Love Withheld

I‘m reading a book called Inward by Yung Pueblo. It’s full of succinct fragments of deep wisdom comprising a whole meditation on the inward journey. The author notes early on that:

“what we face internally is a microcosm of what humanity faces globally” (p 30).

To that foundational premise, he later adds:

“Whenever we are asked to limit our love, to be selective with our love, to reserve our love from some parts of ourselves and not others or to reserve our love for some people and not others, we do a disservice to ourselves by following along, because any love withheld becomes tension in our being” (p 213).

How abundantly true this is! “Love withheld becomes tension in our being”…tension in our individual beings, manifesting in all sorts of physical, emotional, & psychological symptoms of distress; and tension in our collective being, in all forms of division, rupture, violence, abuses of power, anxiety, and despair.

We need look no farther than our own internal landscape or a mere 30 seconds of news coverage to see the signs of these tensions, and I think this dynamic begs the following sorts of questions:

• Where am I withholding love?

• What parts of myself have I deemed unlovable?

• Who is asking me to limit my love––for myself or others?

• Who is telling me that love is to be reserved for some people and not others?

• Who have I/we deemed to be outside the limits of my/our love?

• How can I/we draw the circle wider, withholding love from no parts of ourselves and from no other?

And that seems like enough questions to last a lifetime, so I’ll pause.

May we allow love to flow freely in our being today and always,

sd.