New from Dharmen & Leela

Our Very Essence is Love – by Leela Swann-Herbert

Our natural state is love; our very essence is love. When we are present to our experience of life, it is an experience of love. Love of our self, love of life – those are just labels to try to describe the felt-sense of awareness of being present, here, now.

The mind is very good at interpreting the body’s experience into a story, and that story repetitive in our internal dialog, can harden into a pattern – a neural pathway that can be triggered by a similar experience, a passing energy that the mind interprets once again – and into a story.

As 9-centered humans, we are capable of the felt-sense of awareness of love, while also capable of identifying with the story that our mind is telling us. The dilemma is that we have been trained to believe that we are our mind, rather than training the mind to be an observer of our experience. We believe the mind’s story that we should find love in a particular person, that love should carry us from one peak experience of excitement and happiness to the next, that there is something in particular life should give us as an experience of love – and if only we did this or that, we’d have it. Or, we believe the mind’s story that we are not worthy of love, we are broken and wounded, and will never find love if we don’t change this or that about ourselves.

Love is like an ever-shining internal light, showing us ourselves, as we experience the pure love of communion with our self. The dilemma is that we don’t see it at all.