"I'm in the Mood for Love...

 ...simply because you're near me" Julie London sings it best.

What is love to you? What does it mean to be loved, but more importantly, what does it mean to love?

Many of us may have come from homes that taught us broken ideas of love and loving. Indoctrinated us. I don't think we realize how skewed our ideas of love might be nor realize they are skewed at all to the extent that they are. Some may hate love based on experiences with something or someone wearing Love's mask, and wearing it well.

I found love outside of romance. With my God sister. Not mine. A person, very special to me.

With my animals. Animals, not mine. 

I have found love in nature. Her seasonal impermanence isn't so loved, especially when it is manifested in a person, in a being, in a thing. In a possessable object. Nature teaches us nothing is possessable, as much as we may want it to be. 

I have found love in moments where I let go of a desire to possess.

Can we fathom loving something without attachment, without the idea of possession? Could you introduce your boyfriend without referring to him as your boyfriend? Forget introducing him, could you see that person outside the identity of being yours? 

Could you introduce your pet without referring to them as your pet, let alone a pet?

Could you introduce your favorite book without saying it is your favorite book?

Can we love anything without feeling like it belongs to us? Do we still consider that love if it is not ours to claim before another? 

I too found love in death. Even with those I’ve felt unfinished with. Especially with those. Forced detachment. A realization of my own possessive ways. 

What is love, without the ache that comes when it goes? The ache is a token it was there. If there was no sadness to love’s fleeting character, it wouldn’t have been love now, would it? 

Anything you lose comes round in another form, promised to us by the beloved Rumi. No need to hold.

Embrace its departure, you don't want to experience this one life you have with just one idea of love now, do you? Just one manifestation out of the infinite. 

Broken homes, harmful upbringings can teach us love is to possess, to comfort ourselves, to not feel alone.

Unlearn that. Feel alone, feel deeply alone. Love from there. Learn what it is to love while you feel empty. The two can coexist. Their coexistence is necessary. To seek love is a distraction, to welcome it in all its forms is life. So live it.

Become enthralled with feeling alone, fall in love with your solitude. Not because we aren't capable of being loved without doing so, that is far from the reality and even farther from the point. But because you will never ever experience something as deep, as profound, as explorative, as igniting, and as inspiring as the love you find within yourself. The sort of love that pours from you. The sort of love that is bound to the impermanence of your body. The permanence of life’s impermanence. 

It transcends time, it truly does and I don't say that to be cheesy. And because of this timeless feature, love requires no attachment, no possession in order to be experienced at its fullest. It is not love otherwise, it can't be. How can it be so profound with such earthly attachments? The sort of attachments confined to the human mind. 

Think of love as a life source. A definition beyond that of just human to human experience. 

Be in the mood for Love, simply because it is near you, always. Open the senses. Return home to yourself. Thay reminds us of this practice daily. 

Now do I claim to know what love is? Absolutely not. That is a lives long adventure. Plural. 

But I do claim to know what it is not. It is not the institution we know and engage with today. A contract of possession. A conditional agreement of love.

Love is as unavoidable and as essential as death. 

It is in the mundane although we often see it solely in the extraordinary. Extraordinary, look at that word. Allow yourself to discover the wonders in the ordinary. The extraordinary in the ordinary.

Allow these three ladies to fill your ears and your minds. Listen to what these ladies have to say. And then ask yourself what is love. Has your definition changed? Will your experience?