Writing My Little Book of Love
essay | 450 words — coming to terms with love and truth
Back in 1995, One Love was the culmination of a decade-long journey with unconditional love as the guiding aspiration of my life. Now in 2022, there’s more to the story.
One Love is a collection of 81 short notes I wrote to myself and self-published in 1995. In 2022 it’s risen back to the surface. I’ve rearranged the poems, polished them up a bit, and made the book available again. Here’s the story of how this book has been an expression and inspiration on my path of spiritual and creative unfolding.
Discovering the Wisdom of Emergence
I considered myself a “seeker” back in 1995, but most of the messages in this book didn’t come through that seeking part of myself. They emerged instead from an everpresent field of wisdom, which I tapped into through a wisdom writing process I would today describe as emergent. (You can try my emergent wisdom writing process yourself.)
A Fertile Field for Awakening
In late 1995, just months after releasing this little book to my extended community, the next stage of my spiritual journey came in full steam through a fundamental realization of everpresent nondual awareness. That opening marked a shift in my central focus of inquiry from unconditional Love to a moment-to-moment practice of timeless presence.
As such, this book has a special place in my heart. It represents the fertile field from which consciousness could emerge to discover itself.
Love, Demoted
“It can be a harsh world for an innocent heart in a social field of truth seekers and ‘finders.’”
For some time after that awakening, though — through internal and external influences (e.g. gurus, “zen-boyfriends,” and random self-defined experts on social media) — Love and Happiness got demoted to lower levels of honor, importance, and relevance as compared to “Truth.” It can be a harsh world for an innocent heart in a social field of truth seekers and “finders.” That harshness was indeed in the world around me. At the same time, that harshness was a painful mirror and magnification of my inner process. My mind did not know its proper relationship to the heart.
Coming Back Around
It’s taken a long time to come full circle and arrive in a place where I am able to share this book once again. Now I have a deeper lived understanding of the messages it contains and the courage to share them. This depth of confidence in my connection to inner wisdom is such a vital aspect of the creative process — which for me is not complete until the work is shared.
Love and Truth and Beauty, Happiness or Peace or Freedom — these are not hierarchies. To live a human journey of being and becoming is an expression of all of these. My focus these days is on cultivating the inner and outer environments that support the unfolding of all these qualities in communion with all of life. And I see clearly, in retrospect, that Love has been — and remains — my personal core guiding inspiration through it all.
❤ 2022 | Maja Apolonia Rodé
Reflections on Love, Letting Go, and Remembering Who We Are
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