LOVE IS ALREADY YOURS

When love feels scarce, we are conditioned to slip into survival mode. We cling to our beliefs about who we are in order to feel safe, to compensate for the belief that we are lacking. But seeing these conditioned habits for what they are can help can create pathways for returning, for remembrance, for releasing into our inherent belonging—into the heart of who we are.

By Caverly Morgan

Paulus could, at a minimum, be described as quirky, though some would say he was wildly eccentric. No cell phone. No email account. Making clay pinch pots that he returned to the Earth instead of firing and selling, Paulus was a pipe-smoking, barefootin-summer-grass, NPR-loving, committed to-slow-and-savor hermit of sorts. He was a queer artist living the simplest life I’d ever touched—or, better said, that ever touched me.

But Paulus did more than live differently. Paulus revealed new worlds. This world revolved around a profound love of craft, but not just any craft. Craft that centered around connection, belonging, reverence for the Earth, and beauty. Craft that was about process over product. The how, not the what.

When I first met Paulus Berensohn, I was 16 with a fresh-off-the-press driver’s license and a world that could still be packed into my knapsack. I knew nothing of his book Finding One’s Way with Clay. I knew nothing of his work that furthered the notion that creativity is universal. I knew nothing of the thousands of lives he’d touched through his teachings. To me, he was my fairy godfather (a title he coined and lived into with grace), and he was magic.

His house was full of precious handmade objects, altars, color, music, and stillness. It was here he introduced me to journal making, working with clay, poetry, qigong, and so much more. Spending time with Paulus was like entering an alternate reality. Everything he created and did felt infused with sacredness. His life was a prayer, a poem, a hymn. Of all the influences he had on my life, what of this new world affected me most? His deep engagement with life and the uplifting joy of his unconditional love. With Paulus, anything felt possible. In experiencing Love, that’s how it goes. In unconditional love, possibility is born. There it sings. In unconditional love, possibility thrives. I was at a Gen X Dharma Teachers gathering in the middle-of-nowhere Colorado when I intuited he was dying. A phone call confirmed it. Expectant and heartbroken, I was

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Caverly Morgan is a meditation teacher, author, and visionary who founded Peace in Schools, a nonprofit that created the nation’s first for-credit mindfulness class in public high schools. She is also the founder of Presence Collective, a community of cross-cultural contemplatives committed to personal and collective transformation.