What Comes Next: Love Relentlessly

WHAT COMES NEXT 

“Love relentlessly.” -Diana Butler Bass

Love relentlessly, she said,
and I want to slip these two words
into every cell in my body, not the sound
of the words, but the truth of them,
the vital, essential need for them,
until relentless love becomes
a cytoplasmic imperative,
the basic building block for every action.
Because anger makes a body clench.
Because fear invokes cowering, shrinking, shock.
I know the impulse to run, to turn fist, to hurt back.
I know, too, the warmth of cell-deep love—
how it spreads through the body like ocean wave,
how it doesn’t erase anger and fear,
rather seeds itself somehow inside it,
so even as I contract love bids me to open
wide as a leaf that unfurls in spring
until fear is not all I feel.
Love relentlessly.
Even saying the words aloud invites
both softness and ferocity into the chest,
makes the heart throb with simultaneous
urgency and willingness. A radical pulsing
of love, pounding love, thumping love,
a rebellion of generous love,
tenacious love, a love so foundational
every step of what’s next begins
and continues as an uprising,
upwelling, ongoing, infusion
of love, tide of love, honest love.

~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Agenda today:

1. Read "Mindfulness-Based Emotional Balance Workbook"

2. Review Essential Intentions

3. Love meditation

1. Read "Mindfulness-Based Emotional Balance Workbook":

I'm reading again from the Mindfulness-Based Emotional Balance Workbook, by Margaret Cullen and Gonzalo Brito Pons (2015). I got it after realizing that mindfulness might be the key to gaining the equanimity I crave. This is supposedly an "8-week program for Improved Emotional Regulation and Resilience". I'm going to take it much slower than 8-weeks.

I've been reading Chapter 3, Clarifying Values and Intentions. The final bit in this chapter, before we start the actual "Program", is to set intentions, something I love to do!

"Intentions are what drive thoughts, words, and actions. ... When unconscious, intentions tend to be a function of habit and conditioning rather than the core values that we have chosen. ... Clarifying your intentions and aligning them with your core values is an important strategy for cultivating emotional balance because it reduces emotional reactivity and short-circuits the downward emotional spiral that can lead to feelings of being overwhelmed. And remembering and nourishing your personal values enhances psychological well-being and fosters resilience."

2. Review Essential Intentions:

Values by themselves lack commitment. I might value honesty, but never define what that means to me, or fully commit to leading an honest life. Values such as honesty are complex, and mean subtly different things to different people.

My list of core values and principles includes big concepts like love and simplicity. Over the years, I've worked to define what exactly these values mean to me, and what they lead me to do and to be. This week I plan to review and recommit to those values, and write some new intentions. I ask-

How do I define each of my values?

Why do I value them? Why is it so important to me?

What right action or good deeds do I intend each day?

How do I intend to live, to support and demonstrate my values?

When I turn my values into intentions, they become a pledge for action in the moment - they remind me of my deepest, most essential, most passionate reasons for leading a valuable life. It's vital for me to define my values and principles in a way that touches me at my core, and hone each one down to a phrase that will be useful, day in and day out.

I'm going to work at this a little each day, starting with love:

I intend to live each day with tenacious love, practicing habits of listening, generosity, patience, care, and kindness with my community, my family, and the earth, because life is lived in relationship and interdependence, and love habits are how I become Godly. Radical, relentless LOVE is the only thing that will save us from ourselves.

 

3. Love meditation:

Every month after the full moon, in the quiet-energy yin time of the waning moon, I practice a love meditation that progresses from receptivity, to gratitude, to generosity:

Day 3: Practice a love meditation, and then journal about generosity with time and attention - start with ideas for being generous with myself, then my family, my neighborhood, community, and the earth. I might decide to give money or a gift, or simple acts of helping and sharing my time.

From my journal: Today I commit to giving myself endless forgiveness, when I forget to follow the habits of love. When I forget, I will take a deep breath and offer a generous and heart-felt apology to anyone I've hurt. I also commit to finding new ways to be generous with my gifts: my writing, my teaching, and crafts.