Thoughts on Love, Addiction & Be-ing the Change

I fall in love easy.

Sometimes all it takes is a certain look, or lilt of the voice, and then that's it I'm all rosy-chested and sparkling.

I'm addicted to it--but (I feel like I've been quoting Buddha a lot lately) addiction is the human condition so this is me non-demonizing. We're hooked on feeling good or feeling bad, in general we're hooked on feelings and it is that reliance, and the anxiety created by wishing those sensate states would remain, that is the root of suffering. We are attached, essentially, to our self. But this isn't about suffering or Eastern theology other than perhaps experimenting with personal and varying applications of such... Really for me today this is about love, and people and humanity. And doing, according to my own spirit, the right thing.

What I am getting at is that I am in love with almost everyone that I know.

Guy, girl, old, young. Doesn't matter. In general, I think people are amazing and really the only thing that I've found that can instantly, and I guess permanently, turn me off is ingenuity. Any really abrasive signs that you dont think for yourself. But even that quality or immediate projection I've learned to try to be gentle around though, I've begun to learn to practice love-ing anyway. If I am around you and you are at ease in yourself, then pow. Watch out. Now we're in love!

I also am baptized again and again in synchronicity and so look out for it, especially in the subtle ways. I heard this guy tell a story--he was making fun of himself because as he related it he went to the beach to be alone and find silence and maybe the grandness, too, and it turns out there was this crying ass kid going nuts just a couple hundred yards from him. So the guy starts totally bugging out because damnit that kid stole his peace, and then he thought maybe that kid needs help? And he turns and inspects the scene more closely and what he finds is this mom of three, struggling like with a capital s, and this little kid's ball in the waves. So the guy goes and gets this ball for the little one, and the little one's like thanks and stops crying and through his little snifflysniffles beams. And the guy he realizes, holy shit. There's always a million little ways to better the world. He thinks, it all comes down to paying attention.

He wonders, deeply. Am I paying attention?

Well isn't that just it, in any given moment, am I paying attention? Where can I give or practice love? Practice, as in the principle, open-heartedness? Am I paying attention?

So stay with me here. Am I paying attention in my own life? In the past few days again and again the same message has come to me in different forms, and it has to do with staying away from negative people. Now I am not too sure how I feel about this. At first, I was like o yea, yes yes that is it. But really, is it?

If we are trying, really trying to be the change we wish to see than do we purposefully stay away from negative people? In that I am someone who falls in love with everyone I know, it means that I have had to learn good inner boundaries. In other words, making sure I am not seeking from you something I need to fulfill in an inner way myself, and/or giving too much of myself in a way that depletes me and disempowers you from your own personal stance of filling your self up from within. So the question is, in the presence of someone negative isn't it our duty to really let loving actions and thoughts shine through? Isn't it than up to us to double down and really stand true to who we are and could be? True, at times there have been some people who are so stuck on there own downer trip and going further and ever down more and more that I have had to limit my time around them. There are others still that threaten my inner-security and how I feel about me, and too I've had to honor that. So I know the necessity of self-protection, but all the same. I'm wondering....

Ok so I'm gonna say it. What would Jesus do? Jesus, who hugged the lepers and broke bread with the whores. Now that of course begs recognition of a primary difference: those folks were socially stigmatized NOT negative; but truly, what is the inherent lesson, the principal taught in that?

For me I know the answer that resonates to my most current truth. When I am true to myself, to being who I can be when I am out in the world and to as much as possible caring for and loving the inside broken, or twisted or funny and also glorious and unique and beautiful parts of me, then I can better do the same with whomever I come in contact with. And more, my path seems to naturally connect me to those who most easily resonate in a true way with me when I am flowing according to my own truths and rhythms, too. In other words, when I am good to me and practicing love, all else sort of takes care of itself. Look, back to last week--it is a fucked up unfair world. BUT if I am alive and loving than inherently I say yes to all of it, right? And do the best I can to love anyway even if it hurts.

Hurt passes. I stay in love. Maybe the message isn't to stay away from negative folks. Maybe the way I'm going to practice it is to work to be around the positive ones.