindings that have grown around your heart will break, causing your heart to break open…and that is a good, good thing. This love that abides in all that is will open your heart. All you have to do is say, “Yes”.

What keeps the real you bound? Whatever it is, it is no match for Love.

What would it take to release you? Again, it is love.

Love such as this is always, always being given to you. You need not fear it, because that’s what the real you is… you are love. You are fierce love. You are soft love. You are the truth at the heart of love.

Longing

I’m not saying it will be easy. It has not been easy for me. Not one bit. It takes a burning desire to know this love. It takes a willingness to feel all that you have not wanted to feel.

The thing is, we are wired for this. It is only our minds, and the products of all of our minds, that constantly tell us differently. But, we are wired for this.

You don’t have to believe in God. You don’t have to believe in a doctrine. In fact, let go of any beliefs you have. Let go of how you think it should and will be.

Your doorway in is your longing…the longing to know love, to be loved, to be love; a longing to return home, a longing to no longer hide yourself.

Touch into your longing. Touch into your knowing. Touch into your own heart.

Reach out to the Divine and ask for what you long for.

Open to the realization that you can trust… in life, in love, in yourself so that you may receive what the Divine is offering.

This is self love: Self loving self.

Release is just a ‘Yes’ away.

 ::

You can find out more about Molly’s ‘The ABC’s of Self Love Blog Crawl + Treasure Hunt’ here.

image by massdistraction  Some rights reserved