Becoming Love

By Jan Crawford

What if each of us already is what we couldn’t even dare to dream we could become? What if there is reality that is free of conflict, free of the suffering, of trying so hard to be the person we are conditioned to believe we are supposed to be? And what if all we have to do is to learn to clear away the obstacles preventing us from living the truth that we already are?

For many years it’s been my good fortune to enjoy meditations in the beauty and often tender calm in the St. Luke’s Gardens at Hudson and Barrow streets. Three years ago, when I was 80, these emergent questions began to compel a number of shifts in my meditations there. I found myself engaged in two new practices I want to share with you.

Sitting in the gardens on one spring day, I became aware that I was habitually focusing on the colorful beauty of the flowers — but only the flowers. I was barely noticing the diversity and beauty of the lush greenery, the patterns of the shadows of light on stone pathways, the breezes and movements of trees or the behavior and songs of the birds. So, I decided to practice what spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti called “choiceless awareness,” and I relaxed my eyes.

Slowly allowing my sight to take in the wider aperture of the whole garden, I became more exquisitely aware of many of the other lovely forms of nature that existed there. As I relaxed even more, I found myself breathing with the trees and the birds. And I gradually began to notice the general feeling of the garden from day to day. For example, some days it felt as if it was rushing to prepare for a storm, while other days as if it was just fully relaxing in the sun.

I also became aware how, throughout my adult life, I had often been drawn to people I could see as the equivalent of beautiful, exceptional flowers. Fortunately, given my particular childhood traumas, I understood why that was true of me. But with sadness I also acknowledged how many people I had hurt by not seeing them as distinctive and lovable presences in my own inner garden. I also faced the pain of accepting how much I had missed because of such narrowed vision, and I felt profoundly grateful to see the ways that is no longer true.

Another practice that contributed to further opening to the love that is our true nature involved returning to my adaptation of a psychosynthesis practice I had come upon years earlier.

In a quiet state, we explore our conditioning by first acknowledging an identity we possess. For example, if you are a lawyer, you might experiment with the identity of Successful Lawyer. Next, take some time to visualize yourself wearing clothing that represents yourself in that identity’s persona. When you are ready, very slowly let that clothing fall to the floor around your legs. Then take some time to notice what you feel.

Earlier in this practice I had worked with my very positive identities as Woman, Feminist and Trauma Psychotherapist. When I stepped out of even these positive attachments, I felt a surprising relaxation. There was a clear sense that all of us are naturally something more vast than any identity — in truth, more vast than any concept.

In the gardens, I now began to explore other identities and culturally dictated concepts. I found that when I visualized myself in the clothing for Human, my body subtly contracted. When I began to perceive Human as a concept rather than absolute truth, as that clothing fell gently to the floor, I noticed another relaxation. I was still Human for practical purposes, but without that identification there was a sense of freedom and more connection to all other forms of life. The same was true when I shed the concepts of Time, Space and Death. I felt a profound expansiveness, a sense of being a part of everything, and everything an inseparable part of me.

As my mind allows these and other experiences of greater spaciousness, there is a deepening silence within me, a natural ease of being that tends to make me a more loving person. Of course, there are still parts of me that, thinking they are protecting me, automatically object to any perceived threat to the Successful Separate Self. However, as I begin to recognize that they are actually “protecting” me from nothing more than a truer reality, I find myself laughing in relief. In those moments there is not just feeling love but becoming love itself.

I hope that, in the Gardens of St. Luke’s or wherever your path guides you, you increasingly experience the freedom, beauty and wisdom of your own loving heart.