It’s 1:53p on a Saturday. My throat feels scratchy from inhaling the fumes of that ridiculous yet necessary amount of clorox clean-up sprayed to scrub out those pesky little mildew spots in the shower. The baggage under my eyes weighs at least 50 lbs having been awake since 4:30a but the noise from the traffic and the heat of the day pouring in from the windows could only make for the most uncomfortable afternoon nap. Lately, I’ve been spending almost every other Saturday alone #solosaturdays (studying, cleaning, and everything self-care related, duh) while my Drea flies to Kaua’i for the day. On our way to the airport this morning I mentioned I’d take time to write this long overdue post. I’ve purposely been putting it off– but today is finally the day.
As I sit here at my tiny makeshift desk that stands no taller than 16”, using a fuzzy white throw pillow for cushion, I am finding myself muttering all kinds of excuses. I want to run. Towards? I don’t know, something, anything– anything other than this. Oh the torturous art of diving beyond the surface. Confrontation can be a rather difficult endeavor especially when confronted by the innermost workings of none other than (you guessed it).. yourself.
I can feel my heart beating inside of my chest.
The same heart that’s been working just for me, non-stop, for 29 years. Let’s attempt to dive a little beneath the surface. We all know the basics. As simple as possible, the heart is the powerhouse muscle that pumps blood. The blood flows through the arteries and veins and eventually gets carried back to the heart (repeating a gazillion billion trillion times) while simultaneously delivering vital nutrients to all of the organs which ultimately make up the human body.
That same heart that has been working every second of every day for [*enter your age here*] years is also a lot more than just a powerhouse for the human body. Dive deeper and we can feel the vastness, the depth, and the complexity. The warmth and the cold. The fullness and the emptiness. Parts that are broken and parts that have been repaired. This is what the inside feels like. Intricate and overwhelming af but.. the heart makes room for ALL of it. No matter how big or how small, every feeling and every emotion we experience gets tucked under the ‘wing’ of our heart. Thus providing a home for those feelings and emotions to further prosper or even wither away. This is why the heart is the guardian and the entryway of the soul.
As we pass through that entryway, we dive to the very core which is the soul. The purest of all our parts. If you have even the smallest sense of a spiritual belief, then it is safe to assume that you too believe that the soul will live on even after the temporal body has died. (if you don’t believe in that stuff and are simply reading this for entertainment purposes then thanks for sticking around, you a real one)
—But wait, what really is the soul?
Let’s first talk about ~feEeeLiiiiiNGsSsss.
We learn at a young age that love is a grand emotion, a magical sensation we feel in our heart [*insert butterflies, sunshine dust, and rainbows*]. However, this happens to be love’s biggest misconception. If we believe that we love with our heart and the heart is temporal, does this mean that love dies with it? Love from the human heart is conditional, easily misguided, and basically impure. Temporal love is often misconstrued and hindered by opposing emotions leaving us incapable of loving unconditionally. Fear, pride, and greed are firm examples of these opposing emotions that obstruct our ability to love. The love I want to talk about requires heaping mountains of good ol’ vulnerability.
Sometimes we choose to open up to someone we trust and when they do something that disappoints (which they will) we shut them out because it hurts and we are crying. Omgosh we are so SO sad. Expectation causes disappointment, disappointment causes hurt, pain, suffering. We deny ourselves vulnerability and we feed the monster of selfishness which lives in our human heart. Our growth is stunted and we remain human leaving no room to break through to the soul, our very core– where love is pure and unconditional.
How do we break through to the core, where we find the transforming power of unconditional love? We’ve all heard it — “The world needs more love.” I’ll be the first to admit– it sounds way cool but the truth is that the world needs more unconditional love. Unconditional love is a state of being- not an emotion- and it doesn’t live in the heart because not even the depth of our hearts are big enough to hold the space that is love. Unconditional love lies within the soul. It is our very existence. Love is what created the universe, it is tangible, it is powerful, and it is healing. We will go more in depth on this in another post, but for now, how did we end up so off course? And how do we find our way back to how we are meant to love?
For many of us, somewhere along the way love became something it was never meant to be. Love was never meant to be conditioned. Yet we conditioned it into fitting into our own selfishness. Throughout my life I grew to understand love was something to be given freely, but taken back just as quickly for “good reason.” I was taught that love is what makes the world go round yet always remember to put yourself at the center. Give just enough love but never all of it. Fix yourself before asking someone to love you because it is unfair for someone to love you with all of your scars. But all of that feels wrong.
“For the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
Galatians 5:14 kjv
So we begin to change by letting ourselves. Let yourself be. Let your soul be. Allow yourself some vulnerability. Allow yourself to open up to others, even if you might be hurt. Allow yourself to love others fully, and find a way to believe you are deserving of love from others. We were all created out of love, in spirit and body. Allow yourself to feel the unique beauty of your soul. That leads us back to the question: What is the soul?
The soul is love: material, tangible, and powerful.
Love is our core, it is our very existence- you don’t feel it, you are it– and it is in letting your true self and soul be, that you feel the deepest love. When you bring your soul to the surface, and let it govern your heart, the world attempts to shame you; do not let it. When you put others first, with no thought to “deserving”, you let your soul be. When you are willing to be vulnerable, to experience pain, to learn and to grow from it and to never be jaded because of it, you let your soul be. When you serve others and find joy in it, you let your soul be.
Our souls are pure love. God gave us the power to create love: on the soul and physical level. He gave us the power to create human life through physical love (more on this one later). He also gave us the power to create a new and bonded soul identity between two souls, to exist as one: Unconditional love is the creation of one love shared between two. It also allows us to embody our truest self when we practice this love. No more fake face, no more fear of yourself. This is how you truly practice self love. By loving others unconditionally, you can learn to love yourself unconditionally. It is no longer “this is how I love” and “that is how you love” or “you take care of you and I will take care of me”. Unconditional love says “I know you are scarred and I know you have baggage, please help me to understand so that I can love you in all the ways you need and deserve”.
In this search for the soul, this deep uncovering, to find love and acceptance and self love– it’s actually quite simple, just not easy. Cast off society (cause humans are so smart and know everything… *eye-roll emoji), cast off shame, and have the courage to dive deep inside, be vulnerable, and let your soul be. Let yourself love unconditionally, as the soul is wired to do.
He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
1 John 4:8 nkjv
God is the ultimate love and He created the universe with love. He created each soul with pieces of His perfect love. It is our ultimate gift from God and if we just embrace it the way we are meant to, we will discover that love is in fact tangible and way too big to be locked up in tiny spaces. So let’s share love with everyone we meet (in person and over social media) and maybe they’ll start sharing it too.
Love is not what makes us human; Love is what makes us eternal.
Note: This is part 1 of 2. Please keep an eye out for part 2 as Drea will be posting soon.
I love you 💕