The landline phone rang at 10:27 on a Saturday morning.  My wife and I answered it simultaneously from either end of the house. It was our younger daughter, barely able to catch her breath through her sobs, calling from her university.  “Emily, Emily, what is it?” My wife asked, her compassion and concern reaching out over the wire. “It’s my roommates. They’re always talking about how much they hate their parents, and I love you guys.” “Oh, Emily,” my wife said, now greatly relieved and trying not to let her smile interrupt our daughter’s upset.

“It’s awful,” Emily continued, still sobbing heavily, her sadness touching us both. “You don’t know how hard it is to live with so much love.”  When she heard what she said, she started to laugh through her tears, and we did, too.

At this particular point along our evolutionary path, our capacity to love should come as neither surprise nor too cliche. I suspect there are few topics about which more has been proclaimed, written or filmed, than love. Among our favorites, Love Actually, Enchanted April, The Princess Bride, Shakespeare’s love sonnets, Robert Creeley’s poetry, Love in the Time of Cholera, (insert your favorites, here). All of these expressions trying to grasp the slippery tendrils that define love, while at the same time opening our hearts to love with their message.

I once met a surgeon, who didn’t understand the notion of opening one’s heart. She tried to explain the scientific impossibility of this most profound metaphor. It never dawned on me that someone might not get what opening your heart to another meant, it seemed so natural. I eventually asked her if she understood the notion of having an open mind, which she did. I then explained, that in Buddhism mind and heart were inseparable, so opening one’s mind and opening the heart were really one and the same. She still struggled with the allusion.

There have been many great philosophers, poets and writers who have tried to define love. And in doing so have delivered many distinctive and varied interpretations, But most would agree, in trying to define it, they invariably fail to capture its essence. I have no intention to define love. Others have failed far more eloquently than I. Rather, in this case, I want to discuss the power we unleash when we consciously, or un, create a lineage of love. And how, through passing on love from one generation to the next, we transmute the world around us from dust to gold.

There are no shortages of impediments that can disrupt this alchemy. High on the list is family dysfunction, which is a reality show often steeped in betrayal, self-loathing and self-absorption. Navigating through this morass of abuse, failed expectation and disappointment can be something akin to wading through crocodile-infested waters at feeding time.

But what if this was my reality. How do I process these debilitating, dangerous and often devastating life events? It wasn’t until someone pointed out to me that a heartbreak was an opportunity. “Oh, here we go,” I thought. I listened nonetheless.

At that moment when the heart breaks and it’s filled with sadness, pain and disappointment, it has also broken open. And that opening, no matter how small, was an opportunity to open my heart further, Despite the pain and discomfort that arose at these times, I would make myself visualize my heart opening to the world beyond the disappointment. When I did so, a remarkable thing happened. It was as if a beacon of light powered out of that opening in my heart. When I realized what was taking place the realization arose. It transmuted into a question that I now ask every meditation student to whom I give instruction. Do you prefer being around someone with an open heart or a closed one. Without hesitation the answer is 100% open. As I began practicing opening my heart when trauma and sadness had already pried it open, that sadness and trauma rather magically dissipated. Why did I feel confident enough to take this surprising step, because I always felt the strength and power of the lineage of love out of which and from which I’d been blessed to operate.

Does that mean those who have been forced to live through this pain and suffering, again and again, are excluded from ever finding their way without their own lineage of love? Absolutely not. A lineage of love only needs one person to begin. One individual willing to reach out, without expectation of receiving love in return. That is the prerequisite of an open heart, that is truly open, without bias, prejudice or expectation. Operating from that place, a Lineage of Love can be launched at any moment.

Few of us can say we have lived a life that has not, on one occasion or another, included a feeling of betrayal. I certainly have, and it was incredibly painful and debilitating. But the crucial factor for me was that it didn’t stick. It wasn’t that I had somehow magically learned to let go of that pain. I must admit, I have never completely understood what it means to “let go.” And then one day, while sitting on the cushion, it came to me… If I’m not holding on, there’s nothing to let go of. It wasn’t that I needed to learn how to let go. I needed to simply learn to not hold on.

OK, that, in itself, is not an easy task. Especially when love is involved. How can I not hold on to love. Well, I can hold on to love, but not the expectation that because I love, I should expect and receive love in return. That’s the great disruption attached to expectation. It’s something akin to if I think:  Oh, I’m meditating. And then suddenly, I’m not meditating. I love you and I want you to love me back,” can often be a similar sort of kill switch.

Not holding on to desire, attachment, or the scariest solidification of them all, possession, is far more difficult than just saying the right magic words and having them miraculously disappear. I know I have easily become obsessed by each and every one of these three, at various times throughout my life. But I also realized in recognizing the strength of my lineage of love, free from expectation, bias and prejudice, it was no longer necessary to hold on to those desires, attachments and possessions, and they simply melted away. That love had allowed me to get to a place where I no longer need to hold on, and the melting commenced.

I began looking at other areas of my life. Like most people, I have experienced various levels of trauma and heartbreak. And while they certainly helped shape my perspective of how I view the world, none of them kept me from opening my heart to the joy and love that presented itself. Why wasn’t I, like so many others I have met, debilitated by these traumas and heartbreaks I had encountered? It became apparent that, unlike those far less fortunate, I had lived within a lineage of love in which those hardships had been allowed to melt.

“But what if I didn’t have your privilege?” One of my dearest friends yelled, cornering me with her anger. “You are a privileged white male and haven’t had to experience the traumatic abuse most people have had to endure.” As much as her admonition stung, she was absolutely right. And as a Privileged White Male my trauma may not have been as severe as others. The strength of the lineage is powerful, but it doesn’t protect others from inflicting harm and suffering on others. And repairing those scars is not simple a matter of bathing them in more love. Deep wounds do not heal with a “Let me kiss it and I’ll make it all better.” If only it were that simple.

I have been nurtured within this lineage of love, but it has not been a protective shield against trauma, rather a means for crawling out from under the pain of that ordeal. It has provided me with a foundation for healing myself from the wounds others may not be so fortunate to have reconciled. Michelle Obama once told a group of high school girls, “Our scars are not evidence of how we have been hurt. They show how we’ve healed.”

My ability to heal, in many ways came out of the great fortune of having lived within a lineage of love. But what about those who were not so fortunate? The truth is we cannot rewind those tapes and erase their hardship. But they can let the lineage begin with them, now, and in doing so, create their own legacy of love, which they can in turn pass on to others.

Whether it’s a lineage or a legacy, it all starts by opening the heart when it feels broken and most vulnerable, and visualizing the light as it pours out.  The heart is there, no matter how buried it might have become. The hardest part, I have found, is learning to love without expectation of getting any love in return; that love is not transactional. A lineage of love is unconditional. The heart opens and I take the leap, without hesitation. In doing so, I enter in, trusting the process works, because it does. It’s not a faith in something outside of myself, but a trust in the self. For many, coming from the confines of self-absorption and self-loathing, it may seem like an impossible leap. Starting a new lineage begins with a first step. Will there be missteps? Absolutely. But as a very wise teacher once told me. “We get lots of sharp edges with which to practice. Lots of opportunities to not make the same choice again.”

The motivation arises again and again, never losing sight of the fact that people want to be around others who live with an open heart. And out of that attraction, both a lineage and a legacy begins.