Expanding Our Capacity to Love

Have you ever noticed how being out in nature can bring so much joy, filling your cup and heart? Have you ever experienced that love for creation grow even more anytime you experience something new in nature? 

Nature is filled with diversity. I'm going to ask you to use your imagination for just a second here. Play along and imagine for a moment that you're seeing the world for the first time. Imagine seeing your first flower, a red rose. You're taken aback by the color, the shape, the smell -- the beauty. Next you're introduced to a new flower, a yellow tulip! This is quite different from the red rose. It has a different color, shape, scent, texture... but it's also very beautiful! Then imagine stumbling across a pink dahlia! This third flower is completely different from the first two, but again equally as beautiful! I would imagine as you discover more and more new, unique flowers, your love of flowers grows even more! 

For the next example, you don't even have to imagine. If you're a lover of sunsets like I am, you know no two sunsets are ever the same. One of my favorite things about traveling is seeing sunsets in new places I've never been before. But even when I'm watching sunsets at home, they're different not only every evening, but you can take pictures every few minutes of one sunset and capture different colors, lighting and design! Maybe I get a little carried away, but with every new setting and even every new hue of a sunset, my love of sunsets grows more and more! 

When we consider nature as a whole, one thing is for sure: no matter what your belief system is -- whether you believe in God, a higher power, a Creator of All That Is, divine intelligence, a universal power, etc. -- it's clear that the Creator of the world we live in is a master artist with a fondness for diversity. Diversity is apparent throughout all of nature: in the different flowers, flora and fauna, landscapes, sunsets, weather patterns, climates, and so on. And I think it's a pretty easy argument to make, or statement to accept, that the more diversity there is, the more we love, appreciate and experience gratitude for the beautiful world we live in. 

Can you imagine living in a world with only red roses? Or what if the only fruit to eat was a strawberry? And the only animal was a squirrel (even though they are cute, I would miss my cats!)? What if we only had beaches, and no mountains? What if we only saw orange sunsets, and there were never any pink, purple or yellow hues? Am I making my case that diversity creates a more rich human experience and acts as a catalyst for expanding our capacity to love? 

When it comes to diversity in nature, it seems that the only diversity we meet with resistance (as opposed to wonder, awe, joy and love) is diversity among other humans. I know this isn't true for everyone and that many people embrace and celebrate diversity. However, being resistant to and even fearful of "the other" is a major theme in our human collective right now. 

While many of us are eager to learn from other cultures, beliefs, backgrounds, etc. and can celebrate our differences, it seems that diversity stirs up fear (and other fear-based emotions) for many people. Diving into the reasons why could be captured in a novel, not just another blog post, but my hunch is that it has a lot to do with our egos and sense of identity. Diversity among ourselves (fellow humans) can cause our egos to go into comparison mode, making us want to categorize and rank ourselves, according to our differences -- who is right? Who is better? Who is superior? The ego drives us to comparison, and thus diversity -- to the ego -- is a threat. 

This doesn't just show up in big systems, like throughout the human race, in our country, communities, etc. As a family constellation facilitator, I see diversity challenge (and sometimes, at least initially, threaten) the family system too. In constellation work we call what I would refer to as some kind of diversity as "negative conscience". Group conscience or the family conscience are the implicit rules and expectations of a family or system, and it's a kind of power that is held by those systems over the individuals of the system. 

When a member of the family or group steps into negative conscience, it means we are doing something or living in some way that goes outside/against the "rules" of the group, risking our security of belonging to that group. What I've seen in my experience doing this work is that sometimes when a family member steps into negative conscience, attempting to add some diversity to the family, or do things differently, that individual loses their belonging in the family system (although they gain the freedom to live authentically). However, many times the family can accept, expand, include and embrace the individual, and when that happens, the whole system's capacity to love expands and the consciousness of the group is elevated. Again, this shows us just how magnificent a gift diversity can be, especially among humans. 

It's my belief that our Creator doesn't want us to become complacent in our capacity to love, but instead continues to push us to grow and expand. In my lifetime alone, I've seen the amount of diversity in the human race evolve more and more, and to me, the most rational explanation is what I just mentioned -- this is our Creator at work, pushing us to love more. I make a point to remember this anytime I meet someone who is different from me. 

When we can set our egos aside, or rise above the ego, we discover the power to open our hearts to more diversity, more knowledge, more wisdom, more joy, and more love. We literally expand our capacity to love, and this is something that can and will change our world. 

I will leave you with a metaphor from Thich Nhat Hanh: 

"If you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water, the water becomes undrinkable. But if you pour the salt into a river, people can continue to draw the water to cook, wash and drink. The river is immense, and it has the capacity to receive, embrace and transform. When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited, and we suffer. We can't accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings, and we demand that they change. But when our hearts expand, these same things don't make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understandings and compassion and can embrace others. We accept others as they are, and then they have a chance to transform. So the big question is: how do we help our hearts to grow?"