Living in love is a beautiful way to travel through this spiritual life! Robert Browning said it best when he wrote, “Take away love and our earth is a tomb.”
Unless you crave living the whole Gothic experience and existing in the dark solitude of a fearful tomb it’s pretty clear that living in love is a much better, more logical heart-filled choice. The whole magic of love is that when you’re coming from it, you never have to look for it. When everything you say, do, believe and express comes from love, your outer world becomes a reflection of your inner world. If you don’t believe this then you’re scapegoating what’s happening outside of you to relieve yourself from the responsibility of making the choice. Often it’s just much easier to place the blame of unhappiness on something or someone outside of yourself than be accountable to it.
The shift comes when you‘re no longer looking to others to make you happy. Joy comes in your contribution to life without expectation for reciprocity. Challenges arise in giving and accepting unconditional love because many have been raised receiving the rewards of love when they do well, but the same love is withheld if they disappoint. As such, the love then given seems to reflect this behavior, I love you because you make me feel good. Here’s the rub; that’s conditional love and not with full integrity. The ultimate truth of living in love is unquestionably unconditional.
Your personal life’s journey will continue to reflect the shift in your heart with your soul releasing its very own unique transforming power of love. Spirit sent you here to be the conduit of unconditional love in a world appearing so conditional and reward based. This expression of true unconditional love doesn’t always need to be verbal; it’s about the energetic vibration of your being as you bring that which allows you to be living in love to those that need to see the truth about love. Hurt doesn’t come from the love others have denied us; rather the experience of hurt comes from the love we deny them. The challenges in life come from forgetting who we are, a conduit of unconditional love. You’ll find many of life’s issues are wholly insignificant once you have connected back to the truth that who you are is not based on outside acceptance and approval.
If your goal is to be joyously living in love, it’s your responsibility to choose what you want to create in your life. You will always find the evidence to support this choice with ease. Form follows consciousness, projection makes perception, attention goes where energy flows, you’ve got to believe it to see it and the clichés go on. Whether you direct your focus on character flaws or another’s spiritual innocence is entirely up to you. When some one is acting out in a less-than-kind way, they are coming from a love shortage and have filled the space with fear. When focused on fear, there is expansion of that fear. However, when focused on love it transforms even pitch darkness into the purest form of light. It’s not a matter of getting more and more love to fill the seemingly bottomless void, because you can never get enough to plug the sense of not enough.
When the love reservoir is full there is much to give, but when it’s depleted, one is not as generous as they might otherwise be. Don’t allow someone else’s shortage and fear shutter your joyous and unlimited sharing of the unconditional flow of love. God is love and can never be depleted and that is the truth of who you are. Remember though, that your gift of love is not dependent on reciprocity from where you are giving it
The barriers we’ve erected around our hearts and lives come from the injuries and perceived damage experienced, keeping the very places that need it most from receiving the inflow of the very thing that can heal them, love. The most vulnerable aspect of you, your wounded places inside, must connect to it more deeply in order to trust life again. Otherwise the head takes the lead position in the watch tower and does a great job of defense, keeping all suitors out. This betrayal to your own needs will keep you in the walled city of your known world throwing in only the occasional entertainment to fill the void. After all, your mind is clever and knows how to keep you intrigued enough not to look over the walls. Often, the pursuit on its own is the very entertainment which keeps you occupied enough to avoid seeing the emptiness. Whatever is keeping you from being present so you can be in joy and love, is actually part of the same wall you believe is protecting you while actually keeping your greater good at arms length. Indeed, the mind is clever, but spirit is all knowing.
The people who are gifts in your world are those who invite you outside the known constraints of your fortress to experience the other dimensions of possibilities. When the new suitor makes it past the gates and into your heart, the mind doesn’t usually quit its defense. And again, it gets clever with its attempt to sabotage the exciting new energies swirling in your heart with its old beliefs and contrarian evidence from the past. Your mind will trigger memories from past events which will prevent you from even recognizing the magic of the moment’s new feelings of love and happiness. This is when your heart invites you to step into a new loving space with a fresh approach and the full sense of trust that is required to experience a life lived in love.
The last thing the controlling mind and all of its unhealthy beliefs want, though you may hear mind chatter otherwise, is for you to step into the unknown, uncontrolled, unpredictable territory of a new landscape of love energy. The aliveness of this new love doesn’t want to hear about the scoundrels, betrayers or idiots of the past. It wants to hear how you intend to continue to joyously live in love. What’s exciting about the aliveness of living in love is that every day, every minute becomes a new experience, a new adventure, a place you’ve never been, and a way to see things like you’ve never seen them before. When the eyes and heart are open to see beyond all of what has been seen before, you can never go back. That’s the transforming power of living in unconditional love and it’s the truth for every one of us.
Personal Practices for Living in Love
- Reflect upon your world and see your most passion filled places; the ones which carry the most energies, pleasant or unpleasant. Identify if you are looking for love or if you are looking from love?
- Where or upon who do you blame your unhappiness?
- Be more accountable to the short fall of love in your life and
- take your power back!
- Recount and write some of your first memories of your reward system for receiving love? How do you reward those who love you correctly? Where do you love unconditionally; Where do you expect nothing in return but the joy of how good it feels to give?
- What evidence can you find to support living in love? What barriers do you use to reduce vulnerability and push away love?
- Where do you feel energetically depleted?
- What can you do to replenish your reservoir?
- Are there old beliefs that rise in your awareness? Do they prohibit you from living in love? What greater good do these protective walls keep you from? - Venture outside again!
- What suitors of joyous living have you been turning away?
- How can you invite more opportunities for love into your life?
- Listen to the enticing call from the new dimension of your expression to come out and play~ and go! Go play in Love!
Reverend Christian Sorensen D.D. is the spiritual leader of the Seaside Center for Spiritual Living in Encinitas CA., last appointed President and first elected community spiritual leader for United Church of Religious Science. An emeritus member of the Leadership Council of the Association for Global New Thought and council Member of Evolutionary Leaders, Dr. Sorensen has authored 8 books including his most recent title “Joyous Living Journal” which he co-authored alongside Dr. Petra Weldes.
