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How Much Love Have You Let in Today?
Is it really more blessed to give than to receive?
Posted November 18, 2011
Can You Be This Vulnerable?
"How much love have you let in today?" I heard that phrase last week in a recorded lecture by a Colorado wise man named Evan Hodkins. I haven't met him in person, but I'll certainly be the first in line the next time he comes to the Denver area.
Hodkins is a long-time student of Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, Sufism, Shiddha and Kundalini Yoga, Kabbalah, and Christian mysticism. So when he speaks, it is as if myriad streams of universal wisdom all swirl together to create a complex river of knowledge and profound compassion.
Listening to Evan Hodkins was like hearing my own life narrated back to me because he has also walked the path of loss and grief. He has drunk from the deep waters of bereavement and learned to taste of their sweet transformative powers. Particularly in that context, his question, "How much love have you let in today?" cracked me wide open.
How much, indeed? At the moment I was feeling more stressed than loving. Angry at the medical situation that was causing my elderly mother great discomfort and frustration. And tired of feeling that everything going on in my life was about me taking care of other people's needs.
So, no, I wasn't letting in much love at all. And Hodkins' words slammed me up against a serious piece of Shadow I'm not sure I had ever really noticed.
I've always been good at expressing love—a skill I learned from being on stage as a singer and musical comedy actress. I have a talent for being nice to people and making them feel better. I was a terrific waitress because I could sense and then quickly fill people's emptiness with food and drink. I'm a good instructor because I can surf the classroom energy and bring out what seems to be important to my students.
But that's all giving. Giving is a way to pre-emptively control, to manipulate what's going on, to stay one step ahead of the audience. Most of all, it's a way to not be vulnerable. And therein lies the crux of the matter.
To let love in, you have to be vulnerable. Not a familiar or comfortable state, especially for us Westerners. Even if we walk softly through life, we still carry a big stick in the form of inner defenses, resistances, psychological walls, and separations. Social media make avoiding actual people quite easy, so that creating real, honest, heart-felt, physical connections is not something we do well. Because to be that open means that we might get hurt or inconvenienced. Or we might be exposed for the frauds we may secretly suspect that we are.
It's a crummy way to live. And yet, we're so accustomed to being closed off that we don't even notice. That is, until somebody asks, "How much love have you let in today?" Then we have to stop and examine whether we even know how to open up. Do we really know what love is? And what happens if we actually let it in?
Before love can wedge a toe past our internal gatekeeper, we have to decide that we are worthy of being loved. Do we appreciate the special qualities that make us uniquely lovable? Or do we see only warts, flaws, imperfections, and failures to live up to some impossibly perfect image of who and what we ought to be? If we go through life never quite "ready for our close up, Mr. DeMille," then love may be truly challenged to touch our lonely hearts.
But let's suppose that, after years of therapy and personal growth work, we have learned to not only appreciate but actually to like our quirky self. At some point we have declared that self to be "love-able"—capable of both giving and receiving love.
Having expunged our resistance to love and opened the door of our heart, we're ready. So, now what? Well, now comes the greater, more subtle challenge: Are we able to receive love as Life would offer it?
Are You Picky About Love?
I think one reason we may be literally starving in the very presence of a universal love banquet is that we are picky eaters. From childhood we have been taught the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
This is great advice if you're raising narcissists, which, sadly, appears to be prevalent in today's "all-about-me" culture. But it is not the way of love.
It is as if I were to return to my waitress days, deciding to serve only guacamole tostadas to my customers because that's what I would like to eat. Of course, I am serving them with great attention, courtesy, promptness, and skill (which do form the essence of the Golden Rule). But what I am not doing is practicing compassion as articulated by the Platinum Rule: "Do unto others as they would have done unto them."
What happens if somebody really wants a cheese enchilada? Will I accommodate him or not? When interpreted by my Shadow, the Golden Rule lets me off the love hook because I can appear to be altruistic when, in reality, I'm only dishing what and how I prefer.
Of course, we all do this. We can't help but give according to our own gifts and perceptions. Easing into the Platinum Rule can at least open us to considering how we might tailor our giving to the needs of others. But there is a deeper meaning here that I think is at the core of letting love in: "Can we receive love from others as they are capable of giving it?"
Here's the deal. It is true that opposites attract. We are naturally drawn to those who energetically complete us. Introverts attract extroverts. Analysts attract the emotional. Creatives attract organizers. And so it goes. Like puzzle pieces, we fit into one another's gaps, creating a strong unit. Except in the love department, where we are most at risk of being wounded by our complement.
In matters of the heart, we tend to prefer our own style. A retiring personality may be overwhelmed by the exuberant love making of his more expressive partner. And she may feel chilled by his reticence to hold hands in public. This is the stereotypical scene of cerebral male and emotional female, but it's a drama that out-pictures in many ways. The point is that we tend to want to receive love in the manner in which we give it.
So the question, "How much love have you let in today?" becomes, "How many flavors of love have you tasted from a loving, abundant, and varied Universe?" Are you willing to accept the subtle expressions of your partner's affection when they are not quite what you thought you ordered?
Allowing ourselves to be touched by another's differences is to be truly open and powerfully vulnerable. Parents are often really sweet in accepting the crude drawings of a child, knowing them to be an imperfect expression of perfect love. But somehow we lose that generosity as we age, forgetting that inside each of us remains a child who wants her gift to be cherished and pressed to the heart of the one she loves.
It may be more blessed to give than to receive. But if we fail to receive what others uniquely and affectionately offer us, the circle of love is incomplete. The heart's door must swing both ways if we are to find wholeness—if we are to ever live life to the fullness that a loving Universe longs to give.
