The ‘Quotes for Contemplation’ series is an invitation to become still and turn inward, allowing deep inner associations and insights to rise to the surface. The more you allow yourself to explore and turn meanings on their head, the more inspirational depth and value these excursions of intuitive listening will yield to you.
The quotes chosen are some of my favorite perennial classics, well known to most of us.
Any interpretations of these famous quotes offered in this series are my own, and I invite you to take them as starting points for your own contemplations only, never as the ‘only’ or correct meaning, or the one intended by their original authors.
Most of all, I hope you will get much joy, inner peace and a host of startlingly fresh insights of your own on this journey of contemplation.
Love is a decision, not an emotion.
— Erich Fromm
How many times have you tangled with an emotion you called love, only to find yourself snared and pulled hither and tither by eddies of pain, despair, doubts, fear of loss and abandonment?
How often have you experienced the sweet, ecstatic heights of blissful love - only to feel the harsh loss of it when your object of attention, your source of love, dried up and turned away and left you high and dry and all alone?
Do you carry a belief that love will come and find you - when the circumstances are right, when you have met “the right one”, when you are finally ready for and worthy of someone else’s treasured attention and adoration, or your own?
If so, the Sage within invites you to shift your perspective - what you thought of as ‘love’ is an illusion, insubstantial wisps of sparks and smoke capable of intoxicating the senses and leading them astray, but nothing more. An emotion of ‘love’ is fleeting at best, illusive, fickle and incapable of growing roots. Like all emotions, it is but a messenger, not designed to stay still but to move around and give feedback according to your inner state of being.
This is good news!
What the great Sage is telling you is that, instead of being one at the whim of unpredictable feelings of love, you are Love. You can choose Love - by choosing to remember the Truth of your Inner Being, your Origin.
Love is your True Essence. How could you possibly experience a lack of Love when it is inherent in everything, within and all around you - unless you choose to shift your gaze away from Love and focus it instead on the illusion of polarity, believing that if there is such a thing as Love, then there must also exist an absence of it?
Love is only ever a decision away - you must choose it over the experience of lack, choose it with every breath you take, every thought you think. Yes, it takes effort and practice and committed dedication. But it is yours for the taking, your choice to be making.
Love is a state of Being, not an emotion. Be Love. Surrender to Love. Do not wait for Love to choose you - it already has. The ball is in your court now - allow Love to pour itself into you, and then, spill over.
Note: on my search for more transparency I have found that not all of these quotes are always attributed to the correct source. I have done my best to make a note where I have found discrepancies, and to name the correct source if I was able to trace it. For anything I may have missed or misrepresented, I apologize.