Mandi Cloete
Mandi Cloete · May 2022 · 1 min read
In my late teens up to my mid-thirties I spent many years travelling the globe seeking not only a place to belong outside of myself but also the secret to life, my life. I’ve had many teachers and taken hundreds of courses in all weird and wonderful things. But the most profound teaching that was really the turning point in my journey of recovery and healing was this simple truth... I am the Love that I seek.
What does this mean?
Love, in the fullest sense is not an idealistic love, it’s not commerce-identified nor is it romantic in its experience. Love exists both before and beyond conditions. It is dynamic. It is always present, it is the very essence of our being.
Love is the voice under all silences; the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness; the truth more first than sun, more last than star... —E.E. Cummings
Because we are love, at our very core, it is always available. Always available to help us face the wounded, rejected aspects of ourselves, enabling us to deal with our inner demons of shame, negative self-talk, negative self-image and unresolved issues that shape the fabric of our identity.
I have learned that in our suffering we place armour around our heart thinking it is protecting us from harm. This dulls our sensitivity and cuts us off from Love. We remain wounded behind this armouring and keep ourselves separate from the very essence that can heal us. What’s astounding is that when a person is armoured, they do not feel their own armour as such.
In his book Character Analysis, Psychologist Wilhelm Reich found the functions of armouring to be that it keeps potentially explosive emotions in and wards off the emotions of others. There are different types of armouring such as body-armouring, sexual body-armouring. All of which affect our ability to connect – with Self, with source and with others.
Richard Moss also speaks perfectly of this:
“The ultimate form of cocreation is how the Self holds the self - the personal experience of being. This is what determines what we experience and who and how we are as we live, breath by breath. The Self-me relationship is the fundamental relationship because moment by moment it is the gaze we turn upon ourselves that creates our sense of self. This relationship is mediated not by thinking but by the quality of attention we bring to the Now in our me-ness; how we are present with our sensations, emotions and thoughts.”
When our attention originates within the Love that is innate to us, and we reside at the beginning of ourselves, then the world is Love. When we hold the even the most painful places in ourselves with loving, open attention, we experience compassion. And with compassion our whole world transforms.
At a retreat with my teacher Isira Sananda she spoke often of Love… “When we realise we are Love, we realise we are at one with all things, with all resources, with all intelligence. We awaken to our infinite Self and discover that life can be dramatically different just by the realisation “I am Love”.
Discovering this Love isn’t through theorising or conceptualising. It’s in the being.
How then?
The where is HERE
The HOW is always in the NOW
The NOW is beyond time, beyond the mind
The NOW is the source and presence of all that is True.
It is when we meet this, consciously, that everything we have tried to understand, the peace and love we have been seeking, is discovered and embodied in the midst of every living moment.
—Isira Sananda
Contact me and let’s work together to dissolve your heart’s armour and unfold the love that you are in your being and in all areas of your life.
With Love,
Mandi
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