The question we need to be asking ourselves

Over the years, whenever I have been faced with a problem, a challenge, a confusion, a triggering experience, I would always ask myself, “What would (insert current teacher’s name) do?” In those moments, I would shift perspective from my own little personal life, and instead look through the eyes of my spiritual teacher. I would try to see life how they see it. I would listen to what they would have said from their greater depth of perception, from their greater awareness.

I would see with new eyes. And I would always find such comfort in this. Almost immediately the overwhelm would settle and some calmness would move in. A greater awareness would permeate the space. A bigger picture perspective. A more unified understanding. It didn’t mean the individual body feelings would completely disappear. But it created greater space to see. To see what was actually going on, not what I thought was going on. To see what was being gifted and the transformational beauty in that moment. To see there was actually no problem. And to have a clarity to act from that seeing. 

Because if you think about it, in life everything is a perspective. Everything is experienced through our own ‘seeing’. And this seeing is very much influenced by our past experiences, ideas and belief systems. This has the ability to create a seeing that is clouded, limited and full of separation, or a seeing that is clear, inclusive and unbounded. For most of us, with our upbringing and the lack of conscious awareness in our society, we’re living in the first category of seeing. And this is what is causing our so-called ‘problems’.

The beautiful thing about our perspective (limited or unlimited) coming from our own self, means that in each moment, we have the opportunity to shift it. To ask ourselves, "Is this true? Is this the fullness of the experience? How am I creating my own problems? Is there another way of seeing this?"

Now if you don’t have an embodied teacher in your life to model your own awareness off and ask, ‘What would they do?’ there’s no need to worry (nor head to India on a mission to find one.) Because a true embodied human is simply a reflection of what we all essentially are – pure awareness, pure consciousness, or a word that holds a much greater palpable experience to it… LOVE. If love is what we are, and love is what we wish to be, then in each moment we can simply ask ourselves, “What would love do?”

Would love judge, control and hold a grudge? Or would love see, feel, forgive and understand?

Would love hate the body it lives in and the life it lives? Or would love see its body and life as a beautiful vehicle, an expression of pure consciousness, here to play and enjoy?

Would love speak negatively about someone, bitch and gossip? Or would love see the sweet truth and highlight that which it wishes to see grow?

Would love live in competition? Or would love accept and bring each part of itself back into wholeness?

Would love allow damaging bad behaviour to continue? Or would love create purposeful boundaries, and look for a more evolutionary way forwards?

Would love get pissed off, frustrated or annoyed? Or would love simply love. Hug. Hold. Unify?

I think we all know the answer.

The perspective of love is unbounded. It is the natural expression of life itself. It’s the whole purpose of life, the ultimate experience, the reason why it invented us. But identified as little individualities, we tend to forget this. And instead we live limited love in our lives which causes us to control, plan, assess or try to work out how to the get best for our self.

And this is what we need to transcend, because it’s this perspective that creates all the problems in life. All problems are personal. Individual. Limited. And if we want to be having a different experience in life, then we need to be practicing a different way of being and living. Our whole society, our humanity, is actually relying on this for us to evolve.

But we need to remember that becoming anything is a practice. When we practice stress everyday, we become stressed. When we practice being individual everyday, then we become individuals. And if we practice love? We become loving beings. So love in one aspect can be seen as a practice. It’s a way of being and living that needs to be cultivated. And this is not always easy! No doubt we will all be, (and already have been!) challenged and faced with actions of love that our little stressed individualities won’t want to do. It's in these moments, we must remember that love is guiding us. And if we want to be what we say we want to be… expressions of love living a life in love, then we need to surrender to love. We need to become love.

“What would love do?” That’s the question we need to be asking. That’s our way out of problems and into grace. That’s our way into a life of love.