divine love of self and oThers There is a type of love called divine love that is the foundation of all truly sage attainments of spiritual consciousness. A brief working definition of this type of love is that it is pure, it is free to all, no one has to do anything to deserve it, and it need not be worked for or striven for. Divine love is given without attachment or expectation of any kind. Divine love is within all of us and it is, and like all love, sourced from God and it shines through our heart chakras, like light through a window. This type of love asks nothing whatsoever in order to be given in limitless quantities. This love is given in complete sovereign independence of anything others may do, believe, think, say or feel. This love could also be seen as the “willfully channeled love of spirit” which we can all access, if we choose to. We must actively choose to divinely love before we are actually able to feel and express divine love. We all have the right to love and be loved as freely and completely as God loves us. Still many of us are caught up in an ongoing struggle within ourselves to determine whether we deserve happiness and love or not. Often we lose in this unnecessary internal debate. The concept of deservedness itself is not truly valid, because it often functions as nothing more than a socially conditioned mask for the cycle of self-judgment. It might seem to many of us that we feel divine love for family members or our spouses or children. Yet this is most often not precisely the case; in fact it is quite the opposite for many of us. We may choose to withhold love, appreciation, attention, affection or approval based upon a set of conscious or subconscious conditions, rules, roles, requirements, values and judgments of ourselves and others. Once these judgments have been made and impede our open expressions of love we then tend to rationalize why it is not appropriate to completely, freely and consistently love either ourselves or others. In addition, we tend to rationalize why it is appropriate to abandon, criticize, punish, control, devalue and ostracize others. In doing so we may feel somewhat comfortable in the apparent safety of our self-justification (or ego justification) and yet we are rendered less able to emotionally and mentally live with ourselves and others in peace. The obvious contradiction between the supposed intention to divinely love as compared to our actual choice and resultant behavior of not doing so eludes many of us, or if we do become aware of it we may then feel lost in feel- ings of inadequacy, guilt or shame. Often we use the withholding of approval, trust, attention, acceptance and love as relationship leverage, and as a threat or bargaining chip to obtain something, some emotion or some behavior from someone else. This is not an expression of love in its most developed form. The greatest difficulty with this process is that we also unknowingly withhold this quality of love from ourselves, through guilt, shame, anger and fear. Complete and total forgiveness is the cure (see the Ho’ Oponopono heal- ing method). In the practice of divine love it is suggested that we continually forgive others for their actions, emotions and life choices no matter what they do. By so doing we learn to see beyond our judgments of them, to let go of the past and are thereby empowered to see the soul within the person. I am not suggesting by saying this that we allow ourselves to be abused or walked upon. If this occurs repeatedly and cannot be reconciled I suggest disconnecting from those types of relationships for our own wellbeing, yet still fully forgiving. Any judgment we hold of anyone is a burden we carry. Thus we are empow- ered by forgiveness to live more freely and lovingly, in the now, in all of our relationships. Forgiveness is a great and necessary practice, however I might suggest that there is an even more effective and useful approach to life. This is because in order to forgive we must first have judged either another person or ourselves or both. Then we must retroactively work to “un-judge” them or ourselves via the willful practice of forgiveness. So in effect we allow ourselves to become stuck temporarily in judgment (sometimes for years or lifetimes), then we un-stick ourselves at some point in the future “when we are ready” to forgive and come to understand the benefit of doing so. What this tends to do is to allow the negative, punishing and judgmental parts of ourselves to continue to be fed regularly through our ongoing judgments, and then it may just “put them on a diet” when we eventually choose to forgive. This practice is still judgmental, therefore it is still a life and relationship limiting and damaging process; we are just eventually letting go, and then congratulating ourselves for being a loving and forgiving person, after we have first judged. I would suggest that not judging in the first place is the only way to delete the whole negative cycle from our lives and from the world. In order to get to this perspective we first need to understand there is nothing at all appropriate to judge in anyone, as we are all children of God with pure souls, therefore there is nothing that needs forgiving. What is required in order to achieve this state is to willfully and consciously choose to love first and always, rather than to ever fall into the trap of judgment. To truly divinely love another person means to have all levels of our hearts and minds open to them at all times, without requirement or expectation of them, of any kind. It means to be unwilling to judge their actions, thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, decisions, values, point of view, opinions, religion, race, politics, nationality or emotions in any way. It means fully respecting their choices as being the result of their God-given freewill, no matter how seemingly destructive, negative or short-sighted they may appear to us in the moment. It does not however mean submitting to abuse or negative treatment in any relationship or situation, or placing our personal safety at risk to any degree. Loving in this way means that we have consciously chosen to raise the other person, our interpretations of them, and their true spiritual value to us, above all mundane or temporal considerations. In effect it means to see them as the children of God that they truly are without