Existence in Love

Existence in Love

Every morning gets a bit closer, a bit deeper.

Today I felt God. I briefly stared into God. I felt it in a part of me I didn’t recognize. The feeling was as real as I’m writing now. I saw myself standing before a light, a portal. It was as if I was miles away; the vision of me was clear, yet distant. I felt it to the core of me.

I observed myself surrendering, being the light, existing in love.

There was a peace within me, a space so vast, so open, endless. I felt it. I could see it. I was in it.

Then, as I felt myself drifting, I begged not to leave, to return. The only path back was love—surrendering to exist in love.

That was the practice it was teaching me: not only does this exist in me, I am capable of living within it. I can live in love and light while nothing else exists. All that is within me and around me is love.

It was the most peace I have ever felt.

It is almost unexplainable. It cannot truly be described. It must be felt, lived, allowed. It cannot be rushed. It cannot be forced.

Allowing yourself to exist is the way.

No thoughts.

No narrative.

No guidance.

No mantra.

Complete nothingness.

Yet it is everything.

In nothing, there is everything. No worries, no regret, no task to be done, nothing to complete. Everything exists without time. There is no pressure to become.

You are everything you need to be.

The power of that is deep inside me. The confidence I felt was not one I recognized. No accomplishments. No reward. No praise.

Just confidence.

Fulfilled.

Proud.

Accomplished.

As if everything I could ever want already existed within me.

This is the presence of living inside out.

From total surrender, life simply lives.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

Existence in love.

The next morning was noisy.

I tried to find who was being loud, but something sat behind the noise. I wanted to listen, but I also wanted to get to my internal space. I wasn’t fully listening. I wasn’t fully with my parts.

I even caught myself thinking they needed me more than I needed meditation, though even that thought was a way of quieting the noise so I could go deeper.

Then the lesson became clear.

Being fully present in what is in front of me. Being where I am, not where I want to be.

I can’t rush through presence to get what I want.

I saw this in my everyday life—in strangers I drive, in the people I love, in every moment where I look past the person in front of me searching for what comes next.

Seeking the next instead of experiencing what is here.

I must build the muscle of presence.

Prepare mentally before interactions.

Speak to myself beforehand.

Be in the moment fully.

Even as I wrote these words I noticed myself rushing—trying to find the last word, trying to move on to the next thing.

Why?

Why do I chase the next?

What part of me seeks the chase?

Or is it trying to run?

Maybe both.

Slow down.

Take a breath.

Ask.

Find out.

Create a moment of clarity.

Stay where you are and finish the experience.

Stay.

Don’t run.

Don’t chase.

Live in the discomfort and discover why.

Tomorrow does not exist.

Tomorrow is always tomorrow.

Now is the only moment that exists.

Practice in the now until now is all that remains.

I am who I am.

I have a path—a path that is true to me. It is mine to follow in faith.

It is my path unlike any other. I do not have to chase it. I do not have to run from it or toward it.

I only need to walk it.

My life has taken me exactly where I needed to go to arrive here.

There were no wrong turns.

No misunderstandings.

Everything in my life—beautiful and horrible, love and anger, pain and suffering—brought me here.

That realization carries both freedom and fear.

To believe the life I had was meant for me.

To believe it guided me.

My ego still whispers otherwise.

That life is pain.

That my life is meaningless.

That I chose it.

But I see now that it chose me.

It brought me here.

It built the ego that carried me.

My pain and suffering built that ego so I could learn strength.

Now I must teach it.

Pain exists, but it does not define us.

Life will continue to give pain and suffering, but those experiences are teachers. They show us who we are capable of becoming.

All experiences contain lessons.

All experiences contain love.

Yet trust remains difficult.

Trusting myself is hard.

Trusting that I will do what is right for myself and for others.

The internal objection is loud.

My pain and fear built a story inside me—that trusting leads to suffering.

That believing leads to suffering.

That love leads to suffering.

Even love cannot be trusted.

Love from others.

Love for others.

Love for myself.

The ego protects me from that pain. If I don’t trust, if I don’t believe, if I don’t love, then I can never be hurt again.

But those are only stories.

Stories from the world.

Stories from the mind.

They are not who I am.

They are not love.

They are not identity.

You can live in the ego’s world, or you can teach it to live in yours.

One lives in suffering.

The other lives in love.

Life can be seen through light.

It is a choice.

You either walk through life alive or you walk through it dead.

Walking through it in love is to live.

Then Big Daddy spoke.

He trusted me with his fear of success.

He knows he can climb.

He is afraid of what happens when he reaches the top.

What happens when everyone is watching?

What happens if he fails?

What happens if he cannot maintain it?

He believes it is easier to stay where expectations are low.

Easier to let people down from the start.

He does not trust himself.

He has let people down before, and he believes that is who he is.

It isn’t the climb that scares him.

It is the eyes once you arrive.

Better to throw rocks from the bottom than stand at the top with stones coming your way.

He believes he does not deserve greatness.

So he hides behind anger.

Behind pride.

Behind stories that blame the world.

Until eventually even that fight exhausted him.

He stepped aside.

He handed life back to the part of me that could grow.

And he rested.

In meditation the next morning I saw something.

A version of myself looked back over his shoulder and waved me forward.

He led me through moments in my life—things I had started but never fully finished.

I once spoke to a class at my old high school after leaving treatment.

I wasn’t prepared.

I didn’t do it well.

But I did it.

There were many moments like that.

Moments where I started something brave but didn’t finish.

For a long time I thought those were failures.

But they weren’t.

They were training.

Each one built something in me.

Each one prepared me for where I am going.

At the end of the vision I saw a glimpse of the future.

Success.

Family.

Joy.

Pride.

Accomplishment.

Not from perfection.

From grit.

From learning.

From refusing to quit.

I realized something in that moment.

I already have it within me.

I always have.

Everyone has a child within them.

The place where soul meets soul.

The innocent part that knows only love.

That child laughs at silly things.

Dances without reason.

Lives fully in the moment.

But the world gives us rules.

Parents.

Teachers.

Friends.

Society.

Those rules slowly replace the light inside.

We begin to live from expectations instead of authenticity.

The child becomes hidden.

But it never disappears.

It still lives in us.

For a brief moment at the beginning of life we were free from all of it.

Free from ego.

Free from fear.

Free from limitations.

That child still exists.

We only have to awaken it.

Allow it to play again.

Allow it to show us that life was never meant to be ruled by fear.

Life is meant to be lived.

To love.

To experience joy.

To seek happiness.

Life is yours.

Live it.

And seek love.