Releasing Love
 
Love, 
The key that unlocks the bars of impossibility. 
- Fikayo Ositelu 
 
Greetings!

I believe in romance in all forms. In this month of love, I look at the texture of the heart's blessing to others. Several titles for this month's article came to mind: Leading with Love, Giving Love, Beaming Love ... However the core truth is that when it comes to love, we don't need to do anything. Even releasing. Our job is to attend to all of the armor and crud smothering our hearts, so that love simply flows. We ARE love. Love is what moves through us to others naturally. We got distracted from this truth, somewhere along the way.

I'm learning to release love in myriad forms, more vigorously these days. A year ago I added a somatic heart opening practice to my meditation. The practices have been inconsistent, mainly due to their fierce intensity. Becoming a vulnerable warrior is not for sissies. It is the most naked one can get. But vulnerability is the way to prosperity for all aspects of life, and for the blessings of relationships, career, spirit, finances, health and more, to flourish.

Last Friday, Colman Knight released love through community service at a Boston homeless shelter. We prepared ingredients for various meals; we served lunch on a blistering cold day to the guests; we listened to the evolutionary story of this shelter during a tour of the facilities. In short, we showed up, opened our hearts, and offered what was called for, with our presence. We attended to the ache in our chest and the crud surrounding our hearts, through the practice of service. While the pain varied for each of us, the collective healing was palpable. Touching humanity, we experienced a profound depth of prosperity.

Heart openings are sometimes surprising. With an idea that love is soft and flowery, I question when love shows up strong, swift and fierce. In Buddhism, the former way has been labeled as idiot compassion. It is filled with an ego that wants to be nice. When wisdom indicates that love needs to be swift and cut sharply, trust is the remedy for doubt. Space in the heart is the practice.

A current personal dilemma relates to the above and pro-bono work for friends. Am I practicing a form of idiot compassion by believing that continuous free services are helping them (but are actually harmful), or am I releasing love with a generous blessing? My inner wisdom tells me that is it the former. Yet, when I try to figure out how to lovingly act, confusion arises. This is the signal to tend to my heart rather than to listen to my head. I can see what arises in my direct experience to inform me of truth and to foster authentic love flow. The inspiration arising for the expression of authentic love flow may not look pretty to an eye habituated to idiot compassion.

In your life, consider the myriad forms of love (yes, including money!) What is the quality of the blessings you are offering? Do you allow your heart to release love, expanding prosperity? Or are you practicing a facsimile blessing, reflecting a distorted version of love? Tend to your heart. Allow your heart to point the way, releasing, clearing and flowing.

Releasing love,
Be Moved...
  Your task is not to seek for love,  
But merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself
That you have built against it.
- A Course in Miracles