Lovers Needed

The world needs lovers.

Lovers  aren’t necessarily people in romantic relationships. They’re not necessarily young or old, men or women – or any other demographic category.

Lovers are people for whom love as a profound force and mode of perception – bountiful, particular-yet-universal, ever-new and ever-revealing – is the highest principle and the top priority.

If you’re a lover…

§  You want to put your love into the world of form in a way that’s both precise and transcendent.

§  You want to let go of the limits that the appearance of scarcity and competition sometimes put on your heart.

§  You catch glimpses of astounding mystery and beauty in the world and seek to amplify and share those visions.

§  Your imagination is more than just a tool for fantasy – it shows you layers of reality that our culture obscures.

§  You sometimes feel frustrated at the uphill battle of making your love manifest through the gravity of your own fear and unhelpful habits.

§  You have painful wounds that come from daily life in a society that values just about everything – money, prestige, drugs, violence, sensation – over love.

§  You receive constant messages from the mainstream culture that you’re nuts for valuing connection and heart and community above personal gain.

Well, I don’t think you’re nuts.  I think you’re the hope of this world, and I’m interested in supporting you in every way I can.  I made the INDECISION RESCUE KIT as a way of helping us lovers lighten up on ourselves.

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I’ve had a goodly amount of trouble articulating just who it is I’m trying to serve and reach with my work.  I’ve talked about geniuses and brilliant people – but most folks who I see as brilliant and geniuses have trouble identifying with those terms out of their modesty – and also, to speak of someone’s genius or brilliance doesn’t necessarily get to the core of what attracts me.  I don’t get particularly thrilled by people who have a lot of creativity but a lack of heart.

During a visit to beautiful Baltimore this spring I saw a quote from Vincent van Goh on the wall of the American Museum of Visionary Art that just about flipped my brains: “I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”

Immediately I was like – whoah.  That’s true. That’s some Capital “T” TRUTH right there.

I can get way excited by art – but art that doesn’t come from a place of love or aspiration-towards-love leaves me cold.

After a lot of early success, I withdrew from academia because the posturing and intellectualism turned me off. I experienced first-hand how much disdain there is out there for the notion of love – like it’s some ooey-gooey, sentimental, ridiculous thing that we’d all be better off without.

At the same time that I was hearing love insulted left and right, I noticed professors and grad students all around me literally destroying themselves with drugs and alcohol.  One particularly brilliant man did it to the point of suicide-by-overdose.  I think he could have used a lot of the very love he made it a point to disdain.

I want to create a culture where a focus on love and connection is seen as a deep strength rather than a pointless weakness.  Where love isn’t just celebrated as exclusionary attachment but as an all-embracing white-hot inspiration. I’m pretty sure such a culture is what my hero Queer Jesus called the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

If this resonates with you, I hope you’ll join my list so we can keep in touch.  I’ll send you the INDECISION RESCUE KIT as my first gesture of encouragement – and much more will ensue from there.

Visit our beautiful Site http://www.awesomelifelove.com/ 

 

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What Is Unconditional Love

Love without Limits

Unconditional love is the decision to never enact emotional violence against yourself or anyone else, ever.  It’s a decision that’s radical and deeply freeing.

You can become free of self-hatred and misery, free from patterns of suffering that keep you stuck. It doesn’t matter if your problem is sucky romantic relationships or a job that torments you or a giant creative block or a compulsion to use substances or engage in dangerous behaviors.  It just doesn’t matter what your problem is because all problems manifest from one thing: a lack of love.  If you become willing to apply simple spiritual principles in your life (love; forgiveness; hospitality; generosity; honesty; hope – and the greatest of these is love) without condition and without reservation, then your life can turn into a stunning glitter bomb of joy and possibility and magic.

I know that this is true because I went from being someone who shot heroin every day and wanted to die, someone whose primary concern in life was whether or not I could get enough drugs that day to numb the stunning pain of the problem of being me to being someone who wakes up every morning soaked in gratitude and thrilled to be myself – even when I’m broke, even when I’m single, even when I’ve failed at major projects that were dear to me.  This same self that I literally wanted to murder – I now cherish and delight in, without condition and without limit.

The Unconditional Decision

How did I get to this point? It happened because I decided to give myself huge joy and love and respect no matter what. What does that mean? It means that no matter what I do, no matter what happens – I’m going to feel great. “Carolyn – you mean, even if you kill somebody you’re not going to feel guilty, you’re not going to feel shame?”  And my answer to that is: yes, precisely. There’s nothing I could do which I would not utterly forgive myself for, and forgiving myself means letting myself feel happy and wonderful. It means refusing to ever reject or punish myself, for any reason.  And the thing is, when I’m willing to give myself unconditional love, unconditional kindness- which really just means I’m willing to never impose shame and regret on myself – when I have that willingness, I’m without violence in my heart.  I would never want to hurt someone or kill someone because I feel so damn happy and loving.

Sometimes people think I’m crazy when I mention the unconditionalness and unlimitedness of my love for myself.  And that’s okay – they can think I’m crazy and they can tell me all about the conditions under which they believe that shame and regret and guilt are appropriate.  Usually these conditions are situations of violence.  What the people who tell me this don’t understand is that regret and guilt and shame are themselves forms of violence: inner violence, emotional violence.  The use of them creates more violence.  Do you think that people who hurt and abuse other people are filled with self-acceptance and joy? No; they’re filled with shame and regret and bitterness and rage.  They’re inwardly filled with emotional violence and that violence manifests outwardly as harm to others and harm to themselves.

What I’ve learned over the years is any limit I’m willing to put on the love I give myself is a limit I’m willing to put on the love that I give you and the love that I give the universe.  And the smallest, most seemingly reasonable limit becomes a giant dam that plugs up the flow of delight and wonder in my life.  So I don’t mess around with making up limits on love any more.  I just give it all, all the time, without holding back, without trying to play it safe.

A Limit On Love is An Attempt to Control 

I realized that any time I’m seeking to limit love, what I’m doing is trying to control.  I’m trying to control myself to make myself fit into some “acceptable” mode.  I’m trying to control you; to control the whole world.  But it’s impossible.  Any time that I try to control something, I end up in pain.  The magic that I am, that you are, that the world is – is quite beyond control.  Have you noticed? I did – I saw that no matter how much energy I put into making myself acceptable I always fell short – I always found reason to regret something I’d done, something I’d said, something I’d failed to do.  And what I realized is that regret, shame and guilt – they’re all forms of violence against myself, they’re feelings but they’re actually the result of  a belief that’s a weapon.  What is that weapon?  It’s the belief that I’m not always already fundamentally good, that I’m not fundamentally perfect and whole and valuable and innocent.

By becoming willing to be happy and grateful in all situations – even in situations when I’ve failed or where someone or something has failed me — I can practice unconditional love, I can practice the truth that undoes the lie that myself or anyone else is less than wholly good, wholly innocent, wholly wonderful as God created them to be.

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