Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life

I am a lover of what is, not because I’m a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality. We can know that reality is good just as it is, because when we argue with it, we experience tension and frustration. We don’t feel natural or balanced. When we stop opposing reality, action becomes simple, fluid, kind, and fearless.

Behind every uncomfortable feeling, there’s a thought that isn’t true for us.

we often rely on anger and frustration to move us to social activism. If I want to act sanely and effectively while I clean up the earth’s environment, let me begin by cleaning up my own environment. All the trash and pollution in my thinking—let me clean that up, by meeting it with love and understanding. Then my action can become truly effective.

I often use the word story to talk about thoughts, or sequences of thoughts, that we convince ourselves are real. A story may be about the past, the present, or the future; it may be about what things should be, what they could be, or why they are. Stories appear in our minds hundreds of times a day—when someone gets up without a word and walks out

It’s not getting what you were seeking that was the worst. You were just left there. No payoff for the sacrifice. No payoff for seeking what we can never really find from another. Have you heard my prayer, if I had one? I once experienced what you did. I got just a taste of it. But my prayer—if I had one—would be: “God, spare me from seeking love,

Without the “should” and “shouldn’t,” we can see reality as it is, and this leaves us free to act efficiently, clearly, and sanely.

Contemporary neuroscience identifies a particular part of the brain, sometimes called “the interpreter,” as the source of the familiar internal narrative that gives us our sense of self. Two prominent neuroscientists have recently characterized the quirky, undependable quality of the tale told by the interpreter. Antonio Damasio describes it this w

Every story is a variation on a single theme: This shouldn’t be happening. I shouldn’t have to experience this. God is unjust. Life isn’t fair.

We’re all looking for love, in our confusion, until we find our way back to the realization that love is what we already are.