Inpower Institute Insights

How do we love beyond enchantment? We don’t. When love is given permission to be free, love is enchanting, and the enchantment is the beyond. Love is the fairytale, the “happily ever after,” the all-consuming affair, the eternal presence, and the unconditioned force we all secretly desire. In this way, it is not our belief in fairytales that is wrong, but rather our belief that loving with such deep abandon is an impossibility. 

In our disbelief, we turn love into a fixture, a limited being, a philosophy, or a fiction we project our deepest desires onto, instead of experiencing them. Our ability to love is therefore restricted by all the ways we refuse to believe it can exist and somewhere, amid the disappointment, sadness, and desperation of our discontent and disillusionment, many of us have concluded that love simply isn’t a fairytale. That love done practically and in the “real world” is sobering.

This is not false. Love is not without many potent challenges that require we reevaluate life on the shore where the ground can be touched and the foundation is steady, but it is also not the whole truth. We are surrounded by countless examples of the ways that love invites us into the deep and drowns us with its presence. The way the Earth provides nourishment with great abundance. The way the Sun shows up relentlessly every single day to smother our faces in kisses and its warm embrace. The way all of our Great Mothers have broken themselves open to create new life and new beginnings. 

If love were not at least in part a mysticism, a mystery outside of our control, an intoxication, a fire that burns wild, a wave without form, our very existence would cease. But belief in this kind of love has been destroyed by genocides of many kinds. Many of us have come to believe that there is nowhere safe outside the womb. Nowhere to be truly loved. That life itself is a trauma, and any conception of unconditional, enchanting love is a false mask for its triggers.

Our desire for this love, however, does not go away amid our disbelief and our fears. We do not forget what it is like to be created out of a cosmic magic that can only be described as love, regardless of the imminent details of our creation. As a result, many of us spend decades and lifetimes searching for synthetic and acceptable replacements for this love we will not allow ourselves to believe possible to recreate. We fall in love with the taste of exotic cuisine. We plunge deeply into our “purpose-driven careers.” We sprint towards the next chemical or herbal high, searching for a love that is wild, free, unhinged, fulfilling, creative, nourishing, sexy, and smothering. Searching for a kind of love that reminds us of air, and warmth, and the unflinching, unconditioned gift of a mother’s womb. A love that accepts us as we are, needing no understanding of who we are, what we will become, and what will be required of us to be in relationship with each other. A kind of love that pours over us relentlessly. A kind of love that says “Yes!” with all-consuming joy and excitement and childlike anticipation. A love that is enchanting.