Clearing out the Crud Chapter One

Did you really stop and think, or immediately turn the page and start to read this sentence.  If you considered, turn the page.  If you just read on, then take a few seconds or minutes or days and consider:

The word LOVE

Who do you think of?  What feeling does it bring up?

 Four letters

Six Billion+ meanings (one for each of us)

What did you think of when you cogitated on those four letters?  Did you think of your spouse, friend, mom, dad, child, or GOD?  Were you feeling good, bad, joy, anger, pain, contentment, longing, or fulfillment?

Every word we read, every word we hear or even think about has unique connotations for each of us.  I doubt anyone reading this thought of the same person.  Certainly not in the same way.  Even if you thought of God, or Higher Power, Spirit, Source or Being, you had a different thought and view of it than anyone else.  We all thought of something, and the thoughts were all different. Okay, here's the first thing you can say about love.  Everyone has a different perception.  In fact you can say that about every thing in life.  We all have different perceptions.

I won't belabor the obvious loves we learned from family, friends and the media: young love, first love, puppy love, love of family, everlasting love, unconditional love, heterosexual and homosexual love, love of a friend, parent, or child...  We all have mostly good concepts of the above, probably even good feelings.  We love good feelings and the things that give them to us.  I would venture to say most of us associate love with good feelings.

But….Love has caused a lot of pain too, but, we expect it.  Love and pain go together don't they?  We have made it so in most of our lives.  In fact there are so many quotes about love and pain being linked, one of the most famous being  "I would rather have loved and lost than never to have loved at all".  So we see love as something that is ours to lose.  Loss causes pain. Love and loss. 

You sometimes hear all kinds of catch phrases associated with love, like these two opposite sayings; “love is pain”, “love is a many-splendored thing”.  How can love be both?  Just goes to show you how messed up we are about love.  Love is pretty much everything to us, we just haven't learned yet what it really is.  We muddle love, and the quest for love, up in our minds and hearts until it is basically unrecognizable.

What has been done in the name of love?  What was done to make some of you reading the above to have an uncomfortable feeling about the word love?  Is there a bad side to love?   What lies have been said in the name of love?  What cruelty has been labeled love?  What kind of crud has blurred, covered up or even have seemed to stop-up love.  What have you heard in your house, from your friends, on the TV or in movies?  Is love always a great feeling, a cherished emotion, or a worthy desire?  Or does love contain twinges of pain and hurt for you.

Consider:

·         I am only spanking or hitting (and/or putting fear in) you because I love you.

·         Because I love you, I am telling you this, even if it hurts you.

·         For love of family and country, he killed and died.

·         The husband loves his wife or child as he hits them to teach them something.

·         The mother loves her babies so much she smothers or drowns them to protect them.

You get my drift.  Love has been used to explain how we hurt one another.

Again, perception is the key to understanding the wide gulf of views and actions surrounding the word love.  Perceptions are what cause us pain.  A married couple divorces because their perceptions of what they wanted from each other and what love was differed too much.  Love wasn't the problem, perception was.

Ever been friends with a couple?  Ever had them at odds with one another and as you listen to both of them, you find you can understand both sides.  Neither is right or wrong, each just has their own perception of what, how or when things should be.  You are in the middle with your own perceptions, probably not even close to theirs.  The thing is that letting go of perceptions and listening and trying to understand the other would enable both to find a solution that led to happiness rather than strife and anger.

Perception enables us to be happy, or be unhappy.  We choose our perceptions, so we choose happy or unhappy.  We choose a life of crud, or we choose to be crud-free.  We can choose to accumulate the crud, or choose to get rid of it.

So what do I mean by crud?  Crud is simply anything that stops the flow of love.  Anytime we stop the flow of love it makes us unhappy.  I was given love and taught to give love.  I was also given and taught crud.  I learned how to take it and how to store it and how to give it.  We all did.  Crud has been taught to each generation from the beginning.  We have learned it, and we have passed it on.  We have covered up love with crud, and even distorted it.

As humans our understanding of love is obviously flawed.  Ahhh… you're right, warped is a better word.  Even (and especially) our view of GOD is distorted and warped beyond belief.  We are taught GOD is love, but in the next breath we are taught he is everything to fear.

·         GOD has punished you because you are gay, black, pregnant, vain, stupid, smart, or whatever label you want

·         GOD doesn't love ___________ (Insert more labels)

·         and of course the ever ready complaint - Why is GOD punishing me??????????

