Loving Reality

In our culture, when we talk about love, we typically talk about loving another person: I love Sonia. I love my grandfather.
 
What do we mean by that?
 
When we love others, we treat them with compassion, kindness, and patience.
 
We perceive their gifts and beauties and power. We champion and affirm what is best in them.
 
We support and nurture and care for them.
 
We forgive them, and we do so regularly.
 
We give up the false idea that there is wrong with the people in our lives, and liberate them to be exactly as they are.
 
When we love ourselves, we do the same.
 
We treat ourselves with compassion, kindness, and patience.
 
We perceive the gifts and beauties and power in ourselves.
 
We support and nurture and care for ourselves.
 
We forgive ourselves, and we do so regularly.
 
We give up the false idea that there is something wrong with the truth of ourselves, and we liberate ourselves to be exactly as we are.
 
Less frequently in our culture, we speak of loving a particular thing, activity, or creative expression in the world. When we speak of that, we usually mean that:
 
We deeply enjoy it, we draw great pleasure from it.
 
As a result, we want to experience it, to be near it.
 
We perceive its gifts, beauties, and power.
 
We have a mysterious and inexplicable special connection to that thing.
 
Let’s take everything we know about what it means to love a person, an activity, thing in the world, and ask ourselves, what would it mean then, to love reality itself? To love the way things are, they way they happen, the way they will happen?
 
To love reality itself. That would mean….
 
Treating reality with compassion, kindness and patience.
 
Perceiving the gifts, beauties and powers of reality and championing and affirming them.
 
Somehow supporting, nuturing and caring for reality.
 
Forgiving reality and forgiving it regularly.
 
Giving up the false idea that there is something wrong with reality, and liberating it to be exactly as it is.
 
Deeply enjoying reality, and as a result, wanting to experience reality, to be near it
 
Possessing a mysterious and inexplicable special connection to reality itself.
 
Play with this this weekend and see – where are you with this idea of loving reality? What occurs when you try it on?
 
Love,
 
Tara