What if you look into the eyes of love?

One of the question I often ask is: ”What is love”?

And the other day, I was interviewing a woman, late into her seventies, and she said:
- Well, love is a word I spare for my husband, children and grandchildren.
And in her longer answer there was something about how we risk to devalue love if we use it more frequently than for the most loved ones.

And for me, love is something very much bigger than something you call - and feel for - your beloveds. For me love is a power, something we all have inside us.

Sometimes it’s like love is a muscle, that you need to use and practice with, to make it bigger. There is, in almost every moment a choice… and you can choose love or something else.

And my intention is to be in that loving space as much as possible. To look at my fellow human beings, everything living on this planet, and the planet itself with love.

What happens if you choose love as the main perspective? What are you able to see in yourself, and in others from that space?

And my experience is that I need to, at least now and then, practice to look at myself with love and compassion. When I was walking the path from self-hate to self-love, I often got hit by my inner critic who sometimes whispered, and sometimes yelled in my ear, not to do this, because looking at myself with love could be d a n g e r o u s. I, mean, what would people say or think if I said: I am okay just as I am? My inner critic saw (and still sees) this as a threat, that I was risking too, again, be thrown out of the tribe.

What would happen if we more often started to look for love? Or just witnessed love?

There is an exercise, that could be a practice, which is called eye gazing. It’s a really simple practice, which might affect you profoundly.

You simply sit in front of another person, looking her och him into the left eye. You sit there and breathe, looking into the eye, for five minutes. And the other person does the same, look into your left eye.

This is a silent practice, sort of a meditation with two persons. And when you sit there, breathing (it happens that the two persons will, unconsciously synchronize their breathing), you are totally focused on that persons eye, and at the same time feeling yourself and your body. (If feelings come, let them be there, cry, laugh or what ever, but don’t talk).

A lot of thing might happen during these five minutes. Love might happen. To me, love very often happen. It’s like the other person opens the heart to me, and sometimes also their soul. It’s like the person gets a bit transparent, and I can see things I usually don’t see… And I allow the other person to see my in this vulnerability, in this nakedness. Because, to openly share you eyes with each other might feel very vulnerable, as if you showed yourself naked to another person. And still, it’s but the eyes touching each other with the gaze. Sometimes the person in front of you changes, you se other forms and colors… and you might get a feeling of coming in contact with something greater than us, something I sometimes call the ”mystery”.

And to me it’s really good to see love, to search for the perspective of love. To me it makes love grow, it doesn’t lessen the value of love.

So look for love today - maybe you need to slow down, to be able to observe it. And then, breathe in love, and pay attention to what happens in you and with the world you are witnessing.