I Love & Adore You

Good morning & Welcome to March 2023.

It’s been awhile - way longer than I like to leave between newsletters.

But flexibility is important & I’m grateful to be back. Thank you for being here.

February 2023 was a tough one. For me and likely others too.

On the second day of the month, 2/2/23, my Aunt Grace passed away.

She was the most embodied person I’ve ever met.

You could feel love radiating from her. And I suspect that everyone who met her would agree.

Less than a day later, a 38-car train of chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, causing one of, if not the, worst environmental disaster in American history.

And the following day was my 29th birthday. Not exactly jovial.

It’s been a weird & dark feeling month, but things are beginning to lighten.

So today, we’re going to drop in and honor Grace.

She studied & taught yoga for decades, spent thousands of hours meditating & fasting, and would run marathons in the California mountains, barefoot, up until the age of 80.

We’ll explore who she was, what we can learn from her, and how her life philosophies can help us navigate life’s paradoxical nature.

Grace Swanson was a spiritual matriarch & an embodiment of love.

Not just to my family, but seemingly, of everyone she interacted with.

Before diving in further, I must acknowledge that my perspective is inherently limited, as I’ve only met her a few times over the years. At family reunions, we would interact from afar, but never really found time to connect. Fortunately, in the last three years, we shared two extensive calls that were eye-opening, insightful, and now, profoundly meaningful.

Anyways, she’s my Grandmother’s Aunt, and even at 93, she carried a radiant wisdom and an undeniable energy. Seriously, it felt like a Ghandi or Mother Teresa vibe– hard to explain, but obvious when felt.

She was a mover & shaker of the Consciousness Movement in the 1960’s and one of the healthiest people I’ve encountered. Her stories are bizarre yet captivating.

Like fasting 60 days for her 60th birthday. Or seeing her eventual husband clear-as-day in a vision, and meeting him just months after. “Coincidentally,” when her friends picked her up on the way to a Feldenkrais workshop, they had picked him up, hitchhiking, from Big Sur to Monterey. They met in the back of the car, fell in love, and soon moved in (to a tree trunk) together.

The first time I met her (& every time since), she would tell me, “I love and adore you.” At first, that just seems like something an over-enthusiastic family member would say.

Then you felt Grace say those words… “I love and adore you.”

It was kind of wild, on a number of levels. For one, it felt like she was giving you a hug from across the room. This was a great thing, of course, but it just flies in the face of most things I knew at the time.

I soon learned that these words were kind of her thing. “I love and adore you” is what she’d say to everyone. It was how she saw the world.

She carried & expressed an embodied feeling of love, in each moment.

When we last spoke in January 2022, I asked her about her saying “I Love & Adore You.”

How was she able to love everything, unconditionally?

Even the bad times or dark forces that can show up– how can we love those, too?

Her response shocked me.

“I can experience perfection in all of it.”

“How so”? I asked.

She recounted childhood where “ceremony & ritual thrilled me,” and reflected into her adulthood, meditating at Eslen for months at a time, where she found “no distinction between me and others during meditation.”

Without separation, all there is,

Is love.

Togetherness. Unity. Oneness.

“We’re all doing the same thing differently.”

Is one of the ideas she repeated during the conversation, over & over again.

Or another way she said it, “Everything is the same with different parts.”

To me, this points to the concept of paradox… without the dark, there would be no light.

Paradoxes initially seem self-contradictory, but later reveal a deeper truth of being connected. Just as good would not exist without bad (as a reference point), pain gives context to joy.

This perspective on finding unity within paradox was popular among philosophers such as Ram Das (Love Your Dark Thoughts) & Alan Watts, who expressed these ideas throughout their life work.

During our conversation last winter, Grace casually mentioned that she hosted Alan and his family for Easter back in the 70’s. Yes, they were on a first-name basis & yes I was simultaneously shocked & stoked to hear they were close. They were good friends for years & taught workshops together at Esalen.

The Esalen Institute is a holistic retreat center & educational institute located in Big Sur, California that focuses on “Exploring Human Potential.” Grace taught yoga & led raw food workshops there for decades, and also spent months at a time meditating & fasting on the grounds.

When I heard her talk about Esalen, her eyes would light up. It was clear that these lands were important to her and still hold a good bit of magic. I hope to make a trip there in the next few years.

Our Life is Our Work

Sadly, and admittedly regretfully, I never made it over to California to visit Grace after our conversation last January. I didn’t have the time, is what I told myself.

But this revealed a deep lesson that I’ll carry forward the rest of my life: Time is not something you have, it’s something you make.

We make time for our priorities.

How we spend our time is simply a reflection of what we care about.

We all have the same amount each day.

If something seems off– adjust. Refine. Reflect. Repeat.

At the end of our conversation, Grace shared an observation that I initially didn’t realize the power of.

“Who I am has been my work. We’re all doing that.”

Who we are isn’t a resume, nor our accomplishments, nor our bank account.

Who we are, is our embodied way of being.

Who we are, is how we show up (when things get tough).

Who we are, is formed & refined in each moment.

Unconditional Love:

What does unconditional love mean to you?

This question was up on the screen when I went to see Jay Shetty’s Love Rules Tour earlier this month. It’s also been on my mind for the past couple of weeks post-Valentines day.

Before you continue reading, I’d invite you to take a breath and drop into the question, “what does true love mean?” And if you’re feeling adventurous, “where did that definition come from?”

I’m somewhat embarrassed to report that my working understanding of unconditional love was born from the comedy movie featuring Vince Vaughn & Owen Wilson, Wedding Crashers.

Again, paradox. But here me out.

If you’ve seen the movie, you might remember this iconic scene where Owen Wilson says,

“True love is your soul’s recognition of its counterpart in another.”

Rumors are that the quote is originally from Joseph Campbell, which is relieving because it’s quite weird receiving love definitions from an early 2000’s rom-com.

Anyways, the idea is spot on (in my opinion).

Love is seeing yourself in another and acting accordingly.

Or as Aunt Grace would say (I believe):

Unconditional Love is Seeing & Honoring the Perfection of All Things.

Grace saw the beauty in all things. She shared courageously & stood deeply in the things she believed in. She shared unconditional love with everyone she interacted with and that capacity for love was both eye-opening & inspiring.

I’m deeply grateful for our time spent together and will carry these many lessons forward in my life. If any of this resonates, perhaps you will as well.

I’m going to wrap this up with a quote from her friend Alan that seems to beautifully illustrate the playful, loving, and go-with-the-flow approach Grace embodied in life.

“We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.” Alan Watts.

Thank you for reading.

If you’re still with me, I appreciate you deeply.

Sharing this newsletter has terrified the shit out of me.

It’s raw. It’s different. It’s real.

That’s why I knew I had to send it.

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” Joseph Campbell

Your friend & supporter,

Aidan