There are so many uses of ‘love’ out there that are actually misuses.  In other words things being done in the name of love that aren’t love at all.  Romance is probably front and center for love being claimed yet misused.  You also see it with religion and pushing of agenda.  The truth of love is that it liberates.  It’s not about control.  Control is evil.  Control is about judgment and agenda.

What world are we living in today?  A world of control.  Ironically people actually seek out control because it is familiar and makes them feel safe.  This is why guarantees are so important to people.  Yet people also want to resist being controlled.

I think about this a lot in relation to friendships.  First off, there is a difference between fellowship and real friendship.  Fellowship is where everybody is involved in a clique, doing brunches and bar crawls, burning copious amounts of time over weeks and sometimes years.  The core of this is a herd mentality.  But is there substance and depth to fellowship?  No.  In many cases it is a safety mechanism.  A prop to feel like you belong to something.  The herd mentality runs deep in the human psyche as it meant survival in more primitive times.  The main difference between friendship and fellowship is the ability to withstand the test of time and particularly conflict.  Conflict is inevitable.  People will not always see eye to eye or agree.  Things that are real will sustain.  Things that were built on superficial foundations will fall by the wayside.  I’ve experienced this first hand.  The conflict only revealed the shallow, superficial nature of things.  People bailing.  Disappearing.  AWOL.  Words that are expressed in true friendships are words like “I’m sorry” and “I miss you” and “let’s talk”.  The era we live in today is an era of retreat.  Retreat into the comfortable and familiar, retreat into the smart phone distractions that stimulate the Pavlovian responses that keeps everything cozy and familiar.  This is not an era of heroes and guts and standard.  It is an era of compliance and observation, a passivity.  It’s like life becomes one big screen of entertainment, to be watched like how you watch a TV series.  Social media is like watching friends’ lives in real time, like its own TV show except the characters are real.  The lines between what’s real and what is fantasy is blurred.

This is where the control and judgment gets born.  You would think that by individualizing everything with personalized facebook pages, personalized instagrams, curated music selections and Netflix recs based on your watch taste that this would mean you would see birthing of the Individual with a capital “I” but NOPE.  Instead this environment only fuels the herd mentality and creating like minded clusters.  The opposite of becoming more authentic and individual is what takes place.  So what happens is when people in such clusters try to do something different the pitchforks come out.  Judgment starts being created.  “Why aren’t you coming out to our happy hour club anymore?”  “Why are you bailing on this music festival this year to attend a different festival, we always do this one?”  “What’s going on with you?”.  Judge, judge, judge.  And forget about being honest in the face of such dynamics.  Yikes.  I keep getting in trouble with this one.  “Because I really want to just veg this time around and do (fill in the blank) instead”.  Oh snap, no.  Brows get furrowed.  This doesn’t fit the pattern.  People start having problems with this.  Even though in all cases this is not meant to be taken personally, it does.  Which fits the MO of a life about control. What that looks like is people getting offended.

I’ve always identified myself as a spiritual person my entire life, taking teachings from the Bible, Koran, Buddha, Tao and more and applying it to life.  Since I was in my mid 20s I’ve been involved with the rise of the goddess energy that is taking place currently.  Talk about people getting offended.  Holy Cow. Atheist friends snicker at my belief in a higher power because of course, they have all the answers and there is no God.  Christian friends are deeply offended by the goddess shakti talk because it weird to them and is a direct threat to Christianity.

What love does it is liberates.  Love looks like this “How can I help you?”.  Love is about creating space for another.  Love is non infringing.  Love means you live life the way you choose and respect another to make their own choices for themselves.  Love is about communication and understanding not just disappearing and judgement.  Love is about being honest with respect.  What this does for the fellow man and woman is it allows for liberation to life.  Lines of communication are able to be opened from this. People are able to tap into their true nature and their individual power when they are given space and support and understanding to be themselves.  This is why love liberates to life.

Some people are not made to operate at this capacity.  For many it is easier to stay in the familiar, for many doing fellowship is enough for them.  The ability to operate at a level of understanding and not being infringing is not possible for many.  This is why if you are a person wanting MORE and a person of greater capacity your greatest tool is to pull back.  This means not creating drama, not manipulating, just pulling back into the power of the truth of all the cards that are on the table of a situation.  This way you aren’t bleeding energy banging on closed doors that will never open.  Consolidation of energy is key to owning your own individual power.