Unexpected Freedom

Unexpected Freedomloving so that we can prepare ourselves to benefit from oursusceptibility to falling in love. As the possibility of the Waydawns on us, we can start to see that it is wisdom that calls usto prepare ourselves for such wild encounters with life.Experiences such as falling in love appear threatening, atleast on some level – they don’t just threaten to destroy ourego, our subjective personality (they do that for sure); theyalso threaten to ruin our lives. If you’re a monk or a nun andyou fall in love, and you’re not prepared for it, theconsequences can be very difficult. Similarly, if you’remarried and you fall in love with someone other than the onewith whom you have made a commitment, theconsequences can also be very difficult. But we can prepareourselves, so that we don’t have to be afraid of it happening;we don’t have to be afraid of the intensity.If we contemplate in this manner, we can ask ourselves,do I want to be able to withstand the tension that arises as aconsequence of an as-yet-unawakened relationship with myown heart-capacity? When we fall in love, what’s really takingplace is that we are challenged to own up to the consequencesof our limited way of engaging with experience. We feel likesaying, ‘I can’t handle it, I can’t handle this,’ but we can decideto handle it, to say ‘I’m interested in learning to handle this;I’m interested in learning to handle all of my heart’senthusiasm for life; I’m interested in being loving, fully,purifying the heart’s capacity for being loving.’ If we’veinvestigated and considered this matter, and then decide toexercise this choice, we are already preparing ourselves, sothat when the passion arises, fear, contraction and limitationis not the default, but instead an interest in the reality which isunfolding takes its place. We’re interested and enthusiasticbecause we see the potential that such energy has fordissolving the rigidity of our frozen hearts. It feels impossible62