by Bill Cumming

Five times this week i am either participating in or leading conversations that will be primarily focused on LOVE. Three of them are part of “What One Person Can Do” or the Advanced Exploration; the others are with people i have yet to meet. The most challenging part of it is that my experience is that, in realty, the experience of love is just that, an experience, and, as such, can only be pointed toward or described peripherally.

Let me first be outrageous enough to point to what i mean by the word “love.” Usually i arrive at an understanding of what we are discussing when we use the word “love,” by asking questions:

If i brought you a 10 year old child from a third world country, would you want that child to starve to death or constantly be worried about where the next meal is coming from?

Would you want them to be homeless or in fear of it?

Would you want them to be able to create a meaningful, productive, contributory, joyous life and have the tools necessary to do so?

It is a feeling of connectedness that is amazing, profound, moving, joyous, can be felt in the heart, warm, gentle, all-encompassing. It is as if there is only one of us. Another clue to what i mean by the word love can be discerned by looking at the original Sanskrit definition of the word, Namaste, which is as follows:

I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides!

I honor the place in you of love, of light, of truth and of peace!

When you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me,
there is only one of us!

When you love someone, you expect nothing from them. You know that you are one and the same, a part of the entire miracle of life. It has nothing to do with knowing them, agreeing with them or wanting to sleep with them. They are special to you because they are.

For years, i have suggested that only people who are capable of bringing children into the world (berthing children, not sperm contribution) should be allowed to run anything, corporations, countries, schools, anything, for about 200 years. Most women know life, its value and meaning at a deeper, more profound level. They are dramatically reminded of it once a month. Those that have given birth or chosen to be Mothers need no one else to describe real love. It doesn’t mean that many have not lost touch with it or had it beaten out of them.

An acorn contains within it the capacity to build an oak tree.

The single cell from which you came has created a being with from 10 to 50 trillion cells within it. Perhaps it is easier to look at these numbers to really get the magnitude of the miracle: 10,000,000,000,000. to 50,000,000,000,000. There are only 7,000,000,000 people on planet earth. Every person is part of this miracle. Everything is part of this miracle.

Not long ago i realized that the way i was signing all my letters did not accurately reflect my experience of love. Previously, i had written, “With all my love and every blessing!” My love? Really. It isn’t my love. Love is the condition in which we exist. The more awake i am, the more i experience it. The more of it i experience, the deeper the experience. It is now written, “With all the love i know!” I can be overwhelmed by it simply walking down the street. I may be physically attracted to another person; that has nothing to do with my experience of loving them. Capital I implies significance. The actual experience of love is completely humble. It recognizes the divinity of all sentient beings. It is never demanding or arrogant. Acting as if I were more important than another is a sign of fear and insecurity.

Interesting in light of all that is happening around the world right now. The computer does not want me to us a small i. It requires retyping to insure it prints correctly. It won’t allow it at all at the beginning of a sentence. The (i) puts in proper perspective our relative worth. From that perspective a whole host of things become clearer.

Next month we’ll talk about why i think we should capitalize Mom and Dad.

All of this will be part of our conversations at Pause Place; www.pauseplace.com

With all the love i know!

Namaste!