There is a secret about human love that is commonly overlooked: Receiving it is much more scary and threatening than giving it.

Forget about enlightenment. Sit down wherever you are. And listen to the wind singing in your veins.

Great love -- the kind that illumines and transforms us -- always includes a keen awareness of limitation as well. Though love may inspire us to expand and develop in new ways, we can never be all things to the one we love, or someone other than who we are. Yet once accepted, limitation also helps us develop essential qualities, such as patience, determination, compassion, and humor. When love comes down to earth -- bringing to light those dark corners we would prefer to ignore, encompassing all the different parts of who we are -- it gains depth and power.

A soul connection not only inspires us to expand, but also forces us to confront whatever stands in the way of that expansion.

The warm and radiant yes of the heart is perfect, like the sun, in bringing all things to life and nourishing all that is truly human.

We may tell ourselves that love is not really available. but the deeper truth is that we don't entirely trust it, and therefore have a hard time fully opening to it or letting it all the way into us. This disconnects us from our own heart, exacerbating our sense of love's scarcity.

We are not just humans learning to become buddhas, but also buddhas waking up in human form, learning to become fully human.