I remember seeing that t-shirt when I was about 11 years old and thinking it was funny but not entirely grasping why. Love is one of the most twisted, misunderstood, and misdirected emotions. I feel this is due to what so many see is Love’s direct correlation to power over others. As humans throughout our evolution anything that can provide power over others has been twisted and exploited.

So what gives something power over others? It requires two things: It must be powerful and it must be in limited supply. Love is by its very nature powerful. This is just what is. It is how the Universe is made. It is a constant. The part about limited supply is within the control of each of us. It is the easily controlled variable in the equation. Could it be possible to have a shortage of oil in the world if every single person had their own unlimited oil well and refinery? Sure, we would just have to decide that our own unlimited supply of oil was not enough for ourselves so we should barely use it and then be very stingy in how we share it with others. See, and you didn’t think it was possible! We each have an unlimited supply of love within ourselves. We are often very stingy in sharing it with others and even more often when sharing it with ourselves. Like much of human behavior when we examine it from a higher, zoomed out, perspective our ridiculousness is exposed.

What happens when we keep our unlimited supply of love contained, bottled up within ourselves? Like Love, helium is extremely light, lighter than air even. Kids love helium balloons for that very reason. It is like magic. They float on air! Every mom or dad who has tried to drive home from the neighborhood family restaurant with those things floating around the back seat hitting them in the back of the head and obstructing their view out the rear window knows this. Restaurants store their helium in those big green pressurized tanks. The magic does not happen until they let it out in a balloon. How happy would those kids be if they each got a 200 lb big green tank that they couldn’t open? Not to mention the parents with it in their back seats. You thought it was annoying when the balloons hit you in the back of the head!

Love is much the same way. When we contain it within ourselves it is not light and beautiful. It is heavy and burdensome. It restricts us and shuts us down in so many ways. So why do we do it? Power! We think it gives us power. Everybody wants love from ourselves and from everyone around us. When we withhold it we have something everybody wants including ourselves!

A favorite exercise I do with groups is to have them look back on an incident that happened very early on in life, usually around four or five years old. This should be an event that has a clear memory and strong emotions attached to it. Once people identify the event the next step is to look back and see what they decided about themselves at that moment. It is usually something along the lines of: I’m a bad person, people can’t be trusted, people abandon me, I deserve second best, and so on. Then we ask, if a four or five year old walked up to you now and told you one of these negative ideas about yourself how serious would you take them?   Probably not very much, they don’t have the life experience to know the difference yet. However, we were only four or five when we made these judgments about ourselves then spent years of our lives living into this belief. It was ingrained within ourselves and we never took the time to reexamine the lack of truth in this statement and reframe our belief about ourselves. It can be a powerful experience when we realize we are still holding onto an insult a four year old gave us, even if it was ourselves.

This also happens regularly in the collective human consciousness. False ideas of how things are find their way into the collective conscious and we accept them as truths without examining how ludicrous they are. Love is a perfect example of this. When we withhold love, who are we really taking power from? We engage in a power struggle with the world. We act as if love is a commodity that should only be spent frugally. If we all have unlimited supply of it why be frugal with it? We have tricked ourselves into a trap. We engage in a game that limits every participant. The idea that love is only to be given to those we deem worthy is a false idea. When we give love unconditionally to everyone including ourselves we all become worthy. When we withhold love it becomes heavy, a burden to carry around, weight on our chest holding us down.

Next time you interact with someone who annoys you feel in your body what you are doing to yourself. You tighten your chest and shoulders. You think negative, low energy thoughts. You take yourself to a place you don’t want to be. Yes, you do this to yourself. It is not about the other person. Why do you suppose this person finds the need to try to annoy others? The answer is always the same. They want love. So, please for all of our sakes, give them love. Give everyone love. Give yourself love.

This does not mean we should by any means take on other people’s dramas. We can send love without engaging in drama traps. In fact your love will assist people in releasing the need to engage in drama.   Love is simply a vibration of energy we allow to flow from our hearts out into the world around us, a flow that can run endlessly, unrestricted, and effortlessly. The only thing that takes effort with love is to restrict and pressurize it.

Let’s break the old outdated and incorrect idea that love is a commodity and give love to everyone! Take the weight off yourself. Depressurize your love tank (That would probably make a good t-shirt too) and share it with everyone so we can all realize we are worthy.

Love and Light,

David Aaron Waldas