Resisting Pain

I recently found myself resistant to being hurt in love.

I wanted to hold back my love. I found I wasn't willing to hurt. I wanted to hold back the pain that came when I thought that maybe me and my love were not on the same page.

When I found that resistance, I cried.

There is no Emotional Mastery that removes resistance entirely.

That wouldn't be desirable, anyway.

Resistance is useful, a fundamental force of the universe.

Emotional Mastery means right-application and calibration of resistance.

It means when resistance arises, I know what to do with it, how to use it or how to find acceptance.

I cried not in resistance to the resistance, but as a way of remembering that all love carries risk, that being willing to love REQUIRES being willing to grieve.

All acts of love are temporary. All objects of love are temporary. My opportunity to love in this form is temporary.

It's guaranteed to hurt when I lose, and I'm guaranteed to lose.

What's not guaranteed is having love in the first place.

Yes, the more I love the more I lose.

But the more I love the more I LOVE.

Love is a risk, but love is not a threat.

Choosing to love in this lifetime is not riskier than existing in any other way. I'd argue it's the path with the least risk.

Existence guarantees loss and pain. These are baked-in, non-negotiable.

Pain is not the consequence we risk—WASTING these precious moments is the real risk.

Existence guarantees pain. But existence merely offers love. Love is one among many options of how to spend these moments which cannot be stored or saved.

Since love is such a compelling choice, we make it, yet then we come to believe that it was the love that brought the pain. We come to associate the choice to love with the pain of loss.

No. Life is what brings pain, inevitably. Love I claim to give meaning to my experience of life.

I courageously choose to love. The pain is coming regardless. I might have had the pain instead of the love, the whole time I was loving—I never might have escaped the pain.

No path in this life brings the conditions of safety. Some choices and practices allow me to cultivate for myself an experience of safety in a now moment.

Love is a refuge I can go to, and I go knowing it will someday be ripped away from me.

I still want to be there as much as I can.