A year-end report on my practice of love

"People who are the hardest to love need it most"

— Mark Goulston

We tend to reason that villains, narcissistic, selfish, obnoxious people are acting their ways purposely and that they take pleasure from deliberately hurting others. The quote above shines the light on the reality that eludes our intellect: these people are, indeed, starving for love in their hearts. Their actions actually compound this hunger as they chase love further away. In order to cause pain to others, a person must be suffering inside--the opposite case is probably easier to grasp: people who are in love are naturally generous, caring, loving, and compassionate toward others. Their emotional state makes them unable to consciously cause others pain, instead, they want to share their love and joy with everyone. Furthermore, ...

Our experiences in the world are reflections of our inner life. When we love ourselves, we know what is like to love and to be loved. Only then we would be better at loving people around us. People who are unkind and causing pain, are also treating themselves unkindly and are suffering inside. A related quote from a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, says it in another way, "One way to achieve world peace is for everyone to achieve inner peace"

"People who have health have a thousand dreams, people who don't have only one"

— unknown

When we are in good health and at peace inside, we become more patient, more accepting, more generous, caring, forgiving, and loving to everyone close and far. The opposite happens when we are under stress, worn out, or in pain. Good health is a foundation of love. (See to my article: "Health, peace, joy, love".)

Health vs Fitness

Health is the state of equilibrium in which every part of the body is in good condition and working in harmony with each other. Fitness is a level of physical performance like running a marathon, doing 100 pushups, swimming 10km. Some people can have good health and limited fitness while others can have a high level of fitness and not good health: high-performance athletes who constantly push their limits subject their bodies to extended stress leading to frequent injuries. 

Survival of the fittest

Once in a while I come across talks and conversations that perpetuate a misunderstanding of Darwin's theory of evolution which says that nature favours the survival of the fittest. Please tell your friends and loved ones that by *fittest*, Darwin was not referring to the most powerful, the strongest, or mightiest, instead, he meant to say *the most adaptable*. Darwin theorized that evolution favors species exhibiting the best ability to adapt to changes in their natural environment.

A father said to his young son: "There are two wolves in every young boy and girl. One is a wolf of love and the other is a wolf of fear. One of these two wolves will grow up with you and will follow you for the rest of your life." The young boy pondered on this for a little while then asked: "How do I know which wolf will grow and follow me when I grow up?" His father smiled, patted the boy's head, and said: "It's the wolf you feed every day."

Spirituality says there exist only two emotions: love and fear. Love is the emotional state when we open our hearts to embrace an event in life. Fear is the opposite emotional state when we close our hearts to an event in our lives. Love brings us joy, peace, well-being, and creative energy. Fear brings us suffering, turmoil, illness, and destructive energy. Love is the same across all circumstances in life, and so is fear. Heaven is not a place up in the sky to aspire to reach in the afterlife, it is a state after the mind surrendered to love. Hell is the experience of a mind overtaken by fear.

As children, we were trained to follow the herd, obey authority, and fill our heart and mind with emotions and thoughts coming from external sources other than ourselves. We became accustomed to valuing and treating ourselves based on how others value and treat us.

Spirituality focuses on building a peaceful inner life unaffected by external circumstances. Spirituality trains everyone to love themselves regardless of how they are treated by others. Buddhism calls this: transcendence, the process of detachment mentally and emotionally from the noisy external commotions to reconnect with one's inner truth. It is a path toward inner peace and emotional and mental freedom from the confinement of external influences.

A similar process applies to our physical health: we can hunt down to eliminate every virus or illness, or we can choose to focus on improving our health with best practices in nutrition, physical exercises, rest, and strong social ties. When in good health, our immune system can naturally fend off all kinds of illnesses without our conscious awareness.

This is a practice of walking in others’ shoes to discover their experiences of life from their perspective the same way we want people to know how we experience life from our own perspectives. It is a way to love so that people feel loved. (See my article: “To love well”.)

Our hearts open up naturally when we are in the presence of beauty in nature, people, arts, or acts of courage. It is far more difficult to open our hearts to difficult unreasonable obnoxious crazy narcissistic selfish or insecure people. In these situations, I practice making an effort to slow down, to take a few steps back, and remind myself of the following thoughts:

"People who are the hardest to love, need it most"

"We do unto others what we do unto ourselves"

I can then see these difficult people in their suffering, and my heart would find empathy and compassion for them instead of anger and resentment. I would become more relaxed, more patient, more generous, more courteous, more forgiving.

It helps to keep our hearts open when we can see others either in their beauty or in their suffering.

I cast a "magic spell" on me

I practice casting a "magic spell" on me every day to keep my heart open, it is pretty simple although requires a great commitment to practice daily. The spell is cast by saying out loud three times: "I love you!" "I love you!" "I love you!" With regular practice of saying and hearing myself, the magic happens and my heart opens when I hear these magic words spoken.

Regrowing love every day

Most of the world's industrialized societies and cultures are founded on fears, our lives are filled with worries, anxieties, and fears from many different sources. Fear has become a universal baseline. Ironically, we are also afraid of love, or rather terrified to be accurate. We are afraid to love and are suspicious of other people’s love.

We all want to love deeply and wholeheartedly. We can commit to regrowing love in our lives with a deliberate practice of feeding the "wolf of Love" every day, and restrain ourselves from the temptation to feed the "wolf of Fear." Every time we make a choice, take a quiet moment to ask ourselves: "Am I making this choice out of love, or out of fear?" If it is made out of love--take the plunge. If it is made out of fear, stop and do nothing, or, if applicable, you might opt to do the opposite of what you were going to do out of fear. And if you avoid taking an action out of fear then you might choose to take the plunge, "Just do it!" Or to keep looking out for a better choice that you love.

Every time a person makes a choice out of fear the outcome is similar to throwing a boomerang into the distance, not knowing exactly when it will come back at you in the future. The more boomerangs one sets off in the air, the greater the damage awaiting them in the future.

In my enthusiastic practice of keeping my heart open to everyone and everything, there are times when I struggle with people's opinions or their actions, and feel stressed out, or get frustrated with myself for not being able to stay calm, and be at peace with myself instead of being carried away by fear, anger or resentment. It took me quite a few incidents and many reflections to become aware of my inner off-balance, I was operating at a depleted level of energy. I was forcing myself to keep up with external events happening around me at the moment while not being able to keep my heart open to others. It dawned on me that I am the person that need my love more than everyone else in those moments. Since then I have been practicing to monitor my energy level and to slow down, take a few steps back to recenter my thoughts, and recharge my energy when I feel off balance.

This is a patient journey toward freedom from suffering, guided by spiritual teaching. It roughly includes a series of practices founded on a complete focus inward to reconnect with one’s inner life:

• Meditation is a tool to calm the mind, focus inward to listen to our heart, and reconnect with our inner life. 

• Self-love is a practice of growing love in our hearts every day. 

• Detachment is a practice of disengaging emotionally to become undisturbed by the drama of external events happening around us. 

• Let it be is a practice of radical acceptance of people and events in our lives as they are, without judgment, expectations, or interventions.

And this journey will, in turn, bring peace and love upon the world around us.