A physics of loving what is 💓

Loving what is unfuses us from the thing we’re loving, while also increasing our intimacy with it. This makes the subject into an object and thereby makes it safer. We’re not the object, so it’s OK if the object changes, or goes. 

Take overwhelm for example. Loving overwhelm demands that we step back from overwhelm in order to witness it—loving is relational. The I that can see it isn’t the I experiencing it, so the I that I am is no longer under threat. But one thing I love about love is that it isn’t just impartially witnessing, there’s a joining where we’re implicated with what we love. We not only separate from the overwhelm, but as something beyond and unthreatened by the experience of overwhelm, we are totally free to feel a warm acceptance of this experience. Our heart expands and we fall into gratitude for what is and what isn’t. In a sense love is unavoidably nondual.

You can replace “overwhelm” with anything, since anything can be loved (and perhaps everything already is, from a certain view). Happiness. A person. Suffering. Political theatre. But why would you love something you want to go away—such as loving the opposite political party, or ‘stupid people on the internet’, or even something like existential risk?

There are many reasons to fall in love with what is (it feels wonderful, it aligns us with being/God in that what-is is already being unconditionally accepted in its existence), but one is because resisting ironically keeps us fused with whatever we resist, and demands that we identify as what we hate. If you resist a current political situation, your self becomes entangled with your resistance, and, like the example of overwhelm, you are fused with what you resist. Fused with it, you feel fragile, threaten-able, and therefore afraid—of yourself, unowned! Loving a current political situation instead gives us the freedom to step back from it; we go beyond it and who-we-are is no longer threatened by it. I think my actual experience is that love naturally flows from here. And anyone who has tried to change something will recognize that coming from love is infinitely more effective than coming in opposition.

These perspectives may sound Buddhist in origin; I believe this is also the root and heart of the Christian message (and likely all mystical traditions). “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 John 4:16). ”Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31). “Love your enemies” (Luke 6:27, Matthew 5:44). “Perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). God loves us unconditionally (Romans 8:39). “Loving what is” looks a lot like forgiveness, a core of Christianity. Particularly forgiving ourselves for the so-called original sin of seemingly separating from the “Garden of Eden”—the joined-with-God / The Kingdom of Heaven at hand.

I bring this up for many reasons, one of which is that as an American, Christianity is foundational to the culture I grew up in and around, and this principle applies to our relationship with our origins too. I love Christianity, I love western culture, I love America. I think we often misinterpret practical instructions for psychological and spiritual freedom ("love your enemies") as moral commandments. Perhaps love itself is much more “is” than “ought”.

With love, Jordan