Remembering Love as the Only Truth

As I prepare for the next Spicy Soul Mama podcast, I find it no coincidence that the upcoming guest wrote about love. I’m obsessed with love on the daily, and my friend, Stever Dallman, truly embodies it. I’ve known him for many years, from San Francisco to Maui, I am grateful to have witnessed some of his evolution with his non-profit Liberation Institute, which provides affordable mental health support for individuals in Portland and San Francisco. The Institute offers affordable or donation-based mental health support for individuals. Now residing in Maui, Stever founded another non-profit, Hanuman Maui, which continues Ram Dass’s presence on Maui. It seeks to uphold his teachings of love, service, and devotion in honor of and caring for the beloved home of Ram Dass. He also wrote a book, “Walking Home with Love” which seeks to answer — How do we navigate todays’ complicated world while staying connected each day to our spirituality?

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Love can be straightforward in a moment’s glance, through an act of service, in an active listening ear. And it also comes as an external projection, transforming into an attachment that can exist onto another person’s foundation of morality, truth, and vulnerability of life itself, dissolving ourselves to see the other.

If we shred away all the constructs of religion and even spiritual traditions we can find that the core is only love.

The Golden Rule: “…it mistakes the reality of the self for the only reality, taking one’s own wishes, desires, and longings as universal and presuming that the other shares those precisely — negating the sovereign reality of the other, negating the possibility that a very different person might want something very different done unto them.” —Maria Popova

This “selfing” gets us into trouble.

We can expand our “self” with the arts and music in both visual and written form. Empathy in art helps us understand what moves us and emboldens us to question and seek understanding. Visiting art museums are wonderous to me, viewing masterpieces placed on the walls is essentially a human’s soul unabashedly and vulnerably exuded in its formation for all to witness. Museums are also one of the only places where you will find humanity in all its forms, coming together to witness these works in commonality, questioning, pondering, and seeking meaning. Preconceptions of labels are left at the door as we view these creations to potentially stir something new in our hearts.

Like a writer who writes by the dim light, digging up the past in the present moment for a potential to come into a brighter light for comprehension of the dukkha — the human condition. The writer has to be careful not to fall too far into the pit of despair, and I am in awe of those who dig down into that pit to share with the reader for our benefit. Witnessing another’s suffering can spawn something new in our soul and maybe even some empathy.

In my early 20s, I read Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening,” published in 1899, which covered feminist themes well ahead of the times. The protagonist’s journey as a mother and wife realizes that she is lost within these roles and ultimately rejects them to find her independence. Ultimately, she chose herself during a time when women were largely viewed as property--first a father's property, then her husband's. She enjoyed her freedom in many ways, yet because of the time it ends tragically when she takes her own life.

As a society, we have come far from this oppression of women as property despite the confines of a capitalistic society projecting its role that we are only worthy if we make money to contribute. I have had countless conversations with mothers who are ambitious with dreams of their own, unable to realize them when a child is diagnosed with a disorder or an illness. Monetary work and ambitions are halted or confined to part-time, leaving the partner or husband to be the breadwinner and health insurance provider. Often, the awareness that a mother is still working as a caregiver without monetary pay is overlooked and seen as “easy” work. Each person gets stuck in their cycle of myopic views of their worlds, and remembering love can be challenging. Each person becomes stifled to have their dreams realized may never come.

What do we do when we forget about love?

When we forget to see the people in front of us and often ourselves. We give up and become stagnant, stuck in routines and old stories. Sometimes, we have to give up for a bit and then pick up the slack again. We have to take that leap off the mountain into the journey to challenge the underworld. The important part is to climb out of it, leaving the victim mentality behind. When a parent is often fighting systems alongside the exhausting role of keeping a loved one safe together with their own personal stress, it can be too much at times. Maintaining self-care and putting your oxygen mask on first is vital to be able to remember to love others.

Love can help us all climb out because it’s the truth of who we are.

I hope you will listen to the podcast that comes out next Sunday to hear our discussion about love.

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