We are born to love.
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As every mother knows, cradling her newborn child, love is the reason we are here.
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As any lover knows, gazing into the eyes of their beloved, love is the reason we are here.
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While it is true that we may hold vastly different beliefs, that we may pursue radically different paths and passions…at core, love is what connects us. Love joins our hearts.
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Those of us who prefer logic and scientific methods experience love in just the same way that mystics do. In fact, there is no dividing line between those who pride themselves on their intellect and those who pride themselves on their meditative states. Love is the common factor of us all. Love unites us.
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And when we look around our world today, at all of its changes, challenges, and growing pains, we see one common theme emerge. Love.
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Love is what we seek. It is the new religion of our age: the glue that binds us, the spark that motivates us, the path that propels us forward.

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If we look at the etymology of the word religion, we see it comes from the Latin root ligare, meaning “to bind.” Indeed, we are on a journey of coming together. We are stepping out of our old divisions, out of our old closets of fear and prejudice. We are, as a collective species, learning to drop the harmful dogmas of the past, the old fundamentalist religions of yesterday, and stepping into the new—love.
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Love bind us. In love, we see we are not separate.
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We are one human family. We are one beautiful planet.

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Of course, many of us have different definitions of “love.” This is good! Our varied experiences and ways of defining love is a benefit to the shifts and changes our global community is currently experiencing. Diversity is beautiful and healing. Through varied ways of understanding and conceptualizing love, we can widen our hearts, and perceive the stories of those whose daily lives and customs might differ from our own.
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For example, let’s travel to India. Let’s sit down in a marketplace and speak with a stranger. As we listen, we learn that the most love this person has ever felt was on the day his wife was cremated in a public ceremony, in an Antyesti. As we listen deeply, we might learn that this man, this man who cared for his wife so deeply, felt his consciousness expand when he saw his beloved’s body burst into a million billion flames. We learn how a deep sense of awe arose in his heart as her flesh turned to smoke before his eyes. We realize that the catastrophic pain and trauma he experienced through losing his wife was actually, paradoxically, the key to his spiritual breakthrough. He realized that death was not the end of life, but merely a transition. He learned that love does not end…love continues.
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Yes, if we talk to this man in India, he will no doubt define love in a different way than a man would in Australia or a woman would in Belgium. We all have different definitions of “love,” many different words to describe, based upon our unique cultures and upbringings. And that’s okay! Because, at core, love is not a word or a definition…love is, rather, an energy. A state of being. And we have all felt it. It is what we share.
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About seven years ago, I began to explore both polyamory and spirituality. For many years prior, I had been very staunchly anti-religious and quite bitter about what I perceived to be the shitty conditioning implanted into me by the fundamentalist Christian church in which I was raised—a church that condemned gays to hell and pronounced sex outside of marriage a terrible sin. Once I left my parents’ house and entered college, new ways of life began to open. I began to breathe fresh air. In my studies and social life, I began to connect with different kinds of people across different backgrounds—people whose basic assumptions about life were very, very different from mine. I also began sharing my poetry at coffee shops and in magazines. Through this art form, I began to experience my own creativity and intuition in a way that I’d never been able to do before.
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My husband and I began to explore polyamorous relationships around the time we both began to explore meditation. We began to realize that opening our hearts and intimately connecting with others beyond our union of two was deeply healing and profoundly joyful. And as we began exploring polyamory, we began to also explore altered states of consciousness—states where the rational brain was no longer explicitly in control. These states were achieved through various practices: breathing, yoga, Reiki, dance, tantric sex, and plant medicine ceremonies. It was around this time that I began to realize that even though I’d freed myself from the confines of conservative religion, there was still a desire within my heart to explore the parts of me that dwelt in something other than the mind, something other than logic or rational analyses.
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A few years later, I began working as a healer and spiritual teacher. As I dedicated my life to this thrilling work, I sensed that what would be most beneficial for me would be to open my heart—not only by exploring the wonderful ways I might connect, learn, and share with new poly partners, but also by exploring the ways that I might connect with the spirit of each and every single person I encountered in my daily life. The woman bagging my groceries began to take on as much importance as my lover in bed. The man handing me cash at the bank began to take on a dearness that had been previously reserved for my husband. I became thrilled by the love energy that was flowing from my eyes, my heart, and my hands, positively uplifting everyone on its path.
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As my journey progressed, I began to realize that, more than anything else, what humanity needs, right now, is love.

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Indeed, love is not just about sex and romantic partnering. Love is much, much more. Love is compassion, acts of kindness. Love is a twinkle in the eye; love is laughter in the heart. Love is doing for others.
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Most importantly, love is loving ourselves. Love is looking in the mirror each morning and saying to our own reflection, “You are beautiful! You are awesome! I love you!”
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We came to this life to love.

Love dissolves the feeling of separation that seems to come between us. Love lets us feel close again.
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Love lets us forget ourselves: forget our own pain, our own struggles—if only for a moment. Love heals. Love unites.
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Indeed, love is the new religion of our times. I believe this is why polyamory is rapidly gaining popularity and public recognition. As relationship radicals such as poly and LGBTQ folks free themselves from the limiting cultural norms and dogmatic religious constructs of an old paradigm that is on its last legs (Trump represents the last dying gasps of an old way of viewing the world), new kinds of families and new kinds of community are being created. No longer are we isolated into our separate monogamous dyads, fearfully protecting and shielding ourselves from a scary outside world. No. There is, more and more, a brave intuition that what makes the most sense now is to come out and come together. Now is not the time for closets, retreat, and fear—no. What we need to do, right now, is to bravely come together, opening our hearts and sharing our lives and stories.
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On this new path, we drop our judgements and see each person for the divine beautiful soul that they are. We see beyond the outward appearance, behind the names and roles and occupations, and see the glimmer of pure life force within. We see ourselves as brothers and sisters, in love.
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As we create this new planet, we create from a space of love, putting in place new modes, new forms, new structures, new expressions of what it can mean to be a human being.
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As we wake up, we create more love, from love.
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We transform. Everything.