When the great sequoia, aging for centuries, finally falls, thundering downward until it comes to rest in the embrace of the earth, that is love, also. The incoming and outgoing tides caress sand and rocks ceaselessly, relentlessly. That is love, too. When the cannons roar, bodies explode and limbs scatter across grassy fields or littered streets made morbid with blood, can that be love?

Can the cruelty of the bully, the deceitfulness of the coward, the majesty of the courageous, and the humbleness of the wise be love as well? How can we dare speak of them in the same sentence, especially when “love” is part of the sentence?

Love is a perception, but it is a holy perception, a sacred perception, a perception that excludes nothing and includes everything. It is the love of the bee for the flower, the mountain for the valley and the valley for the mountain. It is the love of the bird for the air and the air for the bird. It is the boiling, roiling, tumultuous collision of emotions within us, between us and among us. It is the song of the wild and the whistle of an incoming artillery round. It is the stars and the soil, the light and the dark. It is the antelope eating the grass and the lion devouring the antelope.

It is the dance of life and death, inseparably united within the illusion of time and space, matter and duality. The fire destroys the forest and new life arises. The corpse goes into the ground, the waves, or the fire, but the soul remains. All this, also, is love. Victory and defeat, success and failure, insight and confusion are love. Nothing we see or cannot see, love or push away, celebrate or regret is not love. Everything and its opposite is love. When you see this, you step into love.

Your life – all of your experiences – become an uninterrupted flow of opportunities to expand into love instead of contract into fear.

You see that when you create with brutality, the experience of brutality comes to your or another of your soul’s personalities. You see that when you create with love, the experience of love comes to you or another of your soul’s personalities.

Eventually, you learn to create with love no matter what circumstance you are in. You see your circumstances differently, too. You see that all of them beckon you to love, to fall into love, to allow love.

When you cannot feel the call, when you fight the fall, when you refuse to allow, you are experiencing fear. The experience of fear, also, is an experience of love. Eventually you will come to realize that love is all there is.

Why not open to love now?

Why not begin the process now? Why not step into your life consciously and responsibly? There is no other way to love.