LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest David Whyte!
A radical form of undoing
Dear Lovelets,
Last week, a Lovelet named Emily shared in the comments an extraordinary tale about her experience with illness and healing. Specifically, she reported that every time she has made the attempt in the last few years to create an “outside relationship,” with the hope that a great love story with a romantic partner will somehow heal her and save her, she got sicker. And every time she stopped trying to do that, she got better.
Love wrote to Emily, “Three years of trying to give your heart away and every time — what did you notice? Every attachment led to a relapse, and a drop in platelets, and more meds, or different treatments, more pain, more fatigue.”
Yet every time Emily stepped away from the entanglement of an “outside relationship,” she would get better, healthy, measurably and demonstrably more well.
“Come back to us,” Love had said to her. “Dwell in the love and connection WITHIN” (caps mine!).
This message was coming through so powerfully that finally — at the express direction of the Spirit of Unconditional Love (what we call SOUL around here) — Emily lit a candle at the beginning of the year, did a ceremony, and swore off all outside relationships until she could fully heal.
And what has happened? Emily reports having normal platelet levels again, and needing a lower dose of meds.
Unconditional Love said in its letter to Emily, “We are asking you just one thing, little feather — Can you trust us? Can you come back to being unconditionally beloved? . . .
We will heal your body when you stop abandoning yourself.”
I believe (I know) that to be entirely true — not only because of Emily’s story, but because my own life is also the evidence of a complete physical and emotional transformation brought on by nothing more than the deep abiding trust that all the love in the universe is within me, and is for me, and is running through me . . . and that it isn’t going anywhere.
Incredible? I kind of think so.
Our guest today, dear hearts, is the legendary poet David Whyte. Please treat yourself to his words — and please treat all of us to yours.
Our subject today is the power of love. And I cannot wait to read your letters.
Let’s keep going.
Love,
Your Lizzy
If you’d like to write your own letter from love but don’t know how, let us hold your hand.
Dear Love, what would you have me know about your power?
First of all, go head, little timberfly — get it out of your system. You know you want to. Please, sing us a bit of Huey Lewis.
Okay, that’s enough, great. You wanted to do that.
Now do the thing you don’t want to do.
Let’s talk about what happened yesterday.
Let’s talk about yesterday, when you got such a bolt of rage and fear after reading the news that you said: “It’s time for all the men to die. They all have to go. They all have to die now.”
We heard it, honey. I mean, anyone could have heard it, had they been in the room, because you deadass said that out loud — and even though the room was empty, you said it, you said those words, and in that moment, you 100% meant it.
We ask you to share this truth today, that you said those words — and go ahead, let’s hear them again: “It’s time for all the men to die. They all have to go. They all have to die now.”
You said that.
We want you to share that truth within this community, where there are so many men who are part of this gathering, who you love so much. We want you to share this truth on a day when a man whose poetry has at times felt like it was saving your life volunteered so vulnerably, so honestly, and so generously, a letter from love. And we want you to share this truth on a day when, right after you write and record this letter, you are going to go spend the evening with two of your dearest friends — two men who have opened their home and their hearts to you, whom you love like brothers.
And yet yesterday, in your anger and fear, you said, “It’s time for all the men to die. They all have to go. They all have to die now.”
I know, I know that you want us to stop repeating these words because you’re embarrassed. You wince when you hear them, and honestly it’s super not on brand for you, and you don’t want to be the person who says things like that, and can we just move on, you want to know.
We’ll move on in a moment.
But we are Love, the Spirit of Unconditional Love, and we don’t want to move on from that moment until we can show you something. Until we can show you — as a means of demonstrating the power of love — what your mind looks like WITHOUT it. We want to show you what default settings it returns to, of rage and fear, prejudice and, yes, murderous hate. And we want to show you how easy it is, when love’s power is removed from your consciousness, to want to get medieval, vengeful, on people.
This is what you will default to in your anger and fear — just exactly like the people you are so angry at and afraid of right now are defaulting to. Without love’s power, you will default to a nightmare of murder and elimination, dehumanization, extermination.
“They all have to die now.”
That’s what you said.
That’s also what they’re saying a lot of the time. And we want to show you how easy it is to get there. When you’re asking yourself “How can anyone act like that?” when you look at some of the things people are doing, I want you to look at how quickly you yourself got there. To a place of They All Have To Die Now.
It’s in you, honey. It’s in you, Lizzy. It’s in you, too.
