I’ve been wondering about love my whole life. I am just coming to the recognition that I have focused on love story, not love. Love is not a story. Romance is a story.
Love is not adding something to your life or subtracting.
For Valentine’s Day, I want to ask you to spend a few moments being conscious of stillness, gazing and love.
Stillness
Stillness is mysterious, magical, cosmic. Stillness lives behind and embraces all activity.
Be still.
Imagine no attention, no attraction, no arousal, no anxiety, no anticipation.
Imagine no memory, no movement, no mastery.
Imagine no judgment, no intention, no desire.
Simply be still.
Your heart still beats.
Your eyes still see.
Your blood still flows
The grass still grows
The world still turns.
The sun still shines.
While you are still.
Because you are still, you can gaze.
Gazing
In almost all my in-person talks and workshops, I lead a gazing exercise. I ask people to pair up, sit facing each other and for one glorious minute to simply gaze at the other. It is mysterious, magical and cosmic. A gaze perceives all things. Gaze is the receptive awareness living behind all the senses. It does not reach, request or react. A gaze is not about pleasure or pain. A gaze perceives purely and simply.
Imagine gazing with each sense. What happens to smell or taste or touch if they gaze?
Gaze at all things, including yourself. Gaze at your emotions, your thoughts, your intentions.
First, comes stillness, then gazing.
If you still yourself then gaze, you will not experience a story, you will experience love.
Romance
I am not asking you to deny or forego your love stories or chocolate or flowers or sex. Or having an object on which to focus the intensity of your desire. Romance is romantic! I love it.
But go just for a few moments to the sacred. It will bring new height, depth and breadth to your love story.
