“At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet”

-Plato

Love.

This one word carries the power of the gods. 

You read this word and deep emotions begin to bubble up like the impulse of magma heating from the core of a volcano.

This word may confuse us, affirm us, terrify us, ease us, along with a laundry list of other feelings and emotions.

Love is this fundamental craving, this essence in our being. It is truth. Yet, all it is, is 4 letters coming together. It’s simply symbology, but the real essence is what we make it mean. 

Love is relative. My love is not your love, yet we both have love and hold the capacity for something deeper. It’s this fascinating, incomprehensible, “can’t put my finger on it” kind of experience. What is love? What is it to love someone or something the “right” way? How does one express “true, unconditional love”, and not just soapy, movie type love? Is unconditional love even possible?

Love is a concept that has been played and toyed around with for generations and for generations to come. Why? Well, I think because it is universal. It’s like dance or music. It is a language that speaks no words. It is a knowing at its truest form. 

Truly sit back, close your eyes, and imagine a world powered through the heart chakra. A world of joy. A world of understanding. A world of pure creation. Imagine a world of community, connection and the kindness of strangers. A world of oneness. A world ruled by compassion and sincerity, of justness and truth. Where you are heard and understood. A world where you feel you belong and so does your neighbor, and their neighbor’s neighbor. Imagine a world where you are able to love absolutely everyone and everything in your life so deeply. 

If movies tell us anything, it is that love is a powerful force, and a beautiful one. It makes us do crazy, spontaneous acts. Love is the fuel to the rocket ship that will get us to the next chapter of our evolution. It seems like the obvious right answer, doesn’t it, yet…the world doesn’t fully embody this essence. 

It is a force that will undoubtedly serve all human life, but why aren’t we there? What is stopping us all from leading with love? Why do we express love so differently? Are we capable of all embodying love? Will we ever fully be able to come together in love? Is fear truly stronger than love?

These are questions I dawn on quite frequently. 

How do we love deeper? When talking about love, many times, thanks to Hollywood, we think of “True loves first kiss”, or RomComyDomy type love, but I’m talking about love in all aspects of life. In the totality of our relationships. Our relationship with food, animals, nature, school, jobs, sleep, failure, substance, books, family, friends, significant others, OURSELVES and so much more. Basically, anything you interact with, you have a relationship with. How can we lean into those relationships with love? 

The thing with love is that it takes many shapes and forms. My perception of love is different from yours. My whole understanding of love is primarily shaped from how I was loved by my parents and environment growing up. Some guardians love the only way they know how because that is the love they were given and understood, but it might not be the love you need now. But how do you even know what kind of love you need now? Damn, love is a mischievous shapeshifter, isn’t it?

How do we love deeper? What does that even look like? What does that feel like?

Well, it might look like gratitude. Fully sitting with stillness and presence and marveling over just how incredible this truly is. It might look something like this:

This tree….was planted tens or hundreds, or even thousands of years ago, and now it stands tall and strong giving me shade…feeding me oxygen. Out of every tree on this earth you chose to give ME shade?? Are you kidding me!? God, I love you so deeply.

This fresh, organic broccoli…was cultivated in a distant land, starting out as a little baby seed. It was watered and nurtured and made its way to me…to ME. Out of all people!! It chose to provide ME with these incredible phytonutrients and tastes so delicious. God, I love you so much.

My mother and father….out of the billions of people they could have met, met. They came together and decided to make babies. Freaking human babies!! Out of those three babies, and out of the unfathomable battle of sperm and egg coming together, I was chosen to come into this world. ME! If one of those thousands of decisions fell out of place, then I would not be here. God, I love them so much. 

Failure…..man, looking back at that moment where I asked over and over again, “Why me?!?” Damn I learned a lot about myself. I became stronger. It enriched my life story. I became aware and grateful for things I was ignorant of. I’ve learned so much more from you than my successes. God, I love you so much. Thank you for all the lessons. 

Mr. or Mrs. Stranger….I see you. I see your pain and struggle masked by this facade you put on to get through your day. I know you don’t mean the hateful words you say. I know deep down you want to be seen, heard, loved, and understood. It was no coincidence we crossed paths when we did. Thank you for being you and playing your divine role in this universe. I love you. 

Mother Earth….every time I really sit with you I feel SOOO much better! I feel a sense of ease wash through my whole body. Your ability to reduce inflammation in my body when I’m with you never stops blowing my mind. The sun on my face, and sand between my toes, and the sound of waves crashing on the shore soothes my soul. You are so alive! I can’t even fully comprehend you but damn, I love you so much. Thank you for doing all you do. In return, I will do my best to preserve and fight for you. I love you. 

Try this exercise out with things and people in your life. If we really magnify everything in our lives, it becomes absurdly magical. It sometimes doesn’t even make sense how lucky we are. I mean the likelihood of having what we have is mindblowing! But how often do we overlook everything and everyone we have?

