Love is most present Where mind is most silent Closed to new thoughts Happens near the transcendent When the world is rejected For what's found right here Hold steady in the moment Imprint each detail clear You won't realize it Until it's well over and gone These moments of mindlessness Will be what carry you along
P.s. I also published: 26 Cole Schafer Quotes from One Minute, Please? on Love in a World of Conditions, Screens, and Pain
We are at our best when we’re radiating the warmth of love. Not towards one person, per se, but towards all of life.
And that warmth, as mentioned yesterday, is generally a composition of patience, kindness, joy, forgiveness, and gratitude.
Which means, a great question to consider as you go about your day and handle tasks, requests, surprises, confrontations, challenges, manipulations, curveballs, frustrations, adversities, irritations, unmet expectations, etc…
How can I use this or how can I respond to that in a way where it feeds the fire of my love (aka my patience, kindness, joy, forgiveness, and gratitude)?
Because if you’re unable to find a way to have it do either of those things… then the byproduct will be a more blocked love. It’s a binary path. We’re either feeding the fire of our love or blocking it.
And unless we’re finding ways to constantly feed those inner flames… it will slowly cool, fade, and eventually suffocate. And that’s the last thing we need in this already cold, harsh world.
What we need are more people who have found ways to perform at their best and can serve as brilliant sources of warmth and light—not just for themselves… but for us all.
P.s. This became the introduction for: An Exercise In Forgiveness—To Help You Let Go Of Anger and Find Peace
Love is an unconditional warmth that radiates outwards from a person’s center towards all other beings. More specifically, a warmth that’s really just a majestic composition of patience, kindness, joy, forgiveness, and gratitude. Different people are made up of different compositions, but each unique composition has the same outward radiating result.
Love is not selective. Love brings warmth even to those who are cold, impatient, rude, upset, angry, and/or ungrateful. Which isn’t to say we accept, ignore, or make it our mission to change these behaviors. It’s merely to say, as the backyard fire pit warms anyone and everyone who climbs near… so, too, will love warm anyone and everyone who steps near.
What you see when people radiate warmth towards some, but act ice cold towards others is blocked love. When too many layers of cold, corrupt, malevolent, manipulative, hateful, “un-burnable” actions/circumstances gets piled on top of a person’s innate love… they’re only able to partially radiate warmth on sides where there are unblocked openings. And cold towards all is a sign of a completely smothered love.
What you see when two people devote their love specifically towards each other isn’t selective love per se. What you’re seeing are two fires who enjoy each other’s warmth so much that they decide to combine to create a bonfire. This magnifies the warmth that either individual could radiate alone and creates a combined effect that (unconditionally) warms at scale.
When a combining of fires has the opposite effect (and cools), you know it isn’t a love that’s meant to be. Love shouldn’t be something that only makes one or two of us warmer… love is something that should warm us ALL.
Saying to someone “love yourself” is about as helpful as saying to someone “become healthy.”
Like becoming healthy, self-love is a multi-faceted challenge that requires careful introspection, a profound determination or desire, and an extensive life-long commitment—it isn’t something that is just “fixed.”
Maybe, instead of telling people to arbitrarily love themselves, we can be an example for them or encourage them to do more of the things where the byproduct is self-love.
Things like exercise, healthy eating, meditating, reading, writing, therapy, joining supportive and uplifting communities, etc.
When I think back to the people who have inspired me the most in my life… I think of the ones who were modeling a way of life that I wanted to live… not merely talking about one.
So, before you go telling other people to love themselves… consider the idea that loving yourself fully might be the most impactful thing you might ever do for them anyhow.
Not to mention, of course, that the byproduct of this method is that you get to (re)focus your energy into loving yourself fully—which is the ultimate win in-and-of itself.
P.s. MoveMe Quotes got an update. I increased the font size/ readability, removed a bunch of unnecessary meta text, refreshed the look of the blog pages and articles, and more… enjoy :)
When we are born, we are radiating packages of energy. Overflowing from every pore the very essence of life into all that comes near. As we grow, however, we come into contact with energy that’s dull, faded, confused. And in more cases than not—it slowly takes an effect. We slowly start to refuse our bodily energy. We slowly fold closed our open minds. We slowly restrict our pores and suppress our infinitely-sourced energy.
…Until eventually, we embody an energy that’s dull, faded, and confused ourselves.
The easiest way to reverse this process is to spend more time with those who are still radiating packages of energy. The effect can be instantaneous—it’s really an incredibly thing to see. Serious folks who never so much as smile start quacking like a duck; cranky, self-conscious teenagers playing peek-a-boo and poke-the-belly with cartoon toys; the angriest, most short-tempered relatives hitting high-pitch notes you didn’t know they were even capable of hitting—all from simply seeing a newborn.
I see this as a sign of hope.
One that says, nothing is permanently lost; you’re not “too far gone;” you’re not “unable to change”—you’re just under some deep layers of crap energy and crap behavior. If only you’ll start digging yourself out and letting that inextinguishable life energy flow freely once again, maybe you’ll start radiating and positively affecting all whom you come into contact with how you once did—all those years ago when we didn’t know a single thing, yet knew a truth so profound that even the most close-minded, stubborn around you fell victim to your shine.
The number of competitors you have in this world is directly tied to the depth of your self-love. The more you love yourself… the fewer competitors you have.
Why? Because the more you love yourself, the less you have to prove. Challenge is welcome. But, the egotistical need to place yourself above others, dissipates. You’re already whole. You’re already worthy. You’re already great. That’s what self-love proves.
See… the real challenge isn’t to increase the number of people you’ve beaten… it’s to increase the depth of your self-love until external competition ceases to exist.
P.s. I have a collection of 280+ quotes and resources on self-love. You can browse here.
If you want to improve the love you have with another…
Help the other improve the love they have with themself.
Let them have alone time, explore their interests, try new things, create and express freely, learn new skills, go on retreats, do poignant inner work…
You stopping them from doing such tasks is precisely what’s stopping them from being able to love you deeper.
Why? Because each of us can only ever love to the level of our own self-love.
A person’s inability to love another deeper has nothing to do with the other’s worthiness of receiving deeper love.
P.s. I asked “What are you avoiding?” Because it isn’t obvious to me what I might be avoiding. Worth thinking carefully about. Here are other people’s thoughts.