BY MARY O’MALLEY

When you rediscover the spaciousness of being open again to the great flow of life—when you allow energy to move through you rather than trying to control it—you begin to recognize that the word that best describes this movement of light is Love. There is great truth in the song title “Love Makes the World Go ’Round.” It not only makes it go around, it permeates absolutely everything.

In Greek, there are four words for love: eros (romantic love), philia (the love of friendship), storge (the love of family), and agape (universal or unconditional love). In English, we are hampered by having only one word for love, so I am capitalizing the word Love to point to the truth that Love (agape) is the essence of life.

Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon and author of the best-selling book Proof of Heaven, wrote about what happened while he was in a seven-day coma from spinal meningitis. When asked what the core of what he experienced was while he was out of his body, he said, “Love is, without a doubt, the basis of everything. . . . This is the reality of realities, the incomprehensibly glorious truth of truths that lives and breathes at the core of everything that exists or will ever exist, and no remotely accurate understanding of who and what we are can be achieved by anyone who does not know it, and embody it in all of their actions.”

Brian Swimme, an author and evolutionary cosmologist, calls this essence at the heart of life “allurement.” This force of attraction can be seen from the very beginning of our universe. The “stuff” that arose out of the Big Bang followed the call of attraction and came together into communities we call atoms. Then these atoms were drawn together into communities called molecules. Then the molecules were so attracted to one another they came together into communities called cells, and then cells followed the call of allurement and became multicellular beings.

This attracting force at the heart of life then showed up in the mating dance of insects and animals, and in their daily lives as well. In Charles Darwin’s book The Descent of Man, he mentions “survival of the fittest” only twice, but he mentions “love” 95 times when referring to the behavior of the creatures he was observing. He also talks about conciliation and cooperation being the most significant mode of behavior among them all.

This urge to connect at the heart of life is all about Love. The great mystics of the world have all agreed that when you come out of the clouds in your mind, what you recognize and fully become is Love. And it is this Love, this allurement, this urge to connect, that brings together all things, whether it is subatomic particles or human beings or solar systems.

Every cell in your being is filled with this Love, and it fuels almost everything you do. But you have been conditioned to search for it outside of yourself, leading inevitably to the often endless, and mostly unsatisfying, search for somebody to love you. What would happen if you recognized that Love is right here, right now? What would happen if you realized that Love is not something you need to find, but who you already are?

Love is what constitutes absolutely everything. The more your heart opens, the more you can feel the energy of Love that animates everything: trees, rocks, birds, clouds, your dog, and even the sun. Hafiz, who was truly awake to this Love that is at the heart of life, speaks to this truth in his poem “The Sun Never Says,” translated by Daniel Ladinsky in his book The Gift:

Even
After
All this time
The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe
Me.”
Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the
Whole
Sky.

Even the sun is an expression of the Love at the heart of life, endlessly giving forth its light. In the sun’s giving, the entire earth thrives. In learning how to live from your heart, you become as lit up as the sun, giving forth the warm, radiant energy of Love as you move through your day. Just as atoms, molecules, and cells were drawn together into greater communities, you will draw others into the community of the heart. It is the heart that recognizes we are all unique expressions of the Love that is the essence of life, and it is the heart that will wake us up to the truth that we are all in this together, floating on a tiny, blue-green jewel of a planet that is dancing through vast oceans of space.

In the early 1970s, a powerful awakening led Mary O’Malley to begin changing her relationship with her challenges, freeing her from a lifelong struggle with darkness, and she has been helping others heal their inner wars ever since. MaryOMalley.com

BY MARY O’MALLEY

You are an expression of the amazing creativity of your life. This universe that you find yourself in has been unfolding for billions of years, birthing stars, exploding stars, and then creating—out of stardust—this magical and mysterious planet we call home. Absolutely everything on the planet was created from atoms that were once part of a star—and that includes you! Yet, if you are like most of us, you don’t recognize it.

I have a couple of comfortable armchairs up on the moon, and I invite you to come sit with me for the next few minutes. As we settle into our armchairs, there before us is our home—a beautiful, blue-green jewel of a planet dancing through oceans of space. Look at it a little closer so you can see the depth of her exquisite creativity. There are mountain meadows full of wildflowers, majestic icebergs, soaring eagles, raging storms, cascading waterfalls, jungles full of colorful parrots, and many baby creatures playing.

If you look even closer from our moon perspective, you will see over seven billion human beings walking, running, birthing, dying, working, cooking, driving, making love, and doing all the things that we humans do. But if you look very closely, you will see that most of us have clouds surrounding our heads, and are usually struggling with life. Rather than being here for the amazing creativity of life, we are living in our minds. Why? Because we have been conditioned to believe that everything our minds tell us is true.

The mind is an amazing tool for maneuvering through life, but it was not designed to be in control of it. Yet it strives to be in charge of everything. This mind is the cause of all the suffering on our planet, including people killing other people, children dying of starvation, and human beings doing unspeakable acts to themselves and others out of self-hatred—while others are drowning in a sea of despair. It all comes from being lost in judgment (especially self-judgment), greed, shame, hatred, entitlement, anger, and fear.

Now zoom into exactly where you are on this planet. As you look down upon yourself, see and acknowledge that sometimes you too have clouds swirling around your head. This is the “addiction to struggle” conditioning you got when you were very young. Being run by the need to always do things right, you cut yourself off from the well of creativity that lies within you. And rather than engaging with the adventure of your life, you may be sitting on the sidelines, frozen in the belief that you aren’t enough.