When we live in this Groundhog Day routine of life, where we see the same things and people and experience the same emotions, it is way too easy to get complacent with it. To take them for granted. We get so sucked into the noise that we blind ourselves from the MAGIC!

It really is magic! This life doesn’t even make sense. Billions of people living in this carbon ball, floating in the infinitude of the universe. We haven’t even explored 75% of our oceans, and that is like a grain of sand compared to the entirety of the Universe. 

This human experience is magic. I mean we have 400 trillion to ONE odds of just being human. We’ve already beaten the odds, baby! And I know you know, that when we receive love, we feel pretty damn special. We feel like we really do belong. We feel the warmth trickle through our bloodstream once we get a taste of it and then giving…..ohhhh baby giving love is just as sweet if not sweeter than receiving it. 

So, let’s just fucking love each other man. I know people do bad shit, but are they a bad person? Or were they dealt a pretty shitty deck of cards? How about instead of judging, sit with them. Talk with them. Understand them. Then you might be able to sprinkle some love and compassion onto them, and they might be able to sprinkle some onto you which will also help them and you. Love is like the water, soil, and sunshine of our souls. It is the LIFE FORCE!

You might think you are unlovable, but how can that be true? If you’re reading this, I love you (And if you doubt this, send me a message). The universe loves you. I mean, you already beat the odds baby! Just being here, you are a miracle. God, I love you so much. I see the magic in you. I see your inner essence and it’s fucking beautiful. Even if you can’t express it, you know it’s there (don’t try to lie…I know you know it’s there), and my oh my it’s something special. 

LOVE, ladies and gentlemen, is cooler than cool. It’s hipper than hip and chiller than chill. Love is so damn rad!

Wooooo! I honestly didn’t know exactly where I was going to take this post, and I didn’t think I’d get so passionate while writing this, but the love is just pouring through me. 

It’s funny because I think my original intention in this blog was to provide value to my lovely audience, but it’s really helped me come to terms and understand these concepts better. It’s really healing for me. I think we always place an expectation on something we do or are going to do, but we may not be aware of the growth and learning that takes place along the way.

I was listening to a writer talk about how they were in a writing class and the professor said, if you are here to make money or get published, you might as well leave now. It always comes back to intention. If all I get out of these posts is expanding my views and understandings and seeing what flows out of me, then it’s worth every second. LOVE. God, I love the process.

Love ALL, my friend. But I haven’t doven deeper into the most important love of all…that love you have with yourself. That good good self lovin’. Why is this so important?

Well, we sleep on average 7 or 8 hours a night, right? When we drift off to sleep, it’s only us in there. I don’t care who’s snoozin’ next to you, it’s just us when those eyes shut and our mind drifts away for a third of our daily 24 hours.

So often we try to please others constantly, yet we neglect to please ourselves. We forget that this body is our ONLY vessel to live out this human experience. Treat it with love (look back at my older posts on ways we can treat ourselves with love:))

We may not fully understand the dangers of negative self talk because we may be around it so often that it becomes normalized. Well, this then becomes a habit. Even if we consciously don’t fully agree (aka sarcasm) with the shit talk we give ourselves, our subconscious does. With enough repetition, it becomes conditioned, and we now unconsciously believe this fictitious belief that only WE are doing to ourselves. Cut that out HOMIE! Love yourself!

You are so unique and gifted and talented and wise and beautiful. Stop comparing your “worst” to others “best’s”. How we think, act, and feel is directly correlated with our state of being. These are all things that we can control, yet, we give our shitty conditioned thoughts and beliefs the steering wheel, plunging us deeper and deeper into feelings of depression and unworthiness. 

Fun fact: You don’t have to, and you absolutely shouldn’t, put yourself down to be liked by others. That sounds silly when written down, but I’ve done it and I see it happen. Hype yourself up baby! Stop saying you’re sorry if you don’t need to or you were not in the wrong. Walk with your head held high. Give the best fucking hugs ever. Look people in their big beautiful eyes. Connect and love. And the best way to connect and love another is, yup you guessed it, connect and love with yourself.

Now, today, you may not be able to truly say you “love yourself”, due to years of self sabotage (If this is you I fucking love you), and I’m not going to tell you to tell yourself something if it fundamentally feels like a lie, but what I will say is “Accept yourself”. Accept yourself for where you are now and because you WANT to love yourself (I undoubtedly know that you do), work on yourself. Implement self care routines. Spend time on you for YOU. Surround yourself with dope people who make you feel good. Fight for the best version of yourself because I know that you know that he or she or they are in there! I know it. 

So Lovvveeeeeee baby! 

Make this world go round and round. Sprinkle it everywhere you go because lord knows we need more of it. 

Like attracts like. Love attracts love. 

Once you start leading with love all day ere day…watch and observe how beautiful this world reflects back at you.

I love you deeply.

-Andrew