Have you heard the Eagles’ song Love Will Keep Us Alive? Released 30 years ago, it is one of the most beautiful songs ever written. I’ve heard it hundreds of times over the decades and yet when I listened to it recently, its beauty sent me sailing in an unexpected way. For many years, we’ve been hearing the outcry of the human existential song. Nuclear obliteration. Insufficient food supplies and clean water. Daily, more than 25,000 people die of hunger and more than 15,000 are children — when there’s plenty of food to feed all of us. Massive storms, floods and war. Rape, sex trafficking, genocide. Colossal use of pharmaceutical medication to combat anxiety and depression. Suicide… Repeat… Repeat. Souls are in despair, globally. This is not a pretty song. How could we not be afraid? Watching “the news” feeds our consciousness with fear. Stories are chosen that speak from fear. The reporter starts talking and Oh, no… Gasp. Begin shallow breathing. Lock your door. Get your guns ready. Stockpile food in your basement. Wear a mask and stand six feet apart. Isolate or die. Our mortality is being shoved in our face by the metacrisis we created. Our choice for fear over Love is killing us. Having spent college and the first 10 years of my career in the environmental field, I’ve felt fear up close. We’ve been abusing our life support system, choking her lungs and clogging her seas with plastic. Imagine choking and clogging the life support system in a hospital ICU. What do we expect? It’s scary. How about this — let’s stop running around scared of our own body’s death. To truly feel freedom, we must accept our mortality. When we do, a heavy weight is lifted off our chest. We see that life is now. We feel truly alive, filled with the beautiful desire to express our own unique self. If you haven’t yet “seen the Light” inside of you — the galactically gorgeous spray of divine stars glimmering in your being — this is your invitation to see it. Now! Ask Spirit, God, Love, for help. Get out of your mental head and move your body in a way that makes you feel totally alive. Before a job interview, I like to walk around at a cemetery and feel the mortality, the lives passed. It helps to ground and humble me. It helps me remember that the only time I’ve got is now. Love brings us alive while we’re living, and Love keeps us alive when we die.Let me humbly admit that I didn’t “get the memo” in an easy way. It took five years of horrid monthly migraines, a massive brain tumor, brain surgery and a near death experience (NDE) for me to expansively “see the Light” of the one moment we’ve got: the moment of now. Seeing death’s face up close helps us wake up to — Life! Life. Living! Being alive. My God, what an ecstasy laden existence this is. It is also an inconceivably atrocious “reality” we’re living in, so my dearest darling you, for all it’s worth… CHOOSE LOVE. Choose to see, breathe and live the LOVE you are. Love is the Light that illuminates darkness. Choose the joy that Love wants to feed you. Choose people who uplift and see you, who you uplift too. Choose to feel good, come together and enjoy Life while you’re living. If an extremely unfortunate situation greets us along with the last breaths we take, it isn’t a full basement of food — and it certainly isn’t a gun — that will give us Life. It is Love. When we need food for our children or a sense of safety, it is those relationships we’ve invested in with our time and attention, that will provide us with deep breaths of comfort. Alas, the Eagles were tuned in — that great thing called Love will keep us alive.
When we take our last breaths, it is a feeling of being loved that will make our final breaths peaceful, sending us into the realm of timelessness with sunlit, oceanic beauty swimming in our souls. And I’ll tell you from having “seen the other side” in my NDE, death is not actually death; what we call death is actually rebirth into a whole new landscape of Light. Here’s the song. Play it loud, let it in and with every part of your blessed, breathing being, feel it.
