THE LOVE YOU ALWAYS DREAMED ABOUT

THE LOVE YOU ALWAYS DREAMED ABOUT

You have to take one moment at a time, child.One breath at a time. Follow the circle of breath, its rising and its falling too.

Both movements are precious.Everything will pass, you see. The rising of the Sun is surely followed by the setting. The old skin sheds. The leaves drop off the tree and are no lessbeautiful in their falling.

Those you love will die totheir physical form and return to light, their original perfection. As Eckhart Tolle reminds us, even the Sun will die.We seek security in places we will never find it. We run from anxiety, avoid that funny emptiness that lives at our core, try to escape from the living.

You were sold a lie about love, you see: that you had to be worthy.Fuck being worthy.Love isn’t something anyone can give you. It’s not something you have to beg for, earn, or deserve.If you succeed, if you score an A+, if you get the promotion, if you win the race, you won't be loved more. You have to shake off that illusion.

You don’t have to be worthy. You only have to be alive, and you are worthy.You are whole even when on your own, and you are never on your own, because you are inseparable from the stars, the mountains, the rustling trees in the meadow.

And you follow the breath as it rises and falls. And you make room in yourself for these long-neglected feelings. You learn to trust the body, its rhythms, the way it tries to protect itself, its unpredictability, its feelings of unsafety.

You breathe into the sore places, make them safe, where it once felt unsafe.Safe to even feel unsafe; that is freedom.To love even the part that feels unlovable; that is the love you always dreamed about, the love you never have to deserve.

- Jeff Foster