The Beginning: Understanding love and fear

Hi Community, 

Before we begin our journey, it is important that we understand love. 

The common definition is associated with thoughts or feelings of deep affection towards other people, things, experiences and more predominantly family and romantic relationships. This, in my opinion is our limited understanding of love , it is not wrong but neither is it correct.  

It is almost sweet, as it is innocent when love is limited to the butterflies felt and fleeting emotions aroused by hormonal reactions when you meet Jack or Jill, Malebogo or Jakoba down the street and preside them as the ‘one'. The feeling is unmatched, I know. However, the return to love series takes you deeper into understanding that natural gravitation towards others and experiences that find and spark a light deep inside your soul.  

Marianne writes that, 

‘To experience love in yourself and others in the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things, it lies in you.'

Love is the intuitive knowledge of our hearts. It is what you were born with. 

Let’s go back a few years. 

Before life happened to us, let's go back to our childhoods, try not to focus on traumas but your innocence then. Your imagination, creativity and excitement for life. A world of enchantment and love at its fullest. 

What changed ? 

The return to love series, teaches us that we started thinking unnaturally, looking at the world in a way that contradicts who we are. As a child, thoughts or emotions associated with limitation, struggle, competition, sickness, finite resources, guilt, death and loss do not occur naturally to us. We learn them, and as it is natural human instinct to survive, the race begins. 

The competition to advance and grow better than others not only separates us from each other but also sidelines love and fosters fear. 

Do you realise that most of our motivations stem from fear ? Fear of failure, fear of loneliness, fear of loss and more detrimental, fear of the unknown. The return to love series aims to teach you that, fear is something you learnt here and everyday we must work towards UNLEARNING it and accepting love back into our hearts. It is the only existential fact, everything else is an illusion. 

Be conscious of love, to experience it in yourself and others is the only true meaning of life. Why do we only choose to recognise this very simple truth at the end of life ? Re ngakaletse le eng ? (Translation: Why do we insist on fighting life so much?)

Marianne explains, 

‘ We overvalue what we perceive with our physical senses and undervalue what we know true in our hearts.’ (Ka setswana o paletswe hela ke gore ; re itse thata. )

Love is not seen, touched, or heard with your physical senses. It requires a different kind of knowing, ‘seeing’ and understanding. 

Depending on your individual religious, spiritual, scientific interpretations you may call it the Holy Spirit, the third eye or your higher self. Regardless of what you decide to call it, it is the unconscious truth of your heart. An energy far beyond your physical understanding. Nothing can buy it , nothing can guarantee it but it can surely be expressed. 

Love is experienced through kindness, giving, mercy, compassion, peace, joy, acceptance, non-judgement and intimacy.  The child in you is still there, buried in your mind. Allow yourself to come up for air, to a world where you are still connected to your softness, your innocence and your spirit. 

Return to yourself. Return to love. 

Precious