One of my favorite wisdom bytes about love comes from the poet and mystic Rumi:

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. — Rumi

First, what does this mean?

Love isn’t something we need to seek; it’s our nature. It’s who we are. When we don’t embody love, it’s because we’ve erected something to block it.

Why We Build Barriers to Love

Second, it’s important to understand why we build barriers to love.

We do this to protect ourselves.

Love entails risk of rejection. It requires the intimacy of presence, and the willingness to be seen, which make us feel vulnerable.

So we build walls to protect ourselves, and we armor ourselves when we go out into the world.

The consequence of this protection is that we feel alone, trapped in a prison of our own making. As Tony Robbins says, “the walls that protect you imprison you.”

Love is the key that unlocks the prison door.

In the rush of our days we often forget about love. When we remember, we go out to seek it, only to find it elusive. This is where Rumi’s wisdom guides us:

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. — Rumi

Finding the Barriers … and Then What?

The natural question, once we find the barriers, is: and then what?

When we find these barriers, what do we do with them?

Do we knock them down? Crush them? Overcome them? Sweep them away?

This is our cultural conditioning when it comes to obstacles. But the energy of crushing and destroying only strengthens the division between ourselves and love.

Tara Brach teaches that the way we wake up has to be kind or we will create more separation.

So if crushing the barriers isn’t the answer, what do we do?

Apparently Rumi offered guidance on this, but it’s often missing from this oft-cited quote.

The Missing Piece

In a recent talk on Radical Love, Tara shared that this famous quote from Rumi has another piece to it.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it, and embrace them.

Wow. This last part of the quote is essential to understanding Rumi’s teaching.

Our task isn’t merely to find the barriers. It’s to find the barriers and embrace them.

Of course.

The moment I heard this it made so much sense to me.

This concept of embracing what’s in the way also comes up in other conscious work, including work with fear, resistance, and shadow.

It’s an approach that goes against the cultural conditioning to “crush fear” and “overcome resistance,” and is antithetical to our tendency to ignore, judge, criticize, blame, or shame the barriers we erect.

Embracing the barriers isn’t easy; it’s a process that takes time and patience.

So this is our task: seek and find the barriers we have built between ourselves and love, and embrace them.