And on and on and on.  In fact, we throw those words, love and GOD, around like we really have an idea what they mean.  WE HAVE NO CLUE!!!!  Even as I sit here and write this, I understand that I have no clue as to what GOD or love really is, what those words really encompass.  The depth and breadth and width of them, are beyond me, but somewhere in my heart I think I know what is NOT love, NOT GOD.   Pain, suffering, fear, punishment, control, and anger are not love. So maybe by eliminating what is NOT love, we can start to experience what really is love.  And we can do it for more than a moment or an hour or a day.

So, the key to removing the crud is removing the opposite of love.  Again, I think we have a better understanding of what is not love than what it is.  God's love is so huge, so incredible we have yet to begin to understand or feel all of it.  Sometimes we get a blast of it, a taste or a feel of it. We revel in it for that moment, hour, or a day.  We crave it, we claim it, we need it, and we search for it.  Why?  Because we know so much of hurt and fear and pain.  We want something other than that, something well, less painful.  If you think about it, those feelings of love we have had came in a complete absence of hurt, fear and/or pain. 

Think again of the couple with the differences in perception.  Wouldn't they rather be happy and getting along than arguing and in pain?  Of course.  We all would.  Somehow though we have been taught and learned all the wrong lessons.  We cling to what hurts us because that is what we know.  We need to learn differently.

What was your most joyful moment, a moment you felt connected to the universe, to perfection, or total well-being.  Chances are you cannot and do not associate any negative feelings with this moment.  The most beautiful sunset, the child's first step, the achievement of something.  If it was totally joyful, there was no negative.  It's all perception.  We perceived the good at that moment, we connected somewhere outside of our normal state.  Negative, for all it may have been around us, did not touch us at that moment.

So maybe by removing this negative stuff we know so well, we CAN feel love.  At will and for always.  That is what this writing is about.  Removing the pain and fear and hate from our hearts, the crud that clogs it up.

Now I can only speak from my experience, my journey.  I have had many different teachers including books, media, people, churches, experiences, and even myself as a teacher.  The last is the most important.  You have to listen to yourself.  You have so much knowledge that you have covered up and never used.  Listen to it, learn from it.  As I relate my knowledge, my perceptions, you will certainly have your own.  Listen to them and use them. 

That is the first step.  Listen.  With our technology so advanced, information comes streaming at us constantly.  So much to sort through, so much to digest, so much that is contradictory.  How to decipher it all?  How to hear the truth in the babble?  We have a built in filter if we use it.  Call it our souls, our inner voice, the Holy Spirit, our hearts, Higher Power, whatever you want, whatever you call it, use it.  If it makes you feel good, take it in, listen to what it says to you. If it doesn't make sense or makes you uncomfortable, filter it out.  The good thing is that even when you filter the truth out, it still remains the truth and remains with you and in you.  You just have to grow and learn to see it.  How many times in life have you heard something or learned something that didn't make sense, and then one day all of a sudden it hit you.  You understood.

The second step?  Learn.  After you have listened learn it.  Learn what makes you happy, learn what makes you sad.  Learn how to filter, how to pull the feelings you like into you. Learn from the voice inside you, from those around you, from the things in your life.  Learn new things, adopt new practices and skills, and make them yours.  You can teach an old dog new tricks, and it will put life in the old dog. Often learning a new skill requires putting the old way behind you.  In growing, the new growth crowds out the old and so you have to move to the next step…

Letting go.  Let go the old, make way for the new. Let go what causes pain, let go what causes hurt and fear.  Let go pre-conceptions, needs, wants.  Letting go of the crud makes room for love.  Filling up with love is more satisfying than filling up on fear, hurt and pain.  Somehow we seem to choose the negative emotions to exist on.  There are a lot of reasons put forth as to why, but that is not important.  Finding a way to let negative emotions go is the really important thing.  Once you have listened, learned and let go the old, you have to now make it a part of your life.  Sounds simple, but habit and fear of change can make it harder on you, so you have one more step to start to transform your life.

The last step?  Live it and be guided by it.  Practice, practice, practice!!!  If something works and gives you harmony or peace, identify it and practice it.  Make it a part of your life.  Many things are simple to see, but hard to put into practice.  But if you want to be happy, find the things that make you happy and practice them, own them, live them.  At the same time, if you identify situations which make you unhappy, practice not going back to the old way.  Often you have to go back and let go again.

 More detail in later chapters on the four steps to change.

Press next article for next chapter.