Will Smith's Advice Is: Love Like That

Keep Loving People
I doubt anyone reading this post questions the value of loving people.  As for keep:  

(Have you ever seen this quote before?)

My guess is that most of us simply struggle to find a balance between loving ourselves and loving others.  We think, "so and so wants me to do this but I am so tired. I've got to choose, love me or love her." 

Whenever we find ourselves framing experience as an either-or, win-lose situation, we are in a contracted state of awareness.  When we are perceiving experience like this we are looking through the eyes of ego.  

Loving Awareness does not require that people act in certain ways to "prove" that they love someone; egos think like that.  While egos are helpful and entertaining at times, they are not designed to Love.  Egos are designed to look after number one.  To access the Love Will Smith is talking about, we each have to connect with a more expansive perspective of who we are than our likes and dislikes, our goals, past, achievements and bank balances.  

Without a Loving Awareness practice of some sort, we will find ourselves loving from our egos which is like loving from a measuring cup, a limited supply.  

Your Art
Your "art" can include anything.  Your art may be your work, drawing, parenting, talking to people on the sidewalk, listening, organizing, driving or tidying.  Your art may be paying the bills on time, telling funny stories, washing the dishes, finding the coolest hats, sending cards or making wildly inappropriate comments at the perfect time.  Your art may be speaking the truth kindly, stacking wood, cooking, reminding or kissing.  Likely, your art is a combination of many of these things and more!

However your art looks, it does not need to be white-washed.  In fact, there is no light/love without dark/pain:  

• This story of cross-country skiing in the Olympics.
• This story of how a 3-legged dog and a boy with Schwartz-Jamel syndrome. 
• This 19-year-old discovering how to clean the world's oceans in 5 years time. 
• These celebrities reading mean tweets about themselves.
• This Love Ninja teacher. 

In every case above, pain was transformed rather than transmitted. 

Practice seeing and transforming your pain with the practice of Loving Awareness.  This will give you a shirt to share.  And if you let other people see (seeing is not transmitting) your pain, the shirt you share may be giving another person the honor of assisting you.    

If you are interested where the Will Smith quote came from, 

watch this conversation between Will Smith and Jimmy Fallon 

on the first Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.