About a month ago I had a profoundly deep and expansive experience – one of connection, love, grace and beauty.
I had just finished attending a workshop, the fourth and final of a 4-week series, which in itself already had me feeling a lot of joy and warmth from relating, participating and co-creating with fellow participants.
However, leaving the workshop, I got caught in a cold wet blistering Cape winter storm. This was followed by a beautiful yet sad romantic movie, which left me feeling quite tender, vulnerable and sad, and with it the doubt, uncertainty and questions about life crept up.
As I got up, I noticed my bag lying across the kitchen floor which I dropped there as I got home earlier, wet and cold. I decided to pick it up and unpack everything from the workshop and from all the content and materials, dropped an envelope.
In this envelope, I found beautiful and touching messages from fellow workshop participants to me. A wave of emotion and tears came over me. I couldn’t believe that this was what they were “getting” from me, as there wasn’t much prolonged or one-on-one interaction among us. Below are a few of the messages.
At this moment I heard/saw a very clear message drop into my mind “The universe loves you. Life loves you.” I felt such a visceral and peak experience of communion and oneness move through my body that which I cannot describe. And I simply stayed with the moment, feelings and awe for as long as I could.
The Universe loves you. Life loves you.
After this, I felt a palpable sense of regret. Regret for not fully showing up as the love that I am, for not allowing it to flow freely. See, during the workshop, there were two instances I withheld love and fully expressing myself with two participants after some things they had said and done/not done which I interpreted and judged as “not kind, not caring what I have to say so why bother, etc.”. And whether the meaning and story I assigned to their actions were correct or not is not important.
What is important is that I changed and diminished who I was, and throttled love based on what others were doing/not doing. And these very two people left me such beautiful messages, they were able to see me despite me turning down the love quotient.
And in that moment I realised, that for me (and my guess is this is true for all humans/life) the biggest and most painful regret and experience is withholding love. Not allowing love to flow and express fully and freely.
So today, I invite you to consider: Where are you withholding love?
With love.
Ceferino
