Finding Love in Fear

It has felt challenging to have my attention on social media and the news these days.

In our current political climate and media landscape, so much is being brought to my attention via stories rooted in fear, anger, hate, division, and judgment, creating illusory disconnects between me and the vilified others.

In the onslaught, my attention gets coaxed away from my indestructible heart, and moves up to my head, where the intellect is easily swayed by the insecurities of its destructible ego.

Oddly though, it is this same fear addled climate and landscape that has increasingly become the primary catalyst in my growing practise to keep falling back into my heart… to keep finding the love within me whenever I’m being closed in by fear.

It occurs to me that if the current level of fear wasn’t so prevalent and so divisive, I wouldn’t be as frequently prompted into this practice as much as I have been.

Over the last few years, I’ve noticed that my mind and body have become increasingly sensitive to the aching separateness of fear, anger, hate, division, and judgment that can arise within me, and I’m finding the internal pain of it just too great to bare. It hurts too much to hate.

And so the pain now finds its home, nestled in the growing practice of unconditional loving… the awareness and act of feeling awe for, or seeing the beauty in, each human being that comes into my awareness.

This practice doesn’t have anything to do with “who” anyone appears to be on the outside… including all those with actions that are continually being highlighted in all the fear-fomenting, us-and-them stories.

Instead, this practice simply asks my intellect to rest in the quiet corner of my mind, so that I can be held in the space of my embracing heart. From there, I can find and feel into the common humanity and the incomprehensible interconnectedness between every single one of them and you and me.

These days, I’m certainly being gifted with an abundance of opportunity to practise it. What better time could there be to practice the grounded state of genuine heartfelt connection and goodwill, than in the midst of a cacophony of human disconnect?

The beauty in this practice, is that it doesn’t ask me to ignore the cacophony, nor does it stop me from participating in the slow, quiet work of “righting wrongs” or offering shelter to the storm-weakened.

Just the opposite… it keeps bringing me back to the state of grounded clarity and resilience from which I can navigate the cacophony without adding to it.

I am far from perfect in this, perhaps even very far from adequate in it, and hence why it remains a practice. But every attempt holds significance, in that it offers one more momentary space for healing to happen at the very roots of disconnection from which all of the fear, anger, hate, division, and judgment grows.

In the space and light of our intrinsic human connection, the heavy layers of disconnection are invited to dissipate… within me and within others… love is found under the fear.

With Love and Laughter,

Jonelle

Photo by brotiN biswaS