TRANSCRIPT:
How do you wield power with love? How do you wield strength with love? Or how does love itself become strength? This, I feel, is fundamental to understanding the real power of love. People say that love is the greatest magic. You know that's a common trope in folk tales and myth, that love conquers all. And I want to really, really sink into that today because it's not, you know, on the surface, it's not exactly clear. Love is, you know, in our culture, seen as something that is maybe fragile or prone to sentimentality or weakness. But in reality, love truly is this gateway and more, more than a gateway, it is itself that great power, that great strength that allows us to conquer all darkness. And to understand where that strength lies within love, we have to understand what it is that love is.
Love is acceptance. When we love, we accept. We accept warmly, totally, completely. We affirm what is. And if this is loving ourselves, that means we affirm and love and accept ourselves totally. As Friedrich Nietzsche said, "make of your life a masterpiece so that every facet, every part of you, even the ugly, strange, weird parts are essential to the masterpiece that is you." Accepting, loving another person is accepting them totally and completely. To love someone is not to ask them to change, not to need them to change, and if they do change, loving them in their transformation, regardless of where it takes them.
Loving the world is accepting the world. Loving the world is not trying to save the world, because that you have in your mind an image of a world that is more perfect than this one. The reality is if you truly love this world, there is nothing that needs saving, there is no one that needs saving. It is always and forever perfect. And that is the real power, the hidden secret power of love, is that you look at anything, you look onto anything with this open heart, and you can feel and see that it is perfect just as it is. You are able to accept it. You're able to accept yourself, you're able to accept anyone exactly as they are. And in that, is the very heart of awakening, of enlightenment. It's not about saving all sentient beings, it's about honoring and recognizing that all sentient beings are already part of the perfection of the enlightenment that is this world.
And so to love completely with a totally open heart, that is aligning yourself with the reality of the world. That is accepting the world entirely as it is, and in accepting that, you align yourself with it. It's as if the entire universe is suddenly at your back because this is you. This is you. Even if you were to die, the universe carries you forward. It carries you on, not your personality, not your body, not your mind, but the essence of you. And when you walk out into the world with this clear understanding that you are, your love, your heart, your being is almost being pushed and carried forward by the force of reality, then nothing that you meet can stop you. And it's not that you have any desire to dominate or get rid of anything in front of you because everything in front of you is really just you. But any darkness, any anger, any hatred that you encounter that's thrown at you in spears, daggers, any foul words or feelings, you can meet them and take them. Not defend them, not deflect them, not protect yourself from them because that is closing up the heart. But rather doing exactly the opposite thing that the ego and the body, counter-intuitively, they would try and run, they would try and fight, they would and protect themselves because that's what the body and the ego are designed to do, but the heart does something completely different. It opens itself, it bears itself. It says, 'Here, I'm right here,' and the sword pierces right through it, and the spear, and the dagger, and the poison, the darkness, everything, and the heart remains, despite the pain, despite the tears, despite the anguish.
If the heart can remain open, then it can transmute any and all attacks, any and all darkness, and bring it to the light. It is able to see the heart in others, the goodness behind all that fear, all that anger, all those defenses that other people throw up in front of them."
Continued in video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmNq7G1m3zU
I also did a video a while ago about what it means to be a warrior of love, watch it here: