Learning to Love
Lessons learnt from spending 3 weeks with 800 strangers from around the world at Mindvalley U.
Would you give up 3 weeks of your life to an experiment in accessing your deepest self love and extending that love to others?
Have you ever desired to be fully seen and heard in all your yuckiness and your True Glory?
Would you like to be hugged like 40 times a day by men, women, children?
Over-Smiling is another by product of this experiment
And Dancing to the break of dawn with strangers who want to be your friends from 40 over different countries in a foreign country?
Would you want to learn how to love? Fully? Unconditionally and have that gift given to you as well?
I was blessed to be part of that
And I want to bless you with 5 lessons that I received.
- We are One
“We are the world” is an old song which speaks powerfully of how we together are one humanity, we are one energy, one spirit and we express ourselves in different forms. The oldest student at Mindvalley U was 77 and the youngest was the baby of my friends. In each teenager, giggling and in each woman, crying; I opened myself to realizing its not an “us-them” or “me-you” dichotomy. I was them and they were me. The pain we feel differently, be in from a divorce or betrayal or illness, is the same pain. Pain is Pain. As I was surrounded by strangers and friends in a massive hug at a workshop after we shared our stories of fear and pain and confusion, I allowed myself to surrender to our collective breath and our collective heart beat. I was half scared and half elated — this was the unconditional love, the agape, the love only being fully in community can bring. It is sweet. It is loving and it is healing.
Know this today and everyday. Most people in the world mean us no harm. In their pain they express acts of pain and suffering. When you look at the world with compassion and feel their pain and be in our own, we come to the other side and feel that onenes. Gelong Thubten spoke to us about loving kindness and we sat with our pain and the pain of others. We realized how life cycles affect all of us and the pain we feel when others no matter far away in the world they are, we still feel the pain of an earthquake, fire, mudslide, political unrest, the pain of a child, suffering and a strong man, weeping.
2. How Deep is your Love and can it Deepen?
Shefali Tsabary spoke about conscious parenting and she explained how we have already failed as parents, again and again and in that is the true lesson. The humility to know that we do not know what we are doing and that we are learning together with our children. The dominance of authority that we have over our children too often is never questioned and we push old unquestioned ideas onto them. We have not deepened our love to be able to see that they too; are wise and they too; are our teachers.
Shefali spoke about how we as adults are also emotionally not adults at times. I recognised in myself a teenager, a rebellious one at that. I feel in that space sometimes when I take on the world. I sat with that during her reflections. She mentioned how we expected so much from speakers, leaders and then release all responsibility from ourselves for our part in blindly following. We didn’t see that in the leader, they too have their humanity and flaws.
Deepening the love for oneself is my greatest lesson time and time again. What I give out is what I receive. What I want to receive, I need to give to the world. I expect people to love me — have I questioned the quality of the love I give? Do I give expecting something in return? Do I give to only some select people? Do I expect only love from some and not the love that comes from daily interactions — like the love of a stranger, a service person who remembers our names each time we walk through the door to class, the music that is played by our DJs who share their gifts with us. Each act- an act of love and if I cannot receive those daily acts, I am not deepening the love I can fill myself with.
3. Saying I Love You
I said “I love you”. And I meant it. To little children, young men, my sisters in the tribe. I have said more “I love Yous” in these 3 weeks than probably all my life combined. And I meant it. I am not in love with them and I may never see some of them ever again. However the love I felt in the moment is real and I wanted to express it.
I spoke honestly about my feelings with many. I told them how I felt uncomfortable or that I was unsure. I didn’t hide what I felt. I wanted my authenticity to be my act of love for my self and this new friend. To start from a place of this is who I am rather than this is who I am pretending to be so that you will like me. I disregarded the need to be liked for real. And I received real love in return.
In each one, I loved deeply the essence of who they are and their journey. They and I were not the same, their mistakes not mine and their successes also not mine. I loved deeply for that moment and I felt so much endorphins and oxytocin and the high of love. Not all of them responded but I didn’t say it for them. I said it because we don’t say it enough. And I only said it when I meant it. I said it because I love you’s need to be expressed as much as possible — for the world to see how loving we really are.
4. Fully Expressing ourselves in playfulness, dancing, singing, creativity and joy
The Glory of God is (Marion) fully alive — St Ireneaus. When man/woman are full alive we express the fullness of our spirit for everyone to feel and enjoy. I was happy to be able to show my gifts not in competition. Just being the amazing human we all are. We saw parts we have never heard from in sometime as the open and accepting community encouraged it. I was seeing in their eyes the true reflection of my strengths and gifts. Unadulterated adoration of each other. Just as we were. Come as you are and play and be free and let others listen to your stories and find their own voice again. I lost my voice and now I sing from my soul. And I treasure that change of awareness and carry it with me to my home, my work and my grocery shop. We can see the sparkle in each other eyes again.
Sparkle away, little child-adult.
Sparkle away like the natural beauty that you are.
5. Forgiving is a Verb I use when I love myself more
I expect so much from myself that I have a critical voice running over and over in my head. It keeps me fearful at times. It makes me hide my light and my voice. I do not want to make waves. I want to stay in the sidelines. As soon as I know each day is a new day and we can try again. One thing about this 3 week experiment is I can hate someone one day and the next day, I can practice compassion. I can see nothing in common with the person and the next day I can only see what is in common. I can forgive myself again and again and I can love myself again and again. In the end there is no one in the world but me. I project what I see in my mind onto others and so they are unable to move away from that projection. Until I see again with eyes of love and compassion I am stuck in that mental relationship with them. When I forgive myself and have love and compassion with myself I can feel the melting away of the past and the ability to face a new future.
I needed to be in community for this. They held me up to higher standards of being in the world. They allowed me to feel my fears and feel safe. They are loving; so I can love and I am loving so they can love. That’s why it took all those 3 weeks for my eyes to see clearly again at Mindvalley U what I cannot see daily at times.
The U of Love is over.
I am still processing and implementing the changes in my life and would love to have you share this journey with me
I know that you are the U of Love too
I see you
I love you
You and I — We are one
