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bill r's avatar

Love this!..Is Love something to become, or is it something We already are?❣🙏

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Joan Tollifson's avatar

That was the very thought that almost prompted me to erase what I'd said. But then I wondered, are we in fact already always love? I've probably said things like that, and I can make the case for it, but when I stopped and actually contemplated it today, it rang false to me. It felt like one of those things spiritual people say that doesn't really hold up, or at least, it leaves out something important. It feels out of balance, which relates to what I said about the balance between "be here now" (which is a path or a practice) and "you can't not be here now" (which is a realization). As I see it, both are important. Maybe in another moment I'll find myself genuinely singing the song that love is all there is, and everything is love. But right now I wonder, is that really true? And I sense that there is a place for a path of becoming, as taboo as that is to say in nondual circles. Anyway, thanks for the comment. 🙏❤️

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bill r's avatar

yes..perhaps there is always more and the stance of unknowing may be the only realization ever .....needed/found🤔

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Joan Tollifson's avatar

Your comment and our subsequent email exchange opened up a whole exploration that grew into my next Substack article, in process now. Thank you! 🙏

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bill r's avatar

so looking forward to it❣🙏

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Carol Spooner's avatar

Coming home, Joan! Yes.

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Laurie's avatar

Thank you so much, I can not surrender to not knowing without trust in sacredness. I believe Love is.

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Lynley Hocking's avatar

🙏🌷

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Annette Schmidt's avatar

Well done leaving in that paragraph about “must” and “become” and love. ♥️

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David Kelley's avatar

Read this twice. Different bits and pieces highlighted themselves, like jewels in a moving light, but the overall sense and experience remains: strikingly real and truthful. Accurate. Lovingly helpful. Waves of gratitude, feeling both yours and mine together.

And by the way, it's only been in the last few years that I have become comfortable about using the word God. But I am, I AM! So many names for the un-nameable, colored by different traditions, history, culture, as well as the habits or predilection of individuals. All just pointers, no?

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Eddie Graham's avatar

These days I’m especially drawn to the first response you mention, Joan, “the wonder of the apparently ordinary….” We humans tend to take the fact of existence for granted, but what a wonder anything and everything is! As you write later, “simple beingness is the jewel beyond all price.”

Mary and I really enjoy how you keep questioning your own assumptions and concepts. And we like holding this as a koan: “We must become this Love.”

Thank you, Joan, for continuing to find ways to explore and express what really matters and for sharing yourself with us.

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Bill Pippel's avatar

My favorite quote:

"Is it possible to be a mindless swooning bhakti devoted to the rain, the traffic, the wind in the leaves, the utter simplicity of bare awareness?"

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jill's avatar

enjoyed reading

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