Love is expansion, fear is contraction
I commit to loving the wander & return
photo by Braden Burson
Love is expansion.
Fear is contraction.
Although I realize this sounds ridiculously simple, I believe it to be true.
I also believe it’s a guide for living, even though it might epitomize the phrase “easier said than done” more than any other phrase I can think of.
Although I’ve spent my whole life collecting lessons, skills, strategies, processes, mantras, techniques, practices, words of inspiration, insights, peak experiences, etc., all of these things are secondary.
At least this is how it occurs to me today.
The only thing that seems to really matter at this stage is the commitment to love.
Because no matter how much I learn, it will never be “enough.”
I will never “arrive.”
The problems of the world will never be “solved.”
No question will ever be definitively “answered.”
And fear will invite me to dance again and again and again.
It’s a dance I know well. I will surely step onto the dance floor again, unable to resist the temptation to show off my fancy footwork.
But perhaps at a certain moment, I will sense the contraction for what it is, and remember my commitment.
If I can quiet myself inside that space, and allow feeling to dictate - rather than thought - then I can bypass the shame pattern that tells me it’s a “good idea” to scold myself for making mistakes.
Instead, just like the meditator who realizes that monkey mind has taken hold and calmly reasserts the commitment to return to the flow of breath, I can pivot away from answers and welcome questions again.
Where is my attention focused right now?
Is that really what my attention is for?
What is happening here and now?
How is my posture impacting the people around me?
What is within my power to do and what is beyond my control?
If I am confused, what is the next question I need to ask?
Eventually, it comes back to the question of my commitment.
Am I committed to expansion or contraction?
Love or fear?
To be committed to love is to be willing to fall short of my commitment, to look forward to falling short of my commitment - to know that, as with the wander and return of meditation, every collapse into fear is another invitation to remember my commitment to love.
How do I know these things?
With my body, of course, the only way I can know anything.
I know it in my bones.
It’s the feeling that comes when I experience the love of all of the people to whom I’ve given my fear (my anger, my depression, my resentment, my selfishness, my bitterness).
After all the times I have shaped my body into postures of contraction and offered this energy to others so that they too might share my misery,
how does it make sense that they continue to love me?
In my mind, trained by culture in cold calculation, it makes no “sense” at all.
In my body, it is a sensation of warmth.
It disproves the theory that intellect is humanity’s greatest gift. It proves that love is the insatiable instinct to return to wholeness, no matter how far we wander.
It’s proof isn’t an argument, it’s a way of being.
It has been fascinating to watch, over the course of my life, how the contracted posture of fear has expanded in waves and spread across the globe.
Talk of extinction no longer sounds like science fiction.
Hatred increasingly parades around naked.
But it’s not as if no one has noticed what empire looks like undressed.
An expanding wave of contraction is an obvious contradiction.
But life is like that, isn’t it?
Waves always crash on the shore.
Hearts, lungs - even minds - expand and contract.
These movements give birth to each other.
I don’t find it hard to believe that today there is also a concentration of expansive energy, gathering shape to give birth to something new.
So what can I do?
I have learned a few modest and specific things that I can offer.
But most of all, I can remember my commitment.
I am committed to learning from my mistakes and making more of them, to making my life into a study of the movements of contraction and expansion, to returning to my body again and again every time my mind wanders.
My guess is that I am not the only one who feels both bewildered and committed.
Why else would we suffer so much if we didn’t love to love?
What if we already know everything we need to know?
What if our confusion is nothing more than the most beautiful expression of our continued desire to love, the momentum that will lead us to our next important question?
What if all that was left to do was to see that we are all already whole and sit together as mirrors, as resonators, as confirmation that we are not alone?
This is the outrageous and modest invitation of the Grounded Connection community.
A place to return to again and again,
to sit together, to share our fears,
to learn to listen and make space for difference,
to feel the resonance of our shared commitment to love.
Grounded Connection is expanding in July.
If you’d like to learn more about joining this community, get in touch.