Visualizing Love

 The body remembers. 
Even when people have lost their memory, even when a brain injury or shock has blocked the memories of how to do something, the body remembers. 

I lay down paths throughout my life. 
I walk those paths again and again and again until it becomes second nature. Reacting to loss, deprivation and betrayal I have created paths outlined by markers of fear. Those paths have become so well honed, I can run them blindfolded. 

When I try to move beyond my fear 
I discover my feet treading the same old well worn road. As though I am magnetically glued to it. That makes me angry. The anger can raise me out of the fear. And that feels so refreshing, empowering. At once both a release and an acquisition. In trying to raise myself out of fear, I have changed lanes, but it is still the same road, the same path defined by my fear. The anger relieves the feeling of powerlessness. But it only lasts for that moment and must be repeated with each encounter. I visualize those encounters. I have imagined conversations as I lay my head down to sleep. I feel them emotionally. I feed them and reinforce that old path again and again.

Visualization is a tricky concept. 
What does that mean? How do I do that? Do I see it in my mind's eye? How do I do that? There are a kajillion tricks to making it work. Cut out pictures of your desired outcome, your dreams. See them real, feel them, feel what's stopping them, tell a story about them. And that's what I'm doing with my fear and/or my anger. Honing that familiar path. Polishing it with my fear til it shines like a diamond.

The body can learn a new path. 
I can teach it by feeding it a new visualization. And there is one visualization that can be done with any or none of of the above "tricks".  That is visualizing love. You know it when you feel it. That care for another, that empathy, that warm feeling that envelops our hearts. Sometimes it's with tears. Sometimes it makes my toes tingle. Sometimes the feeling is so full, it transports us. Our bodies already know this feeling and we can cull it from memory. Love needs no justification. It just is. It has the capacity to expand from a sometime traveled back road to a well-worn personal highway. It is a simple tool to create a new path for times of anxiety. I don't have to visualize loving the object of my fear. I  can just feel love for anything, for anybody. It's especially powerful if I can feel love for mwaself in that moment of fear or anger. But that's harder, for me at least. While letting the sense memory of feeling love is not that hard. It just takes repetition.

This week 
and continuing of horrible violence leaves me feeling an intolerable fear, powerlessness and anger. I have reached to find an answer for myself. I realized the violence in Dallas, happening so close to Dealey Plaza brought back the memories of the Kennedy assassination. At 16, I'd skipped school that day to watch the president arrive at Market Hall. I was staring down at it when the news came. My insular little world crashed that day. And it all came screaming back on July 7th. I felt that familiar path take me once again. And I realized that was my path. I built that and I want a new way. I want my body's memory to better serve me. Then I need to teach it a different dance.  I need something simple that I already know how to do. A thing that requires little thought and I can do immediately and often. And finally something I am not only willing to do, but something I want to do.

So here I am, at visualizing love. 
As long as I don't insist that I feel love for the object of my fear, I've found it not difficult and it calms me. I can think of no better way to make both the world's world and my little world a better place. And when I am wrapped in the horror of it, it is indeed the best I can do.


Love
DemiLoveToez