Becoming Love: A Conversation With Andrea Gibson, Part II
On happiness as a birthright, being here now, releasing "trying", sustained joy, dying joyfully, love as presence and guidance, and becoming each other.
Intimate conversations with our greatest heart-centered minds.
As promised, here’s Part II of the interview with the glorious, tender, bursting-with-joy
. It picks up exactly where we left off so if you need a review of Part I or haven’t yet read it, you can check it out here.Next week, I’ll be sharing writing advice from Andrea for paid subscribers. It’s pretty wonderful!
My heart and cells were profoundly changed from speaking with Andrea. I imagine the same will happen for you. Let me know what you think in the comments! ❤️
When you hit the state of being very present, being very in the now, can you describe that experience in a tactile way? What’s happening in your body? What's happening in your mind?
Something that I didn't know existed. I live outside of Boulder, Colorado, so it's a large Buddhist community. I have lots of friends who grew up here who were raised Buddhist, which— what a miracle that would have been. I always thought that these practices were about being able to tolerate the hard stuff more, to bear it more. I didn't understand that the present moment was bliss. I did not understand how much joy was in it.
What it feels like for me is a swell of pure happiness that I am aware is everybody's birthright. I heard something recently —joy is actually the fabric of the universe and our pain is a result of putting up so many barriers between us and it. But to describe the feeling—it is almost as if Andrea goes away and there I am: life itself. I'm looking out my window right now, and there are prairie dogs running around the meadow. I do not think the prairie dogs ever have an experience of self. I think that they have an experience of life. That they’re life witnessing life. And that's how it feels.
I no longer am seeing the world through the lens of my biases, my pains, my preferences. It's like I stopped seeing through the eyes of my memory. I heard recently that the mind literally can only remember. The mind does not imagine anything new. The spirit does, which is fascinating.
So in this space, there's so much imagining. There's so much possibility. I'm nowhere else other than where I am. I don't know if that makes sense.
Yes, it does! And it’s so beautiful. Are you always in that state? Or are you moving in and out of it?