Posts Tagged ‘Love’
The Four Noble Truths of Love – Book Review
Monday, July 9th, 2018
Susan Piver’s book, The Four Noble Truths of Love, is an inner course on navigating relationships and well-being. In her new book, New York Times bestselling author and mindfulness expert, Susan Piver applies classic Buddhist wisdom to modern relationships, including her own long-term marriage.
The Four Noble Truths of Love will challenge expectations we have about dating, love, and romance. This mindful approach towards relationships and love invites us to explore our heart fiercely, deepen communications with our partner, increase our compassion, and lead us toward a path of wisdom and happiness.
Through the lens of both her Buddhist practices and her own experience in a 20-year marriage, Piver interweaves personal anecdotes with practical wisdom to arrive at the Four Noble Truths of Love. Piver spends time in each truth: Relationships never stabilize; Expecting relationships to be stable is what makes them unstable; Meeting instability together is love; The path to liberation. While her practices come from a Buddhist background and her study of the Four Noble Truths, the Four Noble Truths of Love are an invitation to be questioned and examined from our own experience/s.
It’s when we stop trying to see a relationship as only an extended love affair that we gain access to its unique and often undercelebrated powers: of warmth; of solace; of protection; of friendship; a connection that slows and deepens until it subsumes both hearts and blurs the lines between you, me, and us. –Susan Piver
Piver shares from her own personal experience of marriage including some personal struggles and revelations. She shares that if a couple meets their instability together – this is love. This book is a teaching on love from a “big” mind. There are insights about the phases of relationships, from irritation to deep compassion. Piver also offers practical wisdom, including meditation practices. Meditation can be a practice of love.
Everything in this book is a practice – of the heart, of the mind, of the Self. Love at its core is about being vulnerable, open, and kindhearted. Love shows us our inherent goodness and it can also reveal our unhealed pain. Love isn’t about hiding the pain, rather its’ about uncovering it. This path takes great courage – and the noble truths of love offer wise insight to practice that courage.
*I received an advance review copy of Susan Piver’s The Four Noble Truths of Love. I have also met Susan Piver and taken courses with the Open Heart Project.
Watching Over Everything
Wednesday, June 28th, 2017
The birds – they see everything. They fly overhead seeing everything. The birds have a different view.
View. The view of the heart. Does that not watch over everything too? How do we watch over? With love? With judgment? With peace? With an open heart?
Is there a being of love watching over everything? Perhaps this is my faith calling me back. Maybe I am ready, listening, and remembering to return.
Returning to light and darkness. Day and night. Doesn’t that watch over us too?
The night sky – looking up – watching over everything through the stars. The lights blinking, glowing, soaring through the sky. What do the stars see through their lens of light?
The light passes. The darkness opens me up to more light. Here I am shining. Here we are shining.
I have learned how much is watching over me. In the end, it is love, always love, watching over me. Here I AM: SKY, SPIRIT, STARS, LOVE watching….
Watching over everything.
This essay was inspired from the Prompt a Day Program with Cynthia Morris.
May I Have This Dance?
Wednesday, June 15th, 2016
“You didn’t come all this way to sit on a couch, did you?” That was my pick up line at a dance in 1994. It was awkward and funny and eventually I danced with the woman who became my spouse.
It was almost 22 years ago that I went to a dance by myself to be part of the L.G.B.T. community, to meet new friends, and to dance. I remember feeling scared to go. It took every ounce of courage to get on the subway from the Bronx and travel to Webster Hall in Manhattan for a big dancing night. I didn’t know a soul there. I walked into the room wide-eyed and curious and anxious. I was searching for something I didn’t even know I was seeking – my inner freedom. The freedom to be myself, fully. The freedom to be with a woman. The freedom to love – all of me. The freedom to release worry of what “others” might think.
That night in Webster Hall gave me more than a life partner. It gave me my life back. A life that was no longer ashamed to be who I am in the world. A life where I was no longer inhibited by internal or external homophobia. A life where I was no longer inhibited by my body image.
Dance halls and clubs are where so many in the L.G.B.T. community gather for a sense of belonging, connection, and hope. Dance floors are places of refuge. In Buddhist terms, clubs and dance floors are often our sangha. It’s our community. It’s a place we can express ourselves, release inhibition, and be completely free – arms in the air (like we just don’t care).
The tragedy in Orlando was an attack on more than the L.G.B.T. community. It was an attack on expression and freedom. It opened up old shame wounds of our society about integration, diversity, sexuality, and our beliefs on how we define love. In many ways, it was an attack on love itself.
The mass shooting could have targeted any community and many have experienced this trauma before in other places and with other victims: movie theaters, schools, politicians, children, churches, and L.G.B.T. communities.
Our L.G.B.T. community has been vulnerable to hate, to slurs, to violence, to whispers, to looks, to shame, and more. Anyone who has ever come out knows these experiences deep in their cells. It’s the one where someone in our life feels disappointed, scared, angry and ashamed about who we are and who we love. At times, it triggers our own questioning of our identity and we begin to question — is this the life I want?
Then, on a random Saturday night, you ask someone to dance. And you dance and dance and dance.
And then you know, this sangha, this dance hall/club refuge is the very freedom that lives inside of you waiting to be expressed in the world.
Please remember – you are not alone. We are in this together.
Cry. Hug. Hold Hands. Sing. Be Seen. Be Heard. Love More. Dance. Keep Dancing.
Allow grief to surface. Reach out. And when you are ready, please keep dancing.
We Are Orlando.
Rest in Love
Tuesday, November 30th, 2010
Love is the antidote to what ails us.
