Why Are We So Resistant to Love?

Why are we SO resistant to love? As I wake up each morning, reading more and more stories about global abuse—about cars running into crowds of people, about white supremacists burning torches in marches, and about citizens stabbing their neighbors, I am overcome.I am overcome, not with hopelessness, but with the pain that we are in.Collectively, we are in pain. We are lost. We are empty. We are frightened. And unacknowledged, unaddressed fear presents as RAGE.We are RAGING. There is a fire burning through the hearts of humankind. And we must let it burn. The fires are burning away all of our illusions and delusions. There is question that comes up again and again and again for me—why are we SO resistant to love? Why is it SO hard for us to believe that a world can exist where LOVE is the dominant force, energy and experience in our lives?Most of us cannot even imagine what that looks like. We are SO addicted to pain, to debt, to violence, to “othering” that we actually believe that it is part of the human condition.And, yes, up until this moment, we have been living on a planet of duality. Pain exists. I’ve felt it in my body. In my heart. Marginalized communities feel it every day. Children starve. Women are raped. Animals are abused. We have lived and existed in savagery. We have lived and subsisted. We have scraped and saved and starved one another to survive.Have we had enough of this story yet?If it isn’t enough when terrorists are murdering innocent people and the majority of the United States is in debt and our president and the leader of North Korea are in a nuclear standoff, when WILL IT BE? Whether you believe in the energetic and metaphysical power of eclipse or not, imagine this:On Monday, our Sun, the source of all life on this planet—the one that burns and rises and falls every morning witnessing our human story, will be BLACKED OUT. For one minute and twenty seconds, the light of the world will go out. In the middle of the day, we will experience complete darkness. Death.When that sun comes back from the total eclipse, a new window is open. In that moment, each of us and all of us has a chance to start a new experience of life. If you need a more scientifically sound explanation of this phenomenon, read this.It’s an extraordinary opportunity. One that will not come again in most of our lifetimes. It's an opportunity for a profound personal and society reset.  Sounds good, right? We can just all do it differently and start over.On some level, it is that simple. We can stop writing the collective story of hate and write a collective story of love.But in order to continue this story, I’m going to speak from personal experience.I’ve had a rough go of love in my life: I’ve repeatedly fallen in love with partners who couldn’t be available or weren't right for me. In short, I have caused myself repeated pain through my inability to choose and commit to appropriate partners for me. It would be easy enough, each time I fall in love with someone new, to simply think, “Ah! A new opportunity. I will do it differently this time.”But the truth is, there are reasons I have caused myself or experienced pain in my relationships. I have had beliefs, stories, ideas, experiences, patterns in my brain and my body which have drawn me repeatedly into the pain story. No matter how much I want to change, until I am willing to go back and do the dark work to look at the darkness in my own heart, I will keep projecting into the world around me.I have had to do YEARS of work to prepare for this eclipse (we, as humankind, have too). On Monday, when that sun goes into blackness and emerges in light, I will have a new and profound experience of love. And I will because I have done the hard, dark, work. I am finished with the old story—it has nothing left to teach me.(And as I claim that for myself, I am planting the seeds of possibility for all of us. We are all one. And that’s how evolution works). So, when I think about what’s happening in humanity, I know how hard it will be for all of us to change—to let go of the story of terrorism and supremacy and nuclear warfare. It will be hard work. Much harder than protesting. Much harder than raising money. Much harder.And we won’t do it until we have had enough of the pain. One day we will have to stand up and say (like I did in partnership), NO MORE. I will not write this story one more day. I have had enough and I am willing to do whatever it takes to have a new experience of life. We will never solve these problems with war, with protest, with counter violence, with nasty posts on Facebook. NEVER. We will write a new collective story when each of us realizes that we can actually have a new experience of life on this planet.We don’t have to live on a planet of duality any more. I promise you.We are called—in this period of time—to remember that we are evolving organisms. We can choose to evolve out this pain story. There is a world without debt, violence, rape, nuclear warfare, duality, racism. There is a world where LOVE, thriving, connection is the new normal.I promise you.  So why don’t we have it now? Because most of us haven’t transmuted our own darkness yet. This war isn’t external. It’s internal. Every major prophet and religious leader of the ages has previewed this for us.We all have to turn inward—look at, fearlessly, our own darkness. Untangle it from our own hearts. Clean our own minds and beliefs. And if every single human on this planet did that work for herself or himself alone, we would all be free.We are so resistant to love outside of us because we don’t feel it in our bodies. Once we feel the truth of love in our bodies, we will believe its possible outside of us. And once enough of us believe that, it will be so.My heart is speaking to you. DIRECTLY to your heart. Believe me—believe it is so. We create the world we live in.We can do this—this is what we came for.Have we had enough yet?When the eclipse comes on Monday, and the sun goes black, please say with me:I affirm that this a planet, a humankind, an experience of love, of peace, of thriving.May it be so.