What would it be like if you didn’t have to live your life by prior conditioning? Imagine your clouds thinning and recognizing that you are not the struggle that fills your head all day long. You are that which can see your struggling self. See the joy begin to dance through your whole being as you open again to the creative flow of life.

Imagine the possibility that more and more people will see through their clouds of struggle and connect with life again. This is not only possible—it is already happening on our beleaguered planet. More and more people are unhooking from the war inside themselves, and as they do, becoming part of the healing we are all ready for.

Nelson Mandela was a visionary who recognized this new stage of evolution. Even though he experienced great suffering, he lived the truth that nothing except the aware heart will heal our planet—inclusion rather than exclusion, compassion rather than judgment, connection rather than disconnection, kindness rather than indifference. What would it be like if you met yourself in your heart rather than trying to change something about your life? This means letting go of resisting, judging, hating, and fearing all the parts of yourself that you don’t like, including anxiety, meanness, shame, physical pain, insecurity, aging, greed, and compulsion.

Jeff Foster, author of The Deepest Acceptance: Radical Awakening in Ordinary, once said, “Fall in love with this perfectly divine, very human mess that you are!” Being willing to let go of being at war with your experience and instead meet it with your heart will not only bring forth the greatest healing you have ever known but will also touch your family, people at work, and even the people driving down the freeway.

This is the time of the heart, and the most important person to touch with your heart is you. You are a unique and perfect creation of life—there has never been anyone like you, and there never will be again. As you discover the healing presence of your own heart, you will become a healing force on this planet, helping others to see through their own clouds of struggle so they too can join the exquisite dance of life.

Mary O’Malley is an author, counselor, and awakening mentor. Her latest book, What’s in the Way Is the Way, provides a revolutionary approach for healing your fears, anxieties, shame, and confusion so you can live from a place of ease and well-being. MaryOMalley.com.

Imagine a beautiful meadow on a sunlit morning. In this meadow is a rainbow of wildflowers and the heart-opening music of birds. The smell of heather and the beauty of mountains bring a deep sense of peace. There is also death here as one moment dies into the next, and everything in the meadow—absolutely everything—eventually dissolves back into the great mystery of life. In the ongoing unfolding of this meadow, everything flows and nothing resists that flow. The grass doesn’t say, “I don’t want winter to come.” The trees are not trying to be better trees. The animals don’t live in fear of death.

The meadow represents your natural state of open, alive connection with life that you lived in when you were very young. You hadn’t yet learned how to see life as a problem, and thus it flowed through you—the easy and the difficult, the joyous and the sorrowful.

But there came a time when you left the flow of life and got caught in your mind, and the clouds in the air began to circle around your head. At first they were just wispy clouds that didn’t fully block your experience of the meadow. But over time, usually by adolescence, the clouds completely surrounded and filled your head so that you could no longer see the meadow. All you could see were the clouds of your mind that were about good and bad, right and wrong.

This cloud bank is made out of fear and held together through judgment. We are all so used to listening to the chronic low-grade voice of fear that we hardly notice that it is fear until it flares up. We are also unaware of how much we judge, mostly ourselves. We are amazingly hard on ourselves, sometimes so chronically that we don’t even notice it except for a sense of unease that permeates our life.

This cloud bank of fear and judgment is where we live most of the time, lost in our ideas about life, always trying to make life be better or different than what it is, but rarely truly being here for life. It is the essence of John Lennon’s famous quote, “Life is what is happening while you are busy making other plans!” Becoming a human doing rather than a human being cuts us off from the meadow of our own being. Earlier, I took on a ferocious struggling self that was fueled by a relentless and cruel judge inside of me. I used to say that this judge went to law school and was president of the debate club. Now I live from the aware heart.

How do you get to the place where the core voice inside of you is the wisdom of your heart rather than your judging, fear-based, struggling mind? The key is all about bringing curiosity and compassion to the struggling self. We don’t need to stop this storyteller in our head that is always trying to do life and do it right. All we need is to discover how to see it and touch it with our hearts. The more we do, the more its stories dissolve like morning fog touched by the sun.

Your perception radically shifts when you discover that you are not the stories in your head that are made out of fear and held together with judgment. When these stories are met with curiosity and compassion, they let go of their hold on you, and what is left is life in all of its magical mystery, right here, right now. What is left is the remembering that all the joy, peace, and love you long for is to be found here and now. The more we individually and collectively unhook from the storyteller in our heads, the more we discover that it is safe to open to life—not an idea of it, but the living experience. And this is what we are homesick for—the experience of truly being alive.

Alan Watts, the celebrated philosopher, author, and teacher said, “. . . it appears as a vivid and overwhelming certainty that the universe, precisely as it is at this moment, as a whole and in every one of its parts, is so completely right, as to need no explanation or justification, beyond what it simply is.” In other words, it is safe to open to life! The most courageous and healing thing you can do is to open to the way things actually are, rather than always trying to make life be what you think it should be. When you see through the game of struggle enough that the veil between you and this living moment lift, you become a healing presence in the world. These moments of full connection with life matter. In fact, they matter more than you can possibly know. They are what will heal our world.

So I invite you to contemplate the possibility that the chronic, low-grade struggle you have lived in most of your life can be lifted just like the early morning clouds can be lifted by the sun. I also invite you to open to the radical notion that in your life, whatever you perceive to be in the way is the way. In other words, your challenges are tailor-made to help you see your particular brand of struggle and help you unhook from it so you can again know the joy of being fully alive.

In the early 1970s, a powerful awakening led Mary O’Malley to begin changing her relationship with her challenges, freeing her from a lifelong struggle with darkness, and she has been helping others heal their inner wars ever since.
MaryOMalley.com