I have been thinking about love — being in love, letting love in, giving love. As I prepared for the final yoga resting pose, Savasana, I heard the teacher say that this is the position that gets rid of all impurities and allows the body to process all the poses. “Dharma (Mittra) says that Savasana is the antidote to all impurities.” I closed my eyes, relaxed my body, took long and slow breaths and rested.
As I felt myself rest in love, I could feel the whole room fill with love. And when it came time to open my eyes, all I could hear from my meditation was, “Love is antidote to what ails us.”
May we rest in love, always.
Mary Anne
What’s Your Favorite Joni Mitchell Song?
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010
I spent this weekend listening to Joni Mitchell. There is nothing like Joni Mitchell lyrics to wake you up to what’s happening inside. Listening to her songs reminded how much healing there is left and how much more love there is available:
If I Had a Heart
Holy War
Genocide
Suicide
Hate and cruelty…
How can this be holy?
If I had a heart, I’d cry
Holy Earth
How can we heal you?
We cover you like a blight…
Strange birds of appetite…
If I had a heart, I’d cry.
{If I Had a Heart}
and… another song…
Love never looks for love
Love’s not puffed up
Or envious
Or touchy
Because it rejoices in the truth
Not in iniquity
Love sees like a child sees
Where as a child I saw it face to face
Now I only know it in part
Fractions in me
Of faith and hope and love
And of these great three
Love’s the greatest beauty
Love
Love
Love
{Love)
Love more.
Mary Anne
What Is The Cost of Intolerance? Lives.
Friday, October 1st, 2010
As I read the reports of the tragic suicide of Tyler Clementi who leapt to his death from the George Washington Bridge after allegedly having his sex life broadcast all over the web, I am saddened by the disregard for basic humanity and dignity. More information will come out about this story, but the invasion of privacy and the bullying that takes every day is unacceptable. In the meantime, I send my thoughts and prayers to Tyler’s family as they mourn their loss.
According to the Associated Press, there have been at least 12 cases in the U.S. since 2003 in which children and young adults between 11 and 18 killed themselves after falling victim to some form of “cyberbullying” — teasing, harassing or intimidating with pictures or words distributed online or via text message. And according to statistics, gay and lesbian youth are four times more likely to attempt suicide.
I personally know the pain of wanting to hide my sexuality and even having suicide as an option as a teenager. Luckily for me, I was never humiliated or harassed. I didn’t experience the hate and intimidation that so many of our gay youth face.
Every time we destroy another human being in any way, we destroy something far greater than one individual or group.
What is the cost of intolerance? Lives.
Mary Anne
Love or Illusion?
Wednesday, August 18th, 2010
When I look through the eyes of love, the world seems so open with possibility. I wrote in my journal,”If it is not love, then it is an illusion.” So much of life and what we tell ourselves is an illusion. I was meditating on illusions and when I finished, I turned on my iPod and Melissa Etheridge’s song, Only Love, was playing.
As I started singing along, I heard her lyrics:
“Only love is real
Everything is love
Everything you feel
That’s what your world is made of
And when I took a good look around I see
My thoughts are coming back to me
So look around
We are in charge of our own dreams
We have more power than it seems
So look around”
I’m looking around with love.
Mary Anne
All We Have Is This Moment (Part II)
Tuesday, July 27th, 2010
Just as I finished my last blog about living in the moment, I came across this topic in the book I am reading, A Thousand Names for Joy, by Byron Katie. In her book, Katie writes, “Where are you going, other than where you are right now? How can you go anywhere else? The direct path means realizing that the beginning and end of every journey is where you always are.”
Then this past weekend, I picked up the book, Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert and started to re-read all the dog-eared pages. As I flipped the pages, I came across the following lines in the book: “The other problem with all this swinging through the vines of thought is that you are never where you are. You are always digging in the past or poking at the future, but rarely do you rest in this moment.
In my meditation, this is what came through about living in the moment:
You are here. Not knowing, never knew. Never needed to and never will. If your thoughts float to the past, you can bring them back with love. If your thoughts wander too far into the future, you can bring them back with love. When we choose to live in this moment, we choose a direct path to our heart and the divine. Being present to this moment right now means being home. Welcome home.
To celebrating now with love,
Mary Anne
I Am a Mirror of You
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010
One day my spiritual teacher asked me what I admired most about a new friend I had just met. I said, “She is smart, creative, and funny. She is generous, kind, and heart-centered. I admire her tenacity, her openness, and dedication to spirituality.” My teacher said, “That sounds a lot like you.” With a smile on my face, I thought, “Really?” She went on to say, “What you see in her is what is inside of you. She is simply a mirror looking back at you.”
What positive aspect of another is showing up in your life as a mirror looking back at you?
Mary Anne
Conversation with a Seven Year Old
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010
I love speaking with my nephew as he can always make me smile – even without realizing it. He is just so open, real, and pure and he reminds me I can still be like a seven year old in the world. About two weeks ago we spoke on the phone and the conversation went something like this:
Me: Hi George.
George: Hi Aunt Mary Anne (said with glee).
Me: What are you doing?
George: Playing my Nintendo DS.
Me: Which game?
George: Mario Brothers.
Me: How was school today?
George: Great!
Me: What was the best part of your day?
George: Well…I think it was when I was in the lunch room and saw Mrs. Henderson (the lunchroom lady).
Me: Why was that the best part of your day?
George: Well, I like Mrs. Henderson because she is nice.
Me: That’s great George. Have you ever told her that you think she is nice?
George: No, but I do give her a hug.
Me: I am sure she likes that.
George: Yea.
Me: George?
George: What?
Me: Are you distracted?
George: Yes, I am distracted.
Me: What’s distracting you?
George: Well, I am talking to you.
Me: Thanks for that. I love you.
George: I love you too, lots and lots.
Note to self: play more, thank people more, remember the best part of my day, give more hugs, and focus on love.
Thanks George.
Mary Anne