Did I Love Well?

There are many endings in life. We all experience the end of days, the end of relationships, the end of careers, the end of years. And of course there’s the really big one that each of us will eventually face: The end of this life as we know it. Today we will all experience the end of the last day of 2011; the end of an entire year. In doing so, I think it’s important that we ask ourselves this question: “Did I love well?”

I take this question from Jack Kornfield’s book A Path With Heart. And I think it is probably the most essential question we can ever ask ourselves; because when this life is over, our Higher Power isn’t going to ask us if we ate well, or if we shopped well, or if we made lots of money, or if we accomplished great tasks. God will ask us only one question: “Did you love well?”

You see, those who love well live well. People who love well appreciate every aspect of life. They value themselves and thus all people, they value the earth and all creation, they value the air they breathe, the sun shining on lake water and the feeling of vulnerability they experience by being truly intimate with others. They live everyday to the fullest and go for what they want and need. They understand their passions, their talents and purpose. They shoot for the moon and if they come up short, they dance among the stars.

People who love well our guided by their hearts. The heart is the compass that unites us to Supreme Love. And Supreme Love knows no limits or conditions. It has no expectations and makes no assumptions. Real love sees beyond behavior and casts out all fear, all criticism, all harsh judgments, all resentments and all hatred.

In doing so, Supreme Love produces a deep sense of joy and well-being within those who experience it. People who love well have a glow about them. You can see it in their eyes and experience it in their vivaciousness as well as their gentleness. They are truly free spirits because their hearts are united to the greatest Spirit of all. Nothing can weight them down: Not guilt, nor shame, nor fear. They flow with the Universe as God intended them to do from the moment of their conception.

People who love poorly, however, are trapped in their fears, guilt and shame. They don’t love themselves, much less anyone else and they cling to the rightness of rules to justify their existence. The rightness of their rules also justifies their need for hatred, bigotry, constant criticism of others, harsh judgments against anyone who disagrees with them, resentments and an insatiable need for revenge. Since rules are their guide, instead of love, their worlds are very black and white, all or nothing, my way or no way. They see everything as fragmented, me against the world, saint against sinner.

Their concept of rightness is their god and they are usually consumed by the laws of religious institutions that espouse exclusion of others rather than love of all. They have no real spirituality, only religious law, and that law always takes precedence over love. In fact they are totally leery of love. They don’t trust the idea of an all-loving God because they are wedded to an angry god who tracks all of their behavior and keeps their souls hanging in a balance over Hell.

If you want to know whether or not you have loved well, ask yourself which of these two groups do you fall into. My guess is that most of us are on the fence between the two. We want to love well, but we often fail. And much of our failure is based in our unawareness of how trapped we are in old patterns of learned behavior. 2012 would be a great year to get out of those old traps, to choose to consciously love well and to move forward in a spirituality that is guided by the heart and Supreme Love.

Today is your day to reflect on all of this. Tomorrow is your day to begin anew by making a moment by moment, day by day choice to love well.