Love is who you are, what you have come into life to give. Love is the cooperative, harmonizing, accepting, forgiving essence of your being. Love does not give up nor demand what it does not have. Love doesn't force itself on others in order to feel better about itself. Love doesn't attack to avenge itself nor does love withhold itself. When we learn to see ourselves as love and to be present with others in loving ways, love will be anchored in our consciousness and on the planet.
We think that by protecting ourselves from suffering, we are being kind to ourselves. The truth is we only become more fearful, more hardened and more alienated. We experience ourselves as being separate from the whole. This separateness becomes like a prison for us—a prison that restricts us to our personal hopes and fears, and to caring only for the people nearest to us. Curiously enough, if we primarily try to shield ourselves from discomfort, we suffer. Yet, when we don't close off, when we let our hearts break, we discover our kinship with all beings.