Clear Hearts Love

"We are hurt in relationship; we heal in relationship." - Duey Freeman

It is of no secret fact that relationships and their quality are the single greatest determinant of the happi

ness of our lives. When I speak of relationships, what most likely comes to mind for you is your wife, your children, your family of origin, or your friends. This is merely the surface of relationships. The next level of relationship that simply doesn't occur to many men is the relationship that they have with themselves. Deeper still, is the relationship that your thoughts, feelings, body, and perceptions have with themselves and their environment. I offer to you that this is the most important and consequential layer of relationship.

Why? If you place a pair of red glasses over your eyes, the world becomes colored red. There may exist in that world people such as your wife, your boss, or your father, however now they have a red hue that is unoriginal to their existence pasted on top of them. Effectively this means that your thoughts, feelings, and perceptions are being projected outside of you and adding something that is unoriginal. Why is this problem? Because relationship, be it with yourself, with others, with thoughts, feelings, or the moment, thrive when they are afforded clarity. Clarity means seeing things as they are. For individual to truly be loved, they must be seen. To be seen is to be known and to know that you are known is to be set free from self-ignorance, from which suffering spawns.

So, by being highly aware and not projecting yourself onto the world, you can be present enough to uplift it and love into freedom, healing, and joy. The reason that the deeper reality of your body and mind is the most important, is because it is from there that your perception flows. What you think, feel, and do is the foundation of the rest of your life experience. TLDR: Who you are is the most important thing. If you are consumed by thought and emotion and are ignorant of this, you are going to suffer your ass off. If you are suffering your ass off it is very difficult to be present for others and to help them into love and freedom. So first you must help yourself into love and freedom so that you can do the same for others. You have to see clearly to love well. Suffering is to live with eyes closed. Freedom is to love wide awake. The clearer you are, the better you love.

How do you do that? Well, first begin to notice the quality of your internal world. Dedicate yourself to deepening, brightening, and expanding your awareness of self. Learn to sit with yourself in stillness. Stop resisting, fighting, and controlling your experience. Release tension, surrender all. Some call this meditation but it's not really something that you do but rather is a cessation of doing. Keep working and sticking with some kind of contemplative practice and your inner world will gradually, and sometimes suddenly, transform. So, you start with your relationship with yourself. At the very deepest level you see the nature of your thoughts and feelings and how they interact with one another. You eventually see the impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and selflessness that is inherent to experience. With this seeing comes a gradual easing of tension and a releasing of that which is unnecessary. Freedom dawns. Happiness becomes more natural.

You are now much more fit to serve the moments that unfold in front of you and you are capable of loving others truly for you have become love itself. Do not let depression, anxiety, or pain become the rulers of your life. Take charge and strike forth with intent and loving joy to regain your inner authority and transform your life from the inside out. Become intimacy. Then live intimately with all of life. For that is what your soul craves more than anything. Love, love, love. But don't cling! For what comes, must also go.

Have fun and good luck, my brother.

Deeply, joyfully,

Dillan