Love by itself

So often for me, the experience of love has been tied to other people and other emotions. I feel love when I think of a person I feel affectionately toward, and maybe it's connected to happiness because they love me the same way, or maybe longing because my desire isn't mutual. Love tends to be accompanied by other thoughts and feelings like that.

Today in yoga class I was in a child's pose position and I thought of someone, felt love, and immediately felt my face tighten as I connected it with longing. And I wondered, what would the experience of love feel like if it weren't tied to those other things, if I could let go and feel it as an independent emotion? So I dropped what I was doing with my face and just paid attention to the feeling of love. This is something I'm just beginning to explore. Right now, the way I experience it is as a comfortable warmth in my chest. It requires gentle relaxation, which isn't always easy because it can feel scary to let go of the tension I hold and let love be present. It requires acceptance and fondness of self, which are hard to conjure in the presence of fear, guilt, and self-blame. I learned that you have to have compassion even for the part of yourself that feels afraid and guilty before the fear and guilt will start to recede.

I'm playing with the idea that self-love feels just like interpersonal love, but with practice it can be felt at any time regardless of circumstance. This is somewhat of a novel idea because I've always assumed that I have to be in contact with another to feel that kind of love. Or, I can feel it while I daydream about being in a relationship, but then it comes with that sense of lack and envy. How much more stable will I be if I can meet my own need for feeling loved? If I nurture that into a strong constant force, how will it change my ability to pour into other people without a need to get something out of them? How will it change my habits and coping mechanisms? I can imagine it affecting my life in numerous ways.

It's extra challenging for me because of my heart surgery. I have long held tension in my chest and shoulders, perhaps in an effort to protect my seemingly fragile heart area. The physical and emotional are always related so it is no easy task to let that part of my body melt into warm openness. It's only through many hours of meditation that I have started to be able to feel sensation there again and consider the possibility of filling it with warmth.

Maybe the best thing about falling in love with other people is when it teaches us how to love ourselves. If we realize that the people we love most share a lot of our own qualities, and we know that we perceive them as fully adequate, maybe we can start to see that we deserve to feel fully adequate as well. The nice thing about this attitude is that we can fall in love with all kinds of people and enjoy that experience regardless of whether or not a relationship is feasible. It turns "unrequited love" into a meaningless phrase because the love for that other person is a reflection of the love you've found for yourself, and there's nothing to be sad about if they don't act a certain way. You can simply feel warm thinking about them and be happy about that feeling.