“Keep what’s true in front of you, Old Man said. You won’t get lost that way. I was asking about making my way through the bush. He was talking about making my way through life. Turns out, all these years later, it was the same conversation.”
Richard Wagamese, Embers, One Ojibway’s Meditations
This.
Keep what’s true in front of me.
“What is true for me?”, I ask myself. This is what I know to be true:
Love is.
My dreams are filled with love.
So that’s what I’m supposed to keep in front of me— Love. And my dreams that are filled with love. Not the definition of love. Not the concepts. Not the science of it. But the experience of love in all my relationships. And the vision of life being better than it is for all my relations.
When I keep my experience of love and my vision, my dream where love makes life better, in front of me, I am not lost. I have a compass with my North Star clearly visible or felt for me. To keep love in front of me, then I also keep the truth of what I value in front of me. And then as Rumi says, I am in a position where I am ‘silently drawn by the stronger pull of what I really love … for it will not lead me astray.’
Love speaks the truth. Love offers freedom. Love creates harmony even in diversity. It does not invade my privacy, nor does it require me to be someone I am not. Ah, the truth of what I genuinely need and am passionate about can be in front of me. I don’t need to alter it, minimize what I need, lie about my needs, dull it, displace it, project it, or make them ‘acceptable’ in the eyes of others. Love seeks to be true and free and respecting.
Love in front of me. That means with my family and ancestors. That means forgiving them and being at peace with the past. Seeing love freely flowing from the stranger in front of me who smiles and says a kind word to me.
When I keep love in front of me with its foundation of truth and freedom, then I can keep my heart open to the flowing of love to me and from within me out, here and now. I can keep my heart open to my dreams, even when my dreams feel distant and unachievable.
Keep love in front of me. A mantra. And suddenly or slowly and gently, I’m recognizing:
- love being shared in the heart-felt conversations with my personal coach.
- love when my heart opens and connects with the beauty and power of Nature, the bald eagle who flies down the river behind me.
- the sun which radiates through the trees and bounces off the backs of my dogs running through the grove of trees in sheer delight.
- the mystery of love from a client or friend when I have failed to be at my best.
Keep what’s true in front of me. Higher Love is true.
Love calls me to participate in sharing and receiving. Moment to moment. Day to day. Its present to me. Calling me into freedom. To return home to my truth, my soul centre. The more I keep Love in front of me, the more I find myself, here and now. Grateful for what was. Grateful for what is. Even grateful for what will be.
Love is not dominance. Dominance is about power. Dominance and power becomes politics. Who gets what and how much. The relationship becomes about politics, not about truth and freedom. When relationships become about politics, about power, then what’s in front is the same thing as what is behind. Conflict arises.
I will fail, falter and fumble. I will forget to keep what’s true in front of me. But I know now. When I keep what’s true in front of me, higher love, then my dreams will be my guide, my core values will be the lens for my choices, my truth will light my darkness. I will know where I am, no longer lost.
When I am with higher love, expressed in the ordinary and deliciously simple moments of life, then life is blessed and I am home. Peace.
Namaste,
Shirley Lynn