Is there anything more important to the human journey than love?

Based on North American pop culture, it would seem not.

Our favorite songs, favorite movies and even favorite elephant journal articles are most often about love, sex and relationships.

And in many ways, this is not surprising because the experience of being loved is essential to the human species.

It has already been proven that without love and attention, babies fail to thrive and it seems that adults don’t fare much better, when they feel like no one loves them.

We are a tribal species, who spend much of our time searching for the love and connection that brings fulfillment into our daily lives.

Is there a more common journey than the quest of the single person to find a mate?

The long days spent sitting in the mystery of not knowing—when or where a mate will enter our lives.

Like a pregnancy, without a due date.

I mean, we’re talking about the occasion when we’ll meet the most important person in our lives but we don’t know when it will happen, where it will happen or how it will happen.

Or worse, if it will happen at all.

The dreaming, the hoping, the wondering.

Is something wrong with me? Am I simply not lovable? Not suitable for being loved forever and always?

Or, maybe the right person for me, doesn’t exist. Maybe finding a soul mate is simply impossible.

These are some of the thoughts that float through our consciousness, while on the quest for love.

And the truth is, being in a relationship is not a sure fire way to ensure that we feel loved. How often in relationships do we feel abandoned by the people we have chosen to count on as our “love-source?”

Single or in a relationship, it doesn’t matter, this searching for love is present in all us.

But there’s a shift happening.

And it’s palpable.

A re-connection we could say.

A returning to the understanding that love is not outside of us or inside of us either.

And that love is definitely not waiting for us, in another person.

Instead love is just here.

It is here all the time.

We’re simply not noticing it.

We’re busy worrying, fretting, stressing and searching, often about insignificant things, that we’re missing the love, that is significant, right here, all the time.

I think of it as a dropping into love.

I let everything fall off of me that isn’t love. I stumble and fall into the sensory sensation of the love that is right here, right now.

Because, experiencing the love that exists in this moment, isn’t an intellectual experience.

We can’t reach into Quantum Physics and pull out a Valentine’s Day Card that says, “The Universe Loves You.”

Falling into love is literally a pathway that needs to be developed within our being.

We need to practice traveling to the love and staying there as long as we can.

We need to practice traveling into the love when things are peaceful. When our stress level is low, when we feel supported and nurtured.

So, in the inevitable moments when life feels hard, when we feel abandoned and alone, like the planet doesn’t want us on its surface, we will know how to find the trailhead to love, without any effort. We will be able to let ourselves go, knowing the path to love is well-traveled—we can walk it in the dark, eyes closed.

This pathway to love connected to the practice of mindfulness. Because mindfulness is a way to train our attention.

Without practicing mindfulness, our minds are crazy. Wild worlds of worry and fantasy, often out of control.

With mindfulness practice, we control the steering wheel of our lives, and choose where to put our attention. On our breath, thoughts and body.

Or, on love.

On the love that is here all the time, just waiting to be noticed.

Or, better yet, experienced.

 

 

Relephant:

This is What I Know about Love.

Author: Ruth Lera

Editor: Ashleigh Hitchcock

Photo: flickr, awetumjoygasm