Without sufficient Real Love, our lives can only be an endless series of choices made from a place of emptiness and fear. We can’t act from who we are. We act from pain, as though we were nothing more than automatic reflexes—blind and mindless. What a horrifying way to live.
Real Love eliminates pain and fear, and what remains is who we are. But who we really are does not immediately become evident just because the pain disappears. I have observed many, many people lose their fears, and the results are uniformly revolutionary and positive, but then they say something like this: “What do I do now? All I’ve ever known is reacting to pain. I’ve never made truly conscious choices, so I don’t know where to go or what to do. I don’t know who I really am.”
Indeed. Most of us have lived all our lives in the depths of a dark cave. With love we emerge into the light, which creates far more possibilities than the darkness. But just because we’re now in the light doesn’t mean that instantly we’re gifted with knowing what we’re seeing. Everything is unfamiliar. What are we looking at? Where should we go? What should we do? Who are we? We tend to be paralyzed with questions and confusion. What is the solution?
In the beginning, just move. Just DO stuff—anything that doesn’t involve fear and pain or the selfish feelings and behaviors that follow. As you keep moving and doing, you will discover who you are, what you can do, and what works for you. Allow me to illustrate.
Imagine that you are an object, and you can’t see yourself, so you don’t know exactly what you are. How can you find out? Let’s experiment by just doing stuff.
First you attempt to pound a nail into a board. That appears to work for a few blows, but the nail doesn’t move far. What did you just learn? You’re not a hammer.
Then you attempt to strain leaves off the surface of a pool. That seems to work better than hammering a nail, until you see a real pool strainer in action, and quickly you conclude that you were not meant to strain leaves.
You begin to dig a hole in the ground. You succeed in removing the upper surface of soft soil, but when you get to the harder material underneath, your progress becomes negligible. You’re not a shovel.
Then somebody throws a yellow, fuzzy ball at you, and you strike out and hit it. The balls flies a considerable distance. You do it again and again, and you learn that not only can you hit the ball hard, but with practice you can hit it with accuracy. You’ve discovered that you’re a tennis racket, and you learned this only by experimenting and simply continuing to do things. You kept trying stuff until you discovered what you were.
And so it is in real life. How can we know that we have a gift and desire for doing a particular thing—or many things—until we try a lot of things?
First find the love you need. Trust it. Remember it. Share it. Eliminate the pain in your life. Then just get busy doing stuff. In the process you’ll discover what you can do, your gifts, your interests, and more—who you are.
