The opposite of Love

Tenderfoot Yogi Podcast and Audio Blog: Perspectives and Insights for Ease in Your Awakening

It is completely possible to wake up each morning, breath in and out all day and participate in the world without being alive. It is possible to simply exist. But this is not you, not if you’re reading this now. You want more than to simply exist. The funny thing is that we don’t actually know when we are simply existing. We think that we are alive until such time as we realize that we are not. Until we are. And then we start on the path of more. Here is what is what I’m learning…

Listen to the Podcast version of this post below

A shocking experience

A few decades ago I remember watching the late 1970s documentary television program called ‘Scared Straight’. On the show they had some troubled teenagers who were on the path to prison unless they made some changes. The teens were brought to a real prison to get shouted at by some hardened criminals, until they decided that maybe they had some different choices that they could make. Teenagers are notorious for believing they know everything. But on the program most of the kids decided, in the end, that they really did not know much at all, and maybe there is something other than prison worth trying for. Of course, it took a shocking experience to wake them up.

A bit more subtle

On the path of spiritual awakening there tend to be few, if any, shocking experiences. There is no ‘scared straight’ program for adults who are going through our days unaware of how much more there is out there for us. It’s a bit more subtle. If we are raised in a forest where we are always surrounded by trees, it is easy to assume that this is what the world looks like. We assume our path is to make the best possible life for ourselves amongst the trees. This forest is a tricky place, and it occurs to me that there are three different ways to exist in it.

Existence #1: Blissful sleep

It’s possible to live amongst the trees for a lifetime and feel quite content, unaware of that which exists beyond the forest. Yes. It is possible to feel content in the slumber. But I think that for most people, the depth of this type of contentment does not run nearly deep enough. In one of the very first Tenderfoot Yogi posts titled ‘Allowing this new version of you‘ I mentioned that our souls are not meant to remain stagnant. This is why I think that there are few souls that remain truly content with a life spent confined to this metaphorical forest.

A simple life

If we are not meant to be content just living in the forest, does this mean that we cannot be content with a simple life? Quite the contrary. It is the simple things in life, the little things for which we feel gratitude that helps to fill our hearts. But living a simple life is not the same thing as living a small life. A life that feels simple is a beautiful life. A life that feels small is less beautiful because at the core of our beings we are not small. We are expansive. Thankfully, there are other ways to exist.

Existence #2: Unblissful

Another way to exist is to live in the forest, work in the forest, sleep, eat, drink, and play in the forest while at the same time feeling a sense of confinement to the forest. Somewhere, somehow, we know that there is something more out there for us. Maybe one day we got lost on our way home and travelled to the edge of the trees and saw a light. A glimpse is all that it takes to confirm our awareness of something more. From this place life becomes a series of moment by moment choices of whether to expand or stay put. Because the choices toward expansion are away from the familiar trees, they are initially hard to make. Often times we don’t make them and decide to stay put.

The Lumineers

A year or two ago I was driving on a single lane road, route 22A in Vermont north toward Burlington. There were few people and houses but many cows and mountains. This is most roads in Vermont. I can actually remember the specific curve in the road when I had the thought that the opposite of love is not hate, it’s to feel nothing at all. I immediately made a voice note, excited to write a post based on this original thought. A few weeks later I was listening to the radio and heard the fellow from the Colorado-based folk bank the Lumineers sing “…it’s better to feel pain, than nothing at all.” I had heard this song before. So apparently my thought was not original, but it’s a true statement nonetheless.

The opposite of Love

When we are in this second existence in the forest, and are aware that there is something more for us, it is easy to become confused. We become confused because we believe that the something more is to be found ‘out there’ somewhere. It’s something that we are to become. It’s a job that we are meant to have or a person that we are supposed to be. It’s a relationship that we are to have or a place where we are supposed to be. It’s a thrilling experience. It’s approval from somewhere. It’s an achievement of some kind. We become confused because none of these things quite match up with the glimpse of light that we sensed, or saw there at the edge of the forest. We don’t yet realize that the exploration that we are to begin is within us. We can’t yet see it. We may become frustrated. We may become disappointed. There may be an ache within us that we can’t quite soften. A thirst that we can’t quite quench. We can allow ourselves hurt by this and sometimes the only thing that we know to do is to turn ourselves off. We are afraid to feel because it reminds us of the ache and the thirst. So, we request that our soul sit tight for a while – to leave us be, so that we can just go about our days. And this request to sit still, to not feel the feelings that ultimately lead us to expansion, is the opposite of love.

Existence #3: True Love

Hopefully we don’t go too long turned off to all that is possible within us. Hopefully we don’t need an episode of ‘Scared Straight’ to see our infinite potential. Because whatever it is in this third place of existence is worth it. The fellow from the Lumineers was right. It’s better to feel pain than nothing at all. The operative word is feel. When we feel pain, longing, loss, joy, happiness, gratitude, and grief, we know that we are alive. In a recent post ‘the purpose of life’ we went through a spiritual poem that listed the pathways in life that let us know that we’re alive – pathways like loneliness to love, weakness to strength and pain to compassion. Experiencing and feeling these essential places of human existence allows our souls to expand. This is part of how we access true love. But there is more.

The love within

It has been many times that I have mentioned the exploration of the love that exists within us. What does this mean? There are gurus, saints and sages who speak to this question of divine origin – all more qualified than me to do so. But it is what we are all seeking. We can practice meditation to gain the benefits of improved memory and a quieter mind. We can practice yoga to gain the benefits of a more flexible body and improved health. These are wonderful benefits, but really, they are only the most tangible ones. They are not what keeps us coming back.

Outside the forest

We continue to allow ourselves to experience our lives, and we keep coming back to our spiritual practices because in time, we begin to see more of the glimpse we had earlier. We learn that the light at the edge of the forest was real. As it comes into view we see that our forest which we believed was our world, was actually sitting on the top of a mountain. And the light we saw was a reflection off the snow from the top of it. We see that our mountain is just one within a vast mountain range at the edge of the endless ocean. The stars we saw at night from within the forest were but a sampling of all the stars in the sky. We were right to believe that there was something beyond the trees. It was within us and around us, just outside of the forest all the time. We keep coming back to our inner exploration because there is adventure here that satisfies something that we only recently became aware needed satisfying. Then one day a perceptive person tells us that there is a twinkle in our eyes, and he is right. And all the while this light, this love, this twinkle, makes us better at being human. We can still go to the forest. But it’s best to travel there in a hot air balloon. The tree tops look nice from a distance.

For what it’s worth, and for the knowing that all is well.

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