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One day after school, my 9-year-old daughter sat in the passenger seat and asked, “Mama, is it true that the future isn’t real?” My heart thumped with intensity as she left me feeling speechless for the 10,000th time. Where does she hear these things? I often wonder. “You ask the most amazing questions,” I answered, letting my chest become softened by her depth. I spoke the words my heart offered, trusting it would all somehow make sense to her. “Yes, my sweet girl, it’s true.” I told her that we think about the future as something real, but it’s actually just an idea that leads us to another moment of now. I wondered if someone had told me these things when I was a child. Or maybe I first encountered these thoughts in college while reading Ram Dass’ Be Here Now. “All we have is now, my love.” She listened intently as I aimed to speak with brevity rather than waterfalling her with a downpour of passionate Mama philosophy. Then, perhaps unsurprisingly to my readers, I ventured down the Love Sermon path. It is, after all, my religion. On I went, waterfalling. “And in this moment of now — the only time there is — we only have one choice.” She gazed at me with her hazel eyes calmed by our loving exchange and asked, “What do you mean?” “Love or fear. That’s the only choice. We can choose to extend the Love that we are — because in that moment we remember that Love is who we are — or we can reach out for Love in fear, because we forgot that Love is who we are,” I told her in my typical Love Evangelist way. She was used to it by now and she quickly absorbed what she felt, hearing these words. In the week that followed, I noticed how our conversation sweetened my life. When I felt annoyed by somebody honking at me when I was clearly following the rules of the road, I didn’t react from upset. Instead, my heart felt compassion for this man, living in the speed and gruel of a hurried society, which might have led him to behave this way. Was he calling for Love? I made up that he was. It’s all a dream and it’s all made up, this story we now write, called Life. So as he drove by me in haste, I blew him and his wife a kiss. Alright I’ll admit, the air-kiss was topped with a smidge of snark. I am grateful for the moments when I choose Love. I am also grateful, however unpleasant they usually are, for the moments when I choose to react based in fear. These motivate me to, next time, choose Love instead. It just feels better. Love feels better.Right now.
And right now. The only time there is… I am grateful for my daughter. Children are the original gurus. Thank goodness, we all have a child inside. Lately I'm noticing popular statements like "I'll believe it when I see it" that are so unhelpful. Unwise. They provoke us to reclaim our power from the disempowering social narrative. "I'll see it when I believe it" is actually what Love calls us to accept. It's the tail end of an ever wet winter, the rainiest California winter I've ever seen. Still, singing with its illuminated specks of spring's promise, the sun peeks out just enough to remind us it's all in motion. Change is the only constant. We can tuck away our raincoats soon. Do you believe the seasons change? If you're feeling dragged down by a cold, gray winter, do you believe the sun will take its reign again? Two hours ago I gave a talk called "Love is a Life and Death Issue". With passion fed from childhood, when I watched my parents extend unflinching respect for my grandparents, I spoke of the importance of showing elders Love NOW — because, actually, there is no other time. I love public speaking.
What do you love, that brings you alive?Often, humans have something we dream of doing or being that still finds us hiding. Not showing up for it. Letting fear take the front seat instead of letting this one precious Life be LIVED, all out, stepped up, with gratitude for the breaths we're breathing. Authenticity speaks volumes. When we have a rigorous relationship with the truth, and live our truth to the best of our ability, we are heard and supported in astounding ways. The power of our authentic presence is stronger than when we deny our truest calling. Each of us is part of the "unique self symphony" this planet needs, to thrive. It is said that public speaking is one of Americans' greatest fears. I get it, and even though I do feel some degree of fear before my talks, it feels so gosh darn good that I must do it anyway! I believe in me, I believe in what I talk about when I give speeches, and really, I believe in what I'm made of — and what I believe YOU are made of — Love. Love, baby.Got it? Great! Go for it! Dance more often with the power of believing. Alongside countless invisible beings, I am rooting for you. always with Love, |
AuthorJessica Rios, Founder of Leaning into Light, was born with a pen in her heart. Since childhood, Love has been her 'religion'. A lifelong letter writer and a thought leader in Love, her blog is devoted to her greatest passion: illuminating the beauty of the human spirit so we all move closer to remembering that Love is Who We Are. Categories
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