Love and "Stuff"

                               

We really confuse this love thing. And that's ok, because it can be REALLY confusing when we mix Love with everything else that comes with a relationship. Here is the confusion: Love is actually so simple, so pure, so beautiful, so liberating... and we KNOW this. Yet relationships are so not! So we feel this confusing feeling of not wanting to give or receive love in the face of hurt and disappointment, even when we know the underlying love still remains. Can you see how these can be completely conflicting sentiments!

Here is the KEY to clarity when things start to shake up in your relationship. We MUST practice to distinguish Love from what I affectionately call "Stuff":

LOVE:

"How few understand what love really is, and how it arises in the human heart.  It is so frequently equated with good feelings toward others, with benevolence or nonviolence or service.  But these things in themselves are not love.  Love springs from awareness.  It is only inasmuch as you see someone as he or she really is here and how and not as they are in your memory or your desire or in your imagination or projection that you can truly love them, otherwise it is not the person that

you love but the idea that you have formed of this person, or this person as the object of your desire not as he or she is in themselves.

     "The first act of love is to see this person or this object, this reality as it truly is.  And this involves the enormous discipline of dropping your desires, your prejudices, your memories, your projections, your selective way of looking ...a discipline so great that most people would rather plunge headlong into good actions and service than submit to the burning fire of this asceticism.  When you set out to serve someone whom you have not taken the trouble to see, are you meeting that person's need or your own?"

--- Father Anthony de Mello

STUFF?

Stuff is the messy humanness that we ALL carry into relationships. It is our memory of our parents' relationship and what we decide we want to carry forward and want to leave behind (usually unconscious). It is our desires for our romantic and family experiences. It is our memory of how our partner was a year ago and our projection for how we want our partner to be for us today. It is our childhood relationship to our Mom. It is our childhood relationship to our Dad. "Stuff" is our Imagination! An infinite repertoire for how we want to live our lives. And NONE of this is Love. 

So if our partner ever decides to move away from OUR ideal...disaster! How could they?! Of course they could; because they also have all of their STUFF!

There is an important point to make here. I think more and more we are evolving to recognize the difference between Love and Stuff. But I find the rhetoric to be something that denies the Stuff. That shuns it as "lower" and "unspiritual". Yes, Stuff is 100% a lower vibration to Love. Love is the highest vibration there is! But we have the Stuff for a reason. We have the Stuff because we are human. We have the Stuff because it provides us with a road map for knowing how we want to live and how we DON'T want to live. There is NOTHING wrong with having desires! But the Stuff also puts on the Siren that there is work to do! The work of digging into our subconscious to see what our fears are and what is driving our behavior and thoughts so we can move through life more consciously. So we can better separate our Stuff from our partners' and give each other the space to explore our individual selves without all the baggage attached. 

Remember, without relationships we would have no one to reflect our Stuff back to us and we NEED to see our Stuff to grow and learn! So next time there is an disagreement or argument or feelings of jealousy or disappointment, first take a moment and recognize the Love that is there underlying it all. Then look in the direction of where the Stuff points. What perspective are you holding on to that is not actually serving the betterment of your life, their life, and the life of the relationship? But also, what are you holding on to that you want to keep holding on to to achieve the life your desire? 

The journey continues...