close up of bright yellow sunflower

    The Fourth Task to Bewilderment: Follow Love

    This month we’ve reached the fourth of our Bewilderment Tasks! If you have no idea what this means, you’re already bewildered and may be excused—or read my last three newsletters,* which cover the first three Tasks. But if you’ve been following along, you know that Bewilderment is a re-awakening of the wild essential self, and that the Tasks are practices for encouraging this awakening.

    My favorite deceased Indian dude, Nisargadatta Maharaj, once said, “When I look inside and see that I am nothing, that is wisdom. When I look around and see that I am everything, that is love.” Task Four is about connecting with the world so intimately that you experience everything as your true self. As you practice the first three Tasks, you’ll be living more fearlessly, honestly, and fluidly. Now your wild side will begin pushing you—sometimes subtly, sometimes overwhelmingly—to begin connecting with other beings and including them in your definition of self.

    Task Four is simply to let yourself follow this impulse toward love whenever you feel it. This very moment, your heart is turning toward certain people, places, and experiences the way a flower turns toward the sun. It wants you to reach out and connect: write an email, offer help, give someone a moment of your attention. So do it.

    Today, as on many days, Task Four took me outside to meditate under a tree with bird seed sprinkled across my lap. Every time a bird or chipmunk hopped onto my knees and gazed into my face, I fell in love. That’s the reward you get for practicing Task Four: the heart-opening connection with the parts of you that you haven’t yet recognized as parts of you. It will demolish your definition of self, because that’s wisdom, and replace it with the entire universe, because that’s love.

    *You may read the first three Tasks described in my newsletters here: