Love is Our Natural State
Our heart’s natural state is open and loving, so that is what we experience when it is clear of blockages. How do we remove the obstacles? Love everything you do and everyone you see. Choose to focus your awareness on the love instead of your lower self. Love is a natural force in the universe feeding us from the inside. Michael Singer, Living Untethered
This is a powerful inspiration to clear out our samskaras (imprints of suppressed feelings and experiences) and to live more skillfully so we don’t add more debris. We work to remove obstacles like resentment, so we can realize what is always already here. We cultivate kindness and compassion for ourselves and others to open our heart. We learn to know and accept ourselves. We see through core deficiency beliefs and shame. We become reliably on our own side.
Samskaras are stored in the heart, and they release energy when something lands on them. These unresolved blockages sensitize us to certain stimuli, like a tone of voice, a look, smell, or other things associated with what we suppressed. When we ignore or suppress our feelings, they don’t dissipate. Storing samskaras, like resentment at someone, will eventually diminish, and possibly destroy, the relationship we have with the person. Working with these helps us to be free.
If we want to experience the flow of love with another person, we need learn to handle these situations better. We need to stopping adding more resentment and begin to remove what is blocking the flow.
Our heart closes because of stored patterns that block energy. Loving someone allows the energy to temporarily flow around the samskaras, but what we suppressed is still there. This “in love” feeling and rerouting around the blockages doesn’t last. If they leave or we think they might, we feel the pain and fear of the original samskaras. We are emotionally flashed back to feeling powerless, alone, and afraid. Our primitive survival strategies resurface. We get flooded with anger and lash out. We go into freeze or flight. We dig a deeper hole through unskillful responses.
We practice yoga, meditation and nervous system regulation not to get better at the practice, but to get better at life. We practice letting go of ruminating and catastrophic thinking: What I should have said. What I’ll say/do next time. We practice working with and reducing obstacles so we can return to stillness. Witnessing thought, we continue to redirect our attention away from movement to stillness.
When we’re in love and the energy is flowing, we experience the flow of pure love that we would be experiencing if the original blockage was not there. When the blockages restricting the energy are gone, we feel love all the time. Love becomes the core of our being, independent of others. We are whole and complete within.
When we are blocked in the lower part of our heart, we experience emotions like jealousy, insecurity, yearning, and anger.
When the flow of energy is open in the middle of the spiritual heart, it flows out horizontally and we experience the flow as human love.
When our samskaras are thin enough, the flow of shakti or chi is strong enough to pierce the middle section of the heart chakra, allowing energy to pour into the higher part of the heart, and generate a permanent experience of pure love, strength and overall well-being.
This wordless experience of the flow of love is what we are exploring together this week.