I'm brand new to yoga, meditation, and your forum. There's an overwhelming amount of knowledge being passed on here, but I'm really enjoying the learning.
![[:)]](http://www.aypsite.com/plus-forum/Smileys/akyhne/icon_smile.gif "Smile")
I see a lot in this forum about the feeling of love and of being in love, and I view love a little differently, I think. So I decided to throw my ideas out there to see what others have to say.
I guess it's easiest to start a definition by defining what a thing is not. And, from my point of view, love is not a feeling at all. Love is something we do. The word itself is not a noun; it's a verb. So we might feel affection for someone or incredible longing or lust or all three or more, but those feelings are not love.
Love is what we do. It's changing the colicky baby's poopy diaper at 2 in the morning and rocking her until she falls back to sleep. It's massaging the hubby's sore back every night to make living with a herniated disk a little easier. (The touching is nice too.
) It's visiting a loved one in prison because you know how important those visits really are. (Oh, the stories I could tell about prisons!) It's spending time with someone and sharing thoughts and feelings. And I think loving with our bodies (sex) is one of the most profound expressions of love available to us humans. I think that's why sex changes things in a relationship, but that's a whole 'nother topic...
Anyway, viewing love as a verb allows us to actively love others without having to feel any kind of affection for them whatsoever. It's all about what we do for others (and for ourselves), and it's independent of how we feel. But I also know that the practice of love can be horribly draining, especially if the people you love have big problems. My personal experience came in the form of a kind of hormone crash. I wound up in the doctor's office devoid of energy and bleeding profusely mid-cycle. It's the experience that drove me to search out meditation as a possible way to keep myself from circling the drain.
And I found much more than I expected! I now know from reading the AYP book and from my few days' meditation practice that the capacity to sustain love has been in me all along. I just didn't know how to tap it. And I can tell already that the meditation is having a profound effect. I can tell that one of my twins needs extra hugs, and I can tell that my oldest daughter has a lot on her mind and needs someone to really listen to her. I can tell my hubby is upset about his back condition, and I have it in me to give them what they need. It's no effort anymore!
So I think it's incredibly smart to put the meditation practice first before anything else in yoga. (Not that Yogani needs affirmation from a newbie like me!
) We tap the well (get the inner love making going) within ourselves and go out and love others. It's exiting to think about. If I'm getting this from 20 minutes of meditation twice a day for about a week, I wonder what will happen on down the road. Good things, I imagaine.
