How one form of love becomes another

When what we are is awake to itself, and a human self functions within this context, the way this human self functions in the world will often look like love. And it is as natural, effortless and independent of states and emotions as when the right hand removes a sliver from the left. 

When this love is filtered through beliefs, as it is for most of us, it becomes another form of love. It is a love for what we take as a separate I and its circle of us. It is a love of protection, defense, accumulation. It is a love that is expressed through any of our beliefs and emotional attachments, and any reactivity that comes from these beliefs and attachments. It is really a love for a story, a story taken as true. And it can look as anything but love. 

Again, it is good to notice…. It is all an expression of love.

Sometimes clearly so, when it can function unhindered by the limits of beliefs. Free from belief, our natural intelligence and love can make use of stories as tools and guides and allow our human self to function in the world from clarity and kindness. 

And sometimes less clearly so, when this natural intelligence and love is confined by belief, by stories taken as true, when it is filtered through a sense of I and Other, us and them, fear, reactivity. In this case, it can look quite ugly, even in the midst of its innocence. 

What is the function of noticing this? Why is it helpful?

For me, I find that recognizing this in my own life, finding specific examples, noticing it over and over in different areas of my life, helps me find more clarity around these dynamics. It helps me find a more sincere appreciation and welcome of what is, as it is. It helps me shift out of (identifying) with resistance to these dynamics, making it somehow wrong when what comes out does not look very much like love. And that gives some space around it. A sense of more choice. 

………………

Initial outline…

• who we are living within what we are = love (human self, big mind)
  • when filtered through stories taken as true (I-other), love for I/us, less for other (+caught up in likes/dislikes, like=love, dislike=not love)
    • love for a story, love for what is within circle of I/us (create boundary, and scoop love up on one side)
  • when more clear about stories, lived through this human life (love for all, as it is, as expression of god, independent of likes/dislikes at human level)