Will You Choose Love?
Staying Open in a World that's Closing Down
Foreword
Part of what follows was first shared in March 2020, during the early days of the COVID pandemic. The world was riddled with uncertainty and fear. But the core message hasn't changed. In fact, it's become even more relevant.
Contraction
I don’t want to wake up, and I certainly don’t want to face another day of human futility. My eyes stay shut, the last rampart against the gray of reality.
There’s a dull weight in my chest, and my mind is playing hide and seek with really bad ideas. The morning light leaks through the curtain like a nag.
Zero drive. Zero clarity.
No interest in doing anything, going anywhere, let alone meeting anyone.
And the underlying relentless question, every morning: What’s the point of it all?
The mind comes online. Thoughts start to spiral, faster and faster.
Maybe this is the sign I’ve been waiting for. To let go. Move abroad. Sell everything. Go back to India, join an ashram. Disappear. Just stop to exist to avoid the angst of another day.
I lay there, pulling the blanket over my face, caught in the grip of contraction.
Motivation: gone. Purpose: absent. Stress pulling the carpet out from under my feet before I even stood up.
And outside, the world waits… More war. More genocide. Soldiers in the streets.
People dragged away without trial. The collective nervous system on high alert, and mine chiming in.
Since late 2024, it’s been plummeting. Work dropped 80%, no warning.
The LA Fire. The breakup. Then the road closure, five months of suffocation.
The stress-induced collapse. The heartbreak. The sleepless nights.
Technically healthy and breathing. But not alive.
Decades in war zones trained my nervous system well.
Safety doesn’t come naturally, hyperawareness does.
Still, I whispered to myself: I am safe.
Even if my body does not believe it yet.
And so I did what I do, everyday.
Hands on my chest. Breathing deep and slow.
Stretching. Stepping out. Standing.
Begin the routine.
A large bowl of tea, for hydration.
Vibration plate, to stir the stagnation.
Sauna, to let the heat soften the body.
Cold plunge, to feel alive.
Meditation, to still the mind through awareness of the body.
Only then do I sit at my desk.
The contraction is gone. I am not spiraling anymore.
I am back to myself.
Centered. Expanded.
I can write now.
From Love.
Fear contracts. Love expands.
Choosing Love is not a new age concept.
It’s how I come home to myself, again and again.
The Choice
Every moment, we are given an opportunity to choose.
That, I believe, is the extent of our free will. It does not seem much, but it is all we need.
I can choose fear. Or I can choose love.
I can choose to live in hell or to live in heaven.
Right here. Right now. At every moment.
I can choose to believe that the Universe is conspiring for my growth, that something greater than me is at play, guiding me, revealing my blind spots so I may heal and evolve. I can choose to remember that I am not separate, that everything is connected.
I call this choosing Love.
Or I can choose the other option.
I call this choosing fear.
There is no dogma here.
I do not pretend one option is better than the other.
These are two hypotheses, two stories I can live into.
I am free to choose.
But I ask: which one actually serves me best?
The Sacred Invitation
What if the challenges we face, individually and collectively, are not punishments, but invitations? What if the pandemic, the economic chaos, the climate disruption, the global unrest… are all invitations to reset?
To breathe.
To reflect on what truly matters.
To remember that we belong to one another.
What if the breakdown is not the end, but the beginning of a different way?
The Physics of Fear
Change is happening faster and faster.
And for most of us, change is terrifying.
Fear contracts.
Contraction makes us cling to old structures, old habits, old beliefs.
And clinging creates more of what we fear.
When we act from fear, we build walls.
We isolate. We defend. We collapse.
We lose the resonance of Love.
The Inner Architecture of Fear
At the root of nearly every fear are two deep-seated beliefs:
“I am not safe” and “I am not worthy.”
These create opposing sets of needs, each one vital, yet pulling in different directions:
The need for connection (the known) versus the need for freedom (the unknown).
The need for stability (safety) versus the need for adventure (growth).
When the world becomes uncertain, we instinctively grasp for the known and the stable. We cling to familiar authorities, inherited beliefs, and the illusion of control.
It is a paradox, since it is precisely the systems, habits, the control we cling to that brought us to this crisis.
Fear contracts.
It repeats what no longer works.
It rejects change, especially when that change comes from the margins,
from minorities, from outsiders, from the unknown.
Holding onto fear becomes a form of conservatism in the face of evolution.
It’s doing more of what’s already failing.
Fear is holding on to what is dying.
Love is looking forward to what is being born.
That’s why choosing Love is not some idealistic abstraction.
It’s a radical self-care.
It’s taking responsibility over our worth or safety.
It is choosing, again and again, to love ourselves into expansion.
The Resonance of Love
Love is a frequency. A field. A way of relating to life.
To choose Love is to choose a higher resonance.
To expand when the world contracts.
To hold the vibration of possibility even in the midst of despair, destruction, chaos.
Choosing Love is not always easy.
The real challenge is choosing Love repeatedly, every time, moment to moment.
Staying in resonance when everyone around you is tightening with fear is the challenge.
In the words of my teacher Georg Feuerstein:
Ultimately there can be no complete healing until we have restored our primal trust in life.
How To Stay In Resonance
Meeting Our Own Needs
Self-care. Really. Far from selfish, this is strategic.
We cannot hold resonance if we are depleted, unsafe, disconnected, hence contracted.
Our nervous system needs nourishment. Our heart needs space. Our body needs rest.
Self-care is how we anchor Love in the body.
Finding Coherence Around Us
Seek others who have also chosen Love.
Find or create, what is known as “small islands of coherence”: spaces, people, communities, where the frequency of Love is stabilized and reflected back.
In a darkening world, these islands are lighthouses.
When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order.
— Ilya Prigogine, 1977 Chemistry Nobel Laureate
Resonance and coherence arise when the individual trusts the collective, and the collective uplifts the individual.
This Is The Choice Point
We are experiencing a deep shift.
We’re being given space to see the world from a new perspective.
So we can make better choices.
We have all the technology we need.
We have the wisdom of nature.
We have one another.
We can build widespread alignment.
And that begins with a single decision, repeated in every moment:
Will I contract… or will I expand?
Will I react… or will I respond?
Will I collapse into fear… or will I rise in Love?
If You Were God, What Would You Choose?
Because, it is not a secret anymore: We are.
We are a living expression of that creative force.
And we have the power to change the world,
starting with the resonance we hold
and the story we choose.
So…
Will you choose Love?
Choosing a story of Love, we will create a reality of Love.
PS: “Change Your Story, Change The World” is a storytelling endeavor that looks deeply into the psyche that creates the stories we live by—with the intention to help us shape better stories, both personally and collectively.
Because the stories we tell are not just stories—they are the reality we live.