Monthly Archives: May 2007

Ah love songs. Gotta love ‘em–or hate ‘em. I was telling a friend not long ago that there used to be certain music by certain artists that I would listen to as a teenager or young adult, whenever I was feeling especially lonely or lovelorn. I called it my “wallow music”.

I’m much healthier than that these days (seriously!). And even though you would think that by now the world actually would have had enough of silly love songs, we still can’t seem to get our fill. Probably it’s because we can’t seem to get enough love—or in some cases, to find it at all, even though we are always looking.

What is it that makes love feel so elusive? I asked the Shower Team . . . why is it that it seems we are perpetually seeking and so seldom finding the love we long for?

With the possible exception of dollars, there is no topic that more consistently trips you up than the subject of love—both in the romantic and in the broader sense of the word. You are continually asking for some greater or fuller or more satisfying expression of it in your experience and more often than not, lamenting or complaining or longing for more of it than you feel that you’re receiving.

The good news about that is that it means you are recognizing on some level that you should have more of it than you are allowing. The You that understands love understands that you have an endless supply of it, a bottomless well, a limitless reservoir of love and adoration that is yours for the receiving but for whatever reason, you’re not letting yourself see or believe or live that, and so you are understandably upset about this gap between what You know is yours and what you are allowing you to have. That gap ticks you off and rightly so.

Where you get out of whack about it is in your determined efforts to find the love everywhere but where it really is. You look to lovers, friends, family, colleagues, pets . . . You place personal ads and you post online profiles. You go to the places where you think people who might love you are waiting . . . You send out invitations and measure your worthiness for love by the response rate. And the real kicker is that you convince yourself that your lovability is directly proportionate to the extent to which those around you are telling you how lovable you are. You are constantly taking polls and as often as not, losing the race.

The fact is that you are truly looking for love in all the wrong places. More precisely, you are looking for love from everyone but the one who can really give it to you. But as is so often the case, you resist the obvious or simple answer. If someone suggests to you that you must first understand and believe in and receive the love that You have for you, then you dismiss this notion as another piece of airy fairy, self-love fluff that can’t possibly crack the tough nut that real love surely is. You persist in writing this script where love is an elusive or even cruel master or mistress . . . You choose your baggage or your drama over the simple solution that is always available to you. And it is always available to you because You are always offering it to yourself.

The You that knows better, the You that truly sees you and knows you, the You who can do nothing but adore you and support you and respect and appreciate you is always offering truly, deeply, sweetly unconditional love to you that is yours anytime anywhere anyhow you let it in . . . That You has loved you for longer than there’s been a physical you to love . . . that You will love you longer than this physical you will be around to receive it . . . that You loved you through every cut or scrape or bruise or injury or insult or deeply felt wound or scar or trauma . . . through every smile or giggle or song or dance or shout or squeal of joy . . . through every letdown and through every triumph. That You knows and cares about every dream and desire, every hope and fear, every wish or doubt . . . and that You loves you without qualification and without restriction and without limit and without your needing to do or say or be anything other than who You are. That You even loves the you who is insisting that you need something other than or more than the love that You is always offering.

So you can scoff at the notion of needing to love yourself. You can write it off as so much drivel and go on with your quest for finding the love you seek in some as yet undiscovered pair of eyes or hands. But we promise you, that the love you seek will never flow fully to you until you understand and on some level can allow yourself to feel how deeply and poignantly and powerfully what you really want is to feel You loving you—the way You already do, the way You always have, and the way You always will.

Well that’s an interesting twist on an old standard. “You wanna be loved by You, just You . . . and nobody else but You . . .” Okay, maybe not nobody else. Still this revised love song sounds like it might be one worth humming. It sure beats wallowing, and I figure less wallowing has got to be a step in the direction of being more genuinely, lovingly and lovably, complete.

Channels never get depressed, right? Oracles never wonder or worry or wish things felt better than they do. Believe that and I’ve got a rainbow bridge to sell you . . .

Discouragement seems to be part of the human journey. As a poet on the mystic’s path I used to think that melancholia was just grist for the word mill. Whoever heard of a perky poet? Not that I really ever needed to be concerned about that.

But if we can’t or perhaps don’t even want to fully escape sorrow or grief or discouragement or wistfulness or longing, what is our best hope for managing those feelings instead of being at the mercy of them?

I asked the Shower Team: “What about the bluer shades of emotion? How can joy lead us when we are sitting in the middle of grief or despair –or even when we are reaching for comfort for those swimming in sorrow?”

The river that is your joy or zest or passion or peace of mind never stops flowing. It does not depend upon anyone or anything and its flow is eternally uninterrupted. There is no dam you can build that is big or wide or strong enough to hold it back for very long. You or anyone else can sit beside that river, refusing to dip so much as a toe in the water. You can sit on the bank of that river with your head in your hands, refusing to see it or with your hands over your ears refusing to hear it . . . but the river still flows.

There is never a time or a circumstance or a condition where you do not have access to this knowledge. It is always within your capability to turn and see the river flowing, to hear that rush of the current of joy moving, and to decide to place yourself in it and let it carry you or to stand where you are, refusing to budge . . . but even then, eventually the river will overtake you. It will move outside its banks and sweep you downstream no matter how much you resist or run from it.

When you or someone you love sits there, refusing to see or experience that river flowing, remember that you know better. Remember that the river is there. Remember that no matter how insistent you or your loved one may be about not getting into the water and moving with it, the knowledge of the river is still yours. Also important to remember is that the river never refuses or reprimands you. There never is and never will be a time when you decide to return to that flow when the river will dry up on you and say, “Too bad—you waited too long and now it’s too late.” Or “You should have jumped in days or weeks or months ago and now you’ll just have to sit there and suffer until we say it’s okay to get back in.” You may blame or punish yourself—and often do—for your own reluctance or refusal to rejoin the flow but the flow never judges you or resists you or does anything but welcome you back when you are ready.

If you are reaching to comfort another or for comfort for yourself, let your knowledge of the river be what you are offering even if it is not spoken. Let yourself know—even if you or someone you are comforting cannot feel it in that moment that Well Being flows to and through you and/or them. Let yourself know that in any moment, even as you weep, even as you rage, even as you give your attention exclusively to some loss that you have experienced or some deeply held desire that you have not experienced yet, that the river still flows, still beckons, still offers a sweet, lovely, gentle ride to joy. You can jump in any time—as tentatively or as eagerly, as gradually or as swiftly, as smoothly or as awkwardly, as primly or as wildly as you choose.

I may still be standing back from the rope swinging out over the lake or hesitating at the base of the diving board . . . but I can hear the water moving . . . Even if I need to sit here on the rocks a little longer, letting myself feel the harder edges and the colder surface . . . somehow knowing the river waits . . . hearing it out there . . . takes some of the edge off whatever it is I’m focusing on right here and now. And it lets me breathe a little easier, a little calmer . . . and it leaves me feeling—if only just a little—more encouraged, more optimistic, and more complete.