What Love Really Is

Love is one of the things I’ve spent the most time in my life studying, seeking, and freeing within my self. 

When I say love I don’t mean romantic love. 

I mean love love - unconditional love - the love that religion professes to preach. The love that I believe is the fabric of reality, of the universe.  

My pursuit of love - of the true meaning and LIVING of love - is what ironically led me to leave the religion I was raised in. 

To surrender the judgments and cynicism and fear I was raised to believe in. 

To abandon the right/wrong, oppressive, and repressive structures of western society.

True love is the one thing that kept me going when all else in my life felt hopeless. Impossible. Too f*cking much to keep fighting. 

True love is what I began to uncover through my voracious consumption of mindfulness, meditation, eastern spiritual traditions, nature-based spirituality, yoga, energy healing, spiritual psychology, energetic co-creation, and more…

TRUE LOVE IS WHAT SAVED MY LIFE. 

Love is beyond the human self - the ego self - the limited human mind, emotions, and body. Love is something we can ABSOLUTELY experience in our human form - however, it doesn’t originate from the limited physical reality. It originates from beyond that. Beneath that. From the source of all that we and life ARE. 

It’s the separation of love, of our source, that causes pain, fear, sorrow. 

The things that separate us from love are often the sh*t that doesn’t feel good. But sometimes we don’t even recognize it because we were raised in a society where disconnection from love was the norm..

The things that separate us from love are the things that move our minds and emotions and body into a state of “not love.”  For example: judgment. Fear. Stress. Doubt. Sometimes anger. (Though anger - and all emotions - can be incredibly healing and empowering when processed and expressed healthily! And through this act we can find ourselves feeling much closer to love than we were before.)

When I began to learn about love. To experience its awakening within me. To lean into it…

I bit by bit began to let go of the mental constructs I was raised to believe in that were not aligned with love. 

Thoughts and beliefs like “there’s only one right way to live.” 

“My religion knows what’s best or right for everyone. Everything else is evil or sinful.”

“People who do xyz are bad or wrong.”

“People who live or look like or express in xyz ways are bad, wrong, sinful.”

“They are bad/wrong/stupid because they do or like xyz.”

And many other thoughts including judging or putting others down to make myself feel better about myself (without realizing it at the time). Or using my anger to justify judging others, acting out in that anger, or holding grudges towards others. 

TO BE CLEAR: NONE OF THE ABOVE THOUGHTS ARE IN AND OF THEMSELVES BAD OR WRONG. 

AND THIS IS THE POINT: IN LOVE, THERE IS NO BAD OR WRONG. NO GOOD VS EVIL. 

THERE JUST IS. 

THERE JUST IS LOVE. 

THERE JUST IS. 

What I learned, and potently from studying at the University of Santa Monica, is that love exists beyond the mind. Beyond the judgments and thought patterns that separate us from oneness, wholeness, from LOVE…

This is something I learned profoundly, experientially, over two years of studying spiritual psychology. 

TRUE UNCONDITIONAL LOVE IS SOMETHING I BELIEVE CAN ONLY BE UNDERSTOOD BY EXPERIENCING IT. 

Western society became obsessed with the mind, with facts, with logic because of The Enlightenment. Most indigenous and many other cultures have remembered that WE ARE MORE THAN OUR MINDS. Our hearts, our love, our innate KNOWINGNESS and CONNECTEDNESS is where our true power lies.  

I believe now is the time to reclaim our hearts. To live in our souls, our bodies, our HEARTS rather than our HEADS…

Our heart shows us that regardless of differences in beliefs, opinions, or even expression, LOVE CAN STILL LEAD. 

LOVE within - for ourselves, for others. Love expressed, acted upon, EMBODIED, is the only place where wholeness lies. The only place we feel ONE. The only true space within ourselves where we can experience PEACE. 

So, the next time you recognize a judgment pop into your head about another person, I encourage you to acknowledge this. When you have some space for yourself, examine the judgment. Recognize how you feel less connected to your heart, yourself, to love when you are experiencing judgment.. and, if you so choose, you can forgive yourself for judging the other person. You can remember that at their core, they are love. You are love. We are all love. THERE IS ONLY LOVE. 

You don’t have to condone others’ actions. You don’t have to put up with being treated like crap. You CAN, however, separate the action from the individual. You can see the love that they are underneath it all.

You can CHOOSE TO RESIDE IN LOVE REGARDLESS OF EXTERNAL CIRCUMSTANCES. 

Because let’s face it, TRUE LOVE is what this world desperately needs more of right now. 

LET US BE THIS LOVE.

Much love,

Jenna

P.S. Many of us were also raised not learning how to healthily feel and process our emotions. LOVE is not ignoring or suppressing emotions. Love is not thinking our way out of feeling certain ways. Love is not sugar coating the truth of what we feel or believe underneath. EMBODYING true love takes a hell of a lot of work. Being willing to honestly examine oneself, acknowledge the limiting & judgmental constructs we were raised to believe, and then doing the inner work to surrender those old ways of thought. Being willing to see and understand yourself and the world in new ways, based on what this process reveals to you. 

Having the support of others that were trained in and students of this type of work is what helped me genuinely return to love within me… not just at a superficial level that can’t last or feel truly peaceful. But a deep, whole, embodied experience of UNCONDITIONAL LOVE. I encourage you to seek support to truly free yourself from the inner blocks you may experience separating you from the LOVE that you are, that you come from.. If you’d like to explore working with me for support through this process, you can click here.