condition, expectation, question, hesitation, interpretive filters, distortion or interruption. In my personal experience few people are yet willing to make the personal commitment necessary to love everyone they know, or interact with, in this manner on a consistent basis, yet it can be done and eventually we all will. I believe the statement by Christ sums it up, “Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself.” I would add here though that many people are, due to their impairments of consciousness, emotion and understanding currently cruel, critical and judgmental toward themselves as well as others. Yet the reason for this is usually that someone has taught them not to love and accept themselves without condition. They may also be unknowingly acting under the influence of some very heavy past-life karmic patterns. Therefore their choice to act in these ways has been made in misunderstanding or ignorance. They simply need time and opportunity to unlearn this type of detrimental behavior. In our life paths we can either choose to love them and help them develop or we can judge, punish and hate them; it is our choice. I suggest loving them. Divine love means without any requirement of possession or control over those we love. In the case of possessive love, possession and control over another’s emotional and relationship choices, behaviors, attention and physical presence is often the condition for continued love. In today’s world most of us take possessive love for granted, and even see it as the best way or the only way to “really love.” We may look at anyone who does not love “possessively enough” as wrong in some way, or cold or as not “truly loving or committed” or we may feel they are not deeply or passionately involved in their relationship. Posses- sive love and drama tend to go hand in hand. Non-possessive love is even seen by some as an aberration, rather than something to be esteemed. As if these subconscious and socially conditioned states of fear, insecurity, attention seek- ing and relationship control seeking, which are the underlying motivations for possessive love, were actually good and necessary in some way. As if the only way for love to be “real” is to have our love based in fear and insecurity and to have it be constantly and exclusively expressed to one person and then tested and re-proven daily. There is an assumption that what we give in relationships we should receive in equal and like measure, which often leads to feelings of unfairness and even betrayal. This is of course just another way of trying to control others, and can even turn into emotional blackmail in order to achieve the type of relationship behavior we desire from others. Putting guilt trips on others or threatening them with abandonment is often how this is accomplished. (For example, “Look how much I have given to you” or “Why aren’t you as loving as I am?”) This type of interaction leads to emotional extortion, hurt feelings, conflict, forced relation- ship behavior, resentment, drama, and further imprinting of these unhealed states of insecurity. Submitting to it or being overtly tolerant of this style of love is a type of enabling behavior that has become a cultural norm for many and has even become institutionalized in and supported by the legal system. No relationship will always be completely fair or balanced for any length of time, to try to force it to be so will only cause further conflict. I would offer here, as a suggested solution to this social problem, our biblically recorded knowledge of the life of Christ, as a fine example of divine love. In today’s world we are often taught to derive our self-worth and self-esteem through external conditions and relationships, rather than from internal self- awareness, connection to spirit, self-acceptance and sovereign freewill choice. We are thus being taught not to accept, trust and approve of ourselves or others as we are or as they are. We are also taught to compare our personal situation to other’s, and this comparison usually results in unhappiness. Due to these limiting and conflict producing tendencies many people are constantly unhappy, seeking short-term happiness in dysfunctional ways or are lost in social or relationship approval seeking. We literally do not know how to, and are not usually taught to, consistently feel good about ourselves as we are, meaning that happiness and feeling good is usually considered secondary to many other priorities in life. The reason for this is that as a species we have adopted the philosophy that we cannot trust each other or ourselves and that we must be willing to control each other and ourselves into living via “good beliefs, and right behaviors and choices.” This process cannot lead to happiness, since it is based at its foundation upon control, expectation, distrust of self and others, judgment and threat of punishment, non-acceptance, rejection or abandonment. We have been raised in this environment for so long that it has become transpar- ent to our consciousness and seemingly acceptable or even necessary to us. We are like fish in an aquarium that have ceased to be able to perceive the water we live and function in. We may not even realize our judgmental reactions until someone else points them out. This detrimental tendency has become as much a part of us as our breathing; thus we just accept it until there is a problem so great we can no longer ignore it and we are forced by circumstance to change and grow (reactively rather than proactively). We must learn to see the value of vast and foundational change in how we as individuals and as a species love ourselves, each other and our world. We all have power and can change how we choose to love now! We are all fully deserving of this joyful experience. Divine love of self and others is attainable, however it does not just happen, it must be built, owned and willfully and consciously refined and maintained day by day. The key to starting on this path which will ultimately culminate in an ongoing state of divine self-love is to first make the decision and set the inten- tion to achieve it. From this decisive developmental point in your soul’s journey it is only a matter of time until you achieve it for yourself and those you love.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Jun 2013 22:06:57 +0000
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