Love In Action

[Kelly Boys, Mindfulness Trainer] What does it look like to practice love, to practice being love? There's a cool scripture verse from the Christian New Testament I'd love to share and then talk about the mindful view of love. Okay, let's get into it. This is 1 Corinthians 13:1-8. "If I speak in the tongues of people or of angels "but I don't have love, I am only a resounding gong "or a clanging cymbal. "If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have a faith that can move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. "If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body "to hardship that I may boast but do not have love, "I gain nothing. "Love is patient. Love is kind. "It doesn't envy. It doesn't boast. "It's not proud. It doesn't dishonor others. "It's not self-seeking. It isn't easily angered. "And it keeps no record of wrongs. "Love doesn't delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. "It always protects, always trusts, "always hopes, always perseveres. "Love never fails." So that's a pretty high bar to consider how to live and practice love but it says a lot. It says that you can do and say all of the right things, even all of the amazing things but if you're not coming from a place of love, what does that mean? It's actually meaningless. And from this perspective, it means there's really no intrinsic value in simply making the gestures that you know you need to do when you're not coming from a place of love in your heart. In the mindfulness tradition, love is essential to who we are. It's uncaused. It's our birthright. It's something that we can reconnect back into in any given moment. In that sense, it's a practice to be able to reconnect with what's already here. So rather than gaining something, we're actually uncovering the love that we are in each and every moment. And the neat thing is we do that through actions in the world. So this verse invites us to embody love in action. What does it mean to both come from your heart, come from love, and to do those things that are helping others, helping the world, being selfless, et cetera? Sometimes embodying love might look like actually making a stand. It doesn't have to always look nice on the outside. It's just a matter of where we're coming from in our hearts. Okay, let's do a little reflection. Feel free to close your eyes. Can have your eyes open if you like. And reflect. Is there a place that I am embodying love, that I can celebrate and appreciate right now? Where am I actually easily embodying love in my life? It might be toward myself, a pet, a loved one, the earth. And just notice what that's like. So think of one thing, one action you can take to embody love. So love can look radical but at the base of it, it's not self-seeking. In mindfulness, we call this empty of self. When we're coming from the heart from love, we're not coming from that self-seeking perspective. And there's so much in our culture right now that orients us back to ourselves. And that's fine but what would it be like to interrupt that pattern in our culture and actually just drop into our hearts and come from love in our lives? I mean, that's pretty radical. So the invitation is to feel that essential nature of love coming right from your heart through your actions today. Thanks for being with me.