You’re not the first person in history to have had such a thought, and you will not be the last. Because this is what happens, honey, when we aren’t in the room with you — when love is not with you, and I mean all of you. This is what you will default to, when we aren’t there to temper the rage and fear with mature, true, and truly universal compassion.
You’re not in trouble, my love. You’re never in trouble. You’re not in trouble for thinking or saying those words, nor are you in trouble for sharing them here honestly within this trusted community. In fact, we just want to tell you that this reflex was human. It was almost pre-human. It was simian, primal, primate, flight/fight, atavistic, ancient, tribal, protective, defensive, and deeply understandable — but please remember that you are more than your first atavistic reflex. You are more than your ancient trauma. You are more than your unbridled rage. You are more than your defensive terror. You are more than your clenched-fisted fight for survival and justice. You are more than just human.
There is something else in you, too.
Something bigger. Something lighter.
It’s okay, darling. You are evolving. You are all evolving. We know you, we understand you, we see you, we feel you, WE GET IT.
But dearest angel, we say this with a ferocious and unyielding sense of tenderness: You will be in a world of trouble if you let your mind go raging so long untended that you forget about us, or if put yourself in a position where you can no longer hear our voice, or, worst of all, where you no longer even try to seek it out. Where you forget to seek out the incredible blazing power that we have to offer you. A power that lets you recognize yourself in others, rather than dehumanizing them. A power that far, far outshines any other kind of power that anyone in the world, including them and including you, might try to flex.
Come to us first, sweetheart. Come back to us, again and again. Come to us before you set your torches alight and go hunting through the streets for people to take out your rage and sorrow upon (look how well that goes, whenever that becomes the standard operating procedure). Come to us before you dehumanize, before you speak in broad and thoughtless generalizations (and words have so much power, honey; words build and destroy worlds). Come to us before you risk — to quote something another man you love, your friend the poet Mark Nepo, said the other day —“becoming the things that happened to you.” Before you get lost in rage and fear, come to us. Come to us. Come to us. Come to us not only for refuge but for direction. Take direction from nowhere else but us, from the voice of the Spirit of Unconditional Love. From us, to you, about what you still insist upon calling “them.”
We will tell you, I assure you, exactly what to do next — and I can promise it will not involve any killing or even threats or dreams or fantasies of killing.
We do not expect you to live anything close to a perfect life of unwavering love, but we do ask you to not forget about us, and to consider what your future would look like if you continue to have the discipline to get still, to listen, and to find your ground of being in the unblinking power of our voice — before you use your own reflexive, tremulous, fear-and-rage-based voice to add only more fear and rage to an already traumatized world.
Stand IN love, sweetheart, any time your mind will allow you to remember us. Stand in love and as love, and from that place, you will be told what to do, how to do it, when to do it, where to do it, and most of all you will be told in what spirit to do it — which matters far more than you can imagine. We will show you how to help, what to say, what not to say, where to be. Just keep doing what we instruct. Trust us, honey. Trust us. Completely and unwaveringly.
If you think that love — the kind of love that we are, and the kind of love that we offer — is smaller than anything happening in your world, then you have not quite met us yet. And if you think that the world is doomed, just remember that time not so very long ago when you yourself could not hear our voice. You were out there blazing and swinging, causing all kinds of havoc, acting from a place of will and ego. Then something happened, and you started to wake up. And you are still waking up. You heard our voice, so faintly at first, and then stronger. You leaned in. That happened! That miracle happened to you. Why do you think others cannot do the same? Why do you think others cannot also awaken and change?
We invite you to meet us even more fully — and yes, even more powerfully. Lock eyes with us, with the Spirit of Unconditional Love, and do not blink — no matter how seductive the temptation to look away from our powerful, light-drenched truth may be.
We are here to help. We are here to help all of you. But you must be willing to listen, and to trust, and to ask for guidance. That is how you meet us in power.
That’s it, dear girl. We’ve got you. Stay with us. Continue to dare to love the world bravely and unwaveringly. We’re doing this now, and only this. Do not blink. Thank you for being honest. Let’s keep going.
That’s the power of love.
Prompt
Anyone who has spent even a few minutes in the Letters From Love comments section knows that this crowd fully embraces this truth: that love is one of the most powerful forces in our universe. But this week (the week leading up to Valentine’s Day!) let’s explore its full complexity. David’s meditation below reminds us of love’s wild intensity: that it is sometimes confronting, sometimes dark, oftentimes challenging.
When you’re ready to get still, and put pen to paper — or fingers to keyboard — join me in starting with this question: Dear Love, what would you have me know about your power?