LOVE AND FEAR

Before we can explore the Seven Compassions, we need to introduce our foundational belief that everything we do is motivated either by love or fear.

Ask one hundred people to describe love, and you will likely get one hundred different responses. Some will speak of feelings and emotions or affection and connection. Others will reference the religious doctrine to "love one another." Some will speak of its universality while others will talk of their difficulty attaining or maintaining it. Some say love is a noun, others, a verb. Many will reflect that we spend our whole life searching for it. If there is any consensus about love, perhaps it is this: love is complicated. Yet sometimes what seems complicated can really be quite simple, and this simplicity can be achieved once we realize we've been holding the answer all along. In fact, we are the answer.

Despite the differences in our values, beliefs, and perceptions, there exists one truth: we are made from, for, and of love. When our thoughts and actions come from love, we can be at peace with one another and ourselves. This love is infinite and always available to us. What is it then that causes love to feel out of our reach at times? How can it be that our very essence can feel so blocked and inaccessible?

It is fear that becomes a direct block to love. Fear can take many forms, including but not limited to, anger, hate, worry, anxiety, and resentment. Regardless of its manifestation, it is fear. Fear resides in our mind. We worry or stress about what might happen and become afraid of the possibilities. We are afraid of the unknown. We dwell on and replay the past and are afraid similar events will occur again and again. Fear is a reaction, a reactive state of being. Fear robs us of joy and happiness. When we are worried, distressed, preoccupied, and frustrated about the past or future, we are unable to enjoy the present moment — our lives.

When we are experiencing fear, we feel uncomfortable. This dissonance — this loss of the experience of well-being — serves an important purpose. It motivates us to move on and to not get stuck in fear. Fear can be productive when we use it as a teacher. We must come to recognize that the way we are is not how we want to be or feel. We dislike the negative state, so we seek wisdom and insight that help us learn how to find our way back to our authentic self, our true nature — love. Remember, we are made from, for, and of love. This is the place we belong.

Fear can be productive when it is a reaction to a real danger, such as encountering a bear. In this case, fear produces a physiological response. Our heart rate increases, hormones are released, and our thoughts are altered. We are now in a state where we must choose: fight, flee, or freeze. These are important self-preservation reactions.

Fear can also be a reaction to a perceived danger, such as hearing a bump in the night. While our reaction of fear of the unknown is different from our reaction of fear of a known danger, the fear itself is not. In both situations, the fear is experienced throughout the body in similar ways. Both situations can change our behavior in a way that causes us to self-protect. Whether or not the danger is real or perceived, we react. In both situations, fear is brought on by an outside or extrinsic source. It is important to note that fear reactions usually occur before anything is happening to us. In other words, we become afraid before we are actually under any sort of "attack." Fear lives in our thoughts, and our bodies respond to the thought that the danger is real — even if it is not.

The antidote to fear is love. When we choose to take care of our fear through understanding it, learning from it, and letting it go, we operate from love. How do we achieve something that seems so difficult when we think about how many forms our fear can take in our lives each day? Left to run wild and convince us of a story that may not even be true, our thoughts leave little room for us to feel loving and compassionate. The old Cherokee legend "Two Wolves" illustrates the need to feed love and choose love in order to grow love.

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life.

"A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy. "It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil: he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

"The other is good: he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you and inside every other person too."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "But which wolf will win?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

Love is always there for us. Because it is within us, it is never out of our reach. It is our true nature. Being kind, doing something thoughtful for others, and intentionally seeking to bring happiness to others are some ways we operate from love. Bringing our focus to the goodness in our life, what we can find to be grateful for, and what "isn't wrong" can help move us in the direction of love.

Through practice of the Seven Compassions, we can feed our love what it needs to grow until not only do we feel it, it radiates out of us like much-needed sunlight for all. Just as we have learned to operate in fear through habitual patterns, so can we learn how to operate in love. Once motivated into action by love, our inner healing will begin. We will be an available light for others. It only takes one light to erase the darkness. Keep your love light on! The world needs the light of each and every one of us.

Every person has a wholly unique and individual collection of life experiences that have brought him or her to the present moment. While it is easy to see how diverse we are as individuals and how vast a range of backgrounds we come from, we have so much more in common than we might recognize at first glance. We all need to be connected; we need one another. We hunger for belonging. We long to love and be loved. We all do! Compassion practice teaches us how to remove the...