Love Is in You

Often we credit the feeling of being “in love” to another person: someone who supposedly ignites that flame. I have come to understand that the feeling of being in love is actually our natural state of being, and that it is possible to access this state whatever circumstances might prevail in our lives… It is out of this experience that the desire to share what I have learnt was born. For many years from my late twenties, I struggled to make sense of my life. I was well-educated, had good friends, a loving family, a fulfilling love life and success at work – all the things I was supposed to want; the things that should make me happy. At times I was happy. And yet somehow it was never enough; on some level I felt I was never enough. Something was missing, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. Then in summer 1999, lying on a beach in Cape Cod, I experienced a kind of epiphany while reading the book Conversations With God by Neale Donald Walsch. I didn’t grow up with much religion. The God I was told about at school left me with the image of a man holding a book of rules, and if you didn’t follow them there’d be no happily-ever-after for you! And if you were reading from the ‘wrong’ book, you were also in trouble… Not surprisingly, I decided to stay well clear of anything ‘religious’. Even now, I don’t quite know what drew me to a book like this one. But in it, Walsch doesn’t talk about the God I was taught about at school.Instead he speaks of a very personal experience with a benevolent force that manifests itself as pure, unconditional love – and that exists within each of us. He describes this force as the foundation of our being and believes we are in direct contact with it whenever we are in touch with our most altruistic loving qualities. Everything we do, he says, comes from a place of either fear or love, and whichever we choose reflects back our own life experiences. Within these pages I discovered a truth that resonated so deeply that I had an experience of direct knowing. I knew that I was more than I had perceived myself to be. You might call it soul, higher consciousness, Buddha-nature, life force, chi, awareness, love… even the entire universe. No words can fully express the depth of this personal revelation. I felt, for the first time ever, in a state of deep peace, and utterly comfortable in my own skin. I knew this feeling as love – unconditional and total. A blissful moment of surrender. And then… life carried on, as it does. Happy times, sad times, and everything in-between. But that experience in Cape Cod had changed me forever. I realised in that moment of revelation that everything I needed in order to be happy was already there within me. During the years that followed I launched myself into a journey of self-inquiry, both physically and spiritually. I’ve studied many teachings – with many teachers – from various disciplines. But those that I continue to use within my life daily are the transformative techniques of kundalini yoga, A Course In Miracles and thus the work of Marianne Williamson, Gangaji and Eckhart Tolle, as well as the principles of Kabbalah and Tantra. And, what I have come to believe is that for every one of us, within the core of our being there is a still, quiet centre that is totally at peace with whatever is happening in every single moment of our lives. And in every single moment we have a choice: to discover the truth, or run from it.