One step away from love – a decision for love
Even when we feel lost and unloved, even then (I argue) we are only one step away from love!
Love is
The difficulty, or rather a higher level of difficulty, begins when we begin to understand that love cannot be taught. Love is simple. Love is life. We can open ourselves to love, we can let it flow with us, be it, flow with it, be in it, flow in it, flow with it, merge with it, blossom in it.
Wanting to learn to love is similar to wanting to learn something else. It means moving it into the future when we are so far in the future – when we have learned to love (ourselves). By focusing on the future, we are also subconsciously informing ourselves that we are not okay, that we are not yet perfect.
We are different
The problem is our view of perfection. We comb all people with the same comb. We use the same yardstick and then compare ourselves. We see that one person can do so and so well or so and so poorly. But we don’t see the context (!) in which this or that person is supposedly so good or supposedly so bad at this or that.
I use the following example in my seminars:
If the fish were to learn to climb trees, would that be okay?
If we could actually convince the fish that they should learn to do it because everyone else can, what chance of success would those fish have? Even if they tried and practiced as hard as they could, … what would be the result? And how would those fish feel about that? Most likely as failures, unable to learn/learn, unable to develop and keep up with others …
But are those fish worse because of it?
Are they really incompetent?
Is it possible to say that they have failed in their case?
And can we, as outsiders, claim that even as fish they are incompetent?
If we consider the model of rebirth, we can understand that we do not know what previous experiences and what stages of development a particular person has already gone through. We don’t know what he was like in his previous lives and even in his last life. We can see him as someone who is clumsily trying to climb a small tree, and we do not understand what the problem should be and why he is behaving so clumsily, when it is clear to everyone that such a task can easily be handled by children in kindergarten. Yes, but not if this person has spent all his incarnations as a fish in water and the first challenge for him is not the climbing itself, but the very contact with dry ground. Those first steps on it are not a matter of course for him!
Conversely, we can’t say we’re all losers just because we can’t spend more than a minute underwater – can we?
People are different. When we observe someone’s awkward, illogical, or unpleasant behavior, we are looking at it through the filter of our own consciousness and our own familiar choices. In doing so, we often forget to take into account that the possibilities of the person we are observing are most likely already the next stage in the development of his or her own prior possibilities.
Whether we like it or not, it may be that the uncouth potentate (who is just learning to serve) was a tyrannical dictator in a previous life, and his present behavior is already a humanization, a sensitization, a softening of his nature, whether we perceive it that way or not.
We are fine
We are all always fine just the way we are. Life automatically teaches us what is right for us, whether we consciously want it or not. And if we feel lost, if we have truly gone astray (in life), if we have forgotten ourselves and our soul, even then we are always just one step away from the right path, from love, from ourselves, no matter how great the distance seems! And so we just need to take that one single step to return (to ourselves).
What kind of miraculous step is this?
That step is our inner decision!
A decision in favor of (!) something instead of against (!) something.
But also a re-decision – a reconsideration of the former decision!
One step away from love – a decision for love
It may be that we once consciously or unconsciously decided in favour of something other than our own (i.e. against ourselves) because we didn’t want what we had, but we wanted something that others had: knowledge, love, peace, acquaintances, money, fame or something else. No matter how far in the past such a decision lies, no matter what it has brought into our life and energy system, no matter how far from the fateful crossroads we have already taken the wrong path, yet we are still only one step away from ourselves, from our own path, from love, and from our own truth.
Being just one step away from love/truth/life for me also means deciding in favor of love, one’s own truth and natural vitality out of pure inner conviction and desire. No big whoppers! A simple decision and a voluntary first step towards love, truth and life vitality…
© Kristina Hazler 02/2012 from the German original (updated 12/2017)
On this topic I recommend
- https://kristinahazler.com/en/the-labyrinth/