I met my wife Sundara three years before we became lovers. In the interim I lost touch with her, but throughout that period I was possessed by a very real and tangible sense of fear.

This fear seemed to have no object, I just knew I had to get away from something huge inside me. I spent an enormous amount of energy trying to achieve something useful, terrified my plans would come to nothing, endlessly seeking to control things over which I had no power.

And all the while there was an almost unbearable longing in me. A voice was calling out “Where is my family? Where is my wife? Where are my kids?” It’s almost as if I could feel the next stage of my life coming, and was both yearning for it and unable to let it in at the same time.

At some point, I just stopped running. I recognised that all my attempts to get away were futile. So I just stopped. I dropped all the useful things I was trying to achieve, and let everything go.

And at that moment I saw, or rather felt, what I had been running from all this time. Nothing but love! Love that simply wanted to flow through me, into my life, to bless not only me but others around me. Shortly after this, Sundara came back into my life, and before long we were lovers. The kids followed three years later.

So why would love be scary? We resist love because it exposes what is unhealed in us, that has caused us to close our hearts to life. But love is our essential nature, and thus the most powerful thing there is. Even as I resist it, on some level I know that my resistance is futile and will eventually crumble. Resisting something unstoppable always feels scary. Even the mightiest warrior trembles before a battle he knows he will lose.

I can feel something similar in recent months, like there’s a love that has my number, but I find myself unable to respond adequately. As usual, I start running, busying myself with work, trying to achieve something useful. All the while, this huge, potent force is waiting to flow through me.

And what does it want this time? I got a clue from my friend Shayla Wright’s latest blog. She was telling a beautiful story about the Dalai Lama (someone she describes as “one of the happiest people on the planet”).

The Dalai Lama was speaking to a huge crowd one day, when he was asked how he was able to deal with the suffering of humanity. He paused, put down the sacred text he was reading, took off his glasses, and said, “Like this.” And he cried. He sobbed deeply, in front of thousands of people, without the slightest inhibition, for over five minutes. Then he wiped away his tears, put on his glasses, and cheerfully resumed his talk.

We live in intense and extraordinary times. The “suffering of humanity” has only one remedy and that remedy is love. Love, like a huge river, flowing from an endless source into the hearts of every human being, and beating on the door, “Let me in! Let me through! I have work for you to do!”

Yesterday I staggered away from my attempts to be productive and out into the bright sunshine. At some point, walking my dog around town, something in me relaxed and I realised what I was doing. I stopped running away, and allowed that love through.

Probably the only way to stay sane as the world spins into ever faster change is be the witness to the suffering of humanity and allow love to move us into inspired action.

Sundara composed a most beautiful song recently. When I first heard her sing it I sincerely declared it to be the most beautiful song I’d had ever heard. The words come from an old gospel song “Love flows like a river in my soul”. We made a recording of it, and you can listen to it below.

May love flow like a river in your life, blessing all whose lives you touch.

Leo.