Love Is the Way

Happy Valentine’s Day, beloved community! ✨❤️✨

Today is the perfect day to share with you news of a change in this community’s identity.

The change began with a concerning feeling. Was the name Cosmic Love Activist too far out there, too woo-woo, not as welcoming and inclusive as it could be?

Holding this question in my heart, I was blessed with a dream that provided a clear answer. I sat with Byron Katie (my teacher whose practice of self-inquiry called The Work profoundly changed my life). She gazed deeply into my eyes, radiating love like the sun. Then she took me in her arms and embraced me.

What happened next, I’m not exactly sure. I can’t tell if it was part of the dream or if I’d woken up. But what was absolutely clear were the following four words…

As I lay in my bed, awake in the dark, I felt these four word orient everything for me, like a giant magnet pulling flecks of iron.

Love is the way. This is the journey, the path, the means, the end.

Love is the way. This is my compass heading, my true North Star.

Love is the way. This is the fundamental guidance for every act, every day of my precious fleeting life.

Love is the way. This is how we reach out of our comfort zones, build bridges, and create connections that help to heal the deeply-divided, suffering parts of our world.

Love is the way to create the heart-centered, fear-overcoming, love-awakening revolution that this world desperately needs.

As these spread through my heart and mind, I witnessed Cosmic Love Activist shedding its identity and dissolving into Love Is the Way.

The identity, the message, and the core mantra had at last become one:

Love Is the Way.

And in my experience, this is a supremely potent identity-message-mantra!

Here’s a personal example. My wife, Stephanie, and I had a conflict. I felt hurt, defensive, and reactive. My ego’s defense mechanism did its reactive thing: withdraw. I found myself feeling sullen and alone in my office. And then the words came to me: Love Is the Way.

These words felt like the ultimate “gotcha” for my ego. I couldn’t say to myself, “Yeah, love is the way, but Stephanie should (blah blah blah).”

The awareness that love is the way left me with nothing but… love. And in this case, the way to love was humility. Reversing the reaction to withdraw. Leaning in, heart-first.

Simple though this may sound, we all know that there’s nothing easy about this. It feels like surrendering, which, when triggered, feels like the hardest, most impossible thing to do in the world. Meeting and overcoming the obstacle that seems to block the way of love is hard, agonizing work.

But it’s also the most essential work I believe we can do on this planet. Starting with ourselves. Extending to our innermost circle of loved ones. Expanding out to our communities (including people who aren’t included in our tribal affiliations). Expanding out to our nation and to the world as a whole.

This love is not as a warm & fuzzy, feel-good emotion. It’s a revolutionary act that bridges all divisions and overcomes all resistance to our fundamental, inextricable unity.

This love isn’t something that available for only small privileged group of people. It’s our cosmic birthright—one that we all share, and which unites us beyond every superficial difference (such as race, culture, religion, ideology, and belief system).

This love is not a force that yields a predictable outcome. It engages the primordial life-force energy within and between us that transforms and sustains the world.

Each and every day for the rest of my life, I devote myself to saying and practicing the truth that love is the way. And I feel deeply and profoundly honored to be taking this journey with you, beloved community members.

And so, with all my heart, I thank you and celebrate you for walking this way of love, together.

Love,

Shalom

PS – This change comes with its own theme song, which I’m happy to offer to you as a sweet, love-filled Valentine’s Day treat!

Love Is The Way (Pippi Ciez Retake) on Spotify.

If you’re not on Spotify, here’s a link to it on Apple Music. And on YouTube.

Enjoy!