The Quiet Work of Being Love by Lexie Wolf
One measure of a successful life is how loved others felt in your presence.
I heard this suggested at a memorial service over the weekend. It felt radical and simple and true. I believe that embedded in this simple statement is the recipe for a wholly satisfying life.
On the surface it is not a terribly complicated recipe. But for many of us, there’s quite a bit of prep that isn’t included.
For one, you have to love yourself in order to truly share nourishing love. In spite of ourselves, we reflect out to others how we feel inside. Have you been loved by someone who doesn’t love themselves? Who is quite self-critical? That almost always gets projected outward in different ways, even when the person is wholeheartedly trying to love you.
I can feel this in my own love sometimes. I can sense a kind of tainting when what I’m trying to share gets clouded with judgment, conditions, my considerable insecurities and fears. This is not the kind of love I want to embody or offer.
My lower mind has an entity that visits by way of snarky, self-critical and judgy thoughts. These thoughts can be deceptively funny, sometimes, too, but not in a way that feels kind. A sharp spear sent into my own heart that passes straight through and pricks anyone standing too close. I’m learning to feel him coming. (I don’t know why it’s a “he/him, friends, but it is.)
Slowly but deliberately, I’m evicting him. As the Wicked Witch of the West cries, “I’m melting!”—I’m learning to melt him too. Mostly by loving him, though I’ve undertaken a few more forceful eviction proceedings as well. I practice catching myself in negative self-talk. I practice catching myself in judgmental thinking about others. I can manage my actions and my words for the most part, but conditioning myself around loving thoughts—shifting the script from the inside out—is next-level. It’s a lifetime practice, but I can feel improvement over the years, and I am encouraged. The sweet relief in the softening. One of my favorite lines from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras is one I’m sure I’ve shared here before: “Practice becomes firmly rooted through consistent, long-term, uninterrupted effort and devotion.”
Change is possible through awareness and work. The yogis knew about neuroplasticity. We can rewire our brains; we can open our hearts. We can make our inner worlds a more beautiful place to reside. And when we do that, we reflect that beauty outward in a thousand ways, quietly or maybe even not so quietly improving the lives of those around us.
And maybe this is the heart of the path: doing the inner work so the love that moves through us is less tangled in our wounds, more attuned to Source. Not perfect—just clearer. When I soften inside, love feels less like something to manufacture and more like something I allow to flow. I am devoted to being a clearer channel for the love that wants to move through me.
