Love Tells Me I’m Everything


LOVE by Linda Munro


Wisdom tells me I am nothing.

Love tells me I am everything.  

Between the two my life flows.


~Nisargadatta Maharaj

This is a mantra I repeat almost daily. When I heard it, it was like a bright light went on.  I finally understood something that had me perplexed for years and years.
Since I was quite young I would ponder the reasons for us being in the world.  I would do these ‘mind experiments’.  For instance, I would imagine I was this ‘person’ far out in space looking down at our world, watching all those little lives go on over the years.  Time would pass, lives would go, new lives would come, some would do good things, some would do bad things, they would be happy, be sad and suffer, wars would be fought, won and lost; but from up in space none of it really mattered over the long-term.
No matter what happened, the world went on.  Of course things changed but who really cared what happened thousands of years before themselves and some years from now, who would really care what happened now?  It would be all but completely forgotten.
Another experiment I did while sitting on the Toronto streetcars would be to find a stranger and imagine myself in that person’s body.  What would it be like to be a different person?  What would it be like to look over at me and see a stranger?  To not know any of the people in that other person’s life who they love so much and whom they would be so sad if something happened to them.  To have a whole different circle of loved ones.
At this point you are probably thinking “this girl is very strange” J !
As you can imagine, these kinds of reflections could bring one to some dark places.  I could feel “so why bother?” “What is so important about life?”
However, despite these thoughts coming from my brain; within my heart, I could feel immensely the suffering of others.  For instance, if I saw a dead animal my stomach would hurt and I would have that intense feeling in my gut for days!  Same if I read about other people’s suffering in the news.  I couldn’t get the feeling of those people’s suffering out of my body.  So regardless of my brain telling me that none of this is ultimately important, deep in my body I knew that it was more important than anything!
You can reason away anything but the heart speaks for the soul!
I had been confused because I thought one had to be right – either the brain or the heart.  Once hearing the quote “Wisdom tells me I am nothing.  Love tells me I am everything.  Between the two my life flows.”  I finally knew both were right!  Life is finding the flow between reasoning and love.
Not taking this world and our life in it too seriously but at the same time through Love we see our interconnectedness with others, we see the beauty of nature, we feel the warmth of the sun on our face, we feel the comfort of cuddling our child, we’re motivated to help relieve some of the suffering in the world and we get up every morning and appreciate this wonder of LIFE we have be blessed with!