Spiritual Therapy

 Turning it Over to Love

There is a place within you that knows the precise moment when you live the decision to be awake in God, to be the presence of love.  As awareness embraces all things, allows all things, trusts all things, and transcends all things so does love. Love is never possessive.  Love is never fearful.  Love is simply love.  Love does not shine with specialness upon anyone at any time.  For specialness, itself is a contraction. It is the attempt to make love exclusive with only one person, only one being, within only one universe.

Whenever you recognize that you have singled someone out and said, “I love only you” you may rest assured that you’re not in love at all; you are in fear.  You are afraid of being left, afraid of being abandoned, afraid that love might not be returned. You imagine devastation that love could be so fragile. But if you are living in love, as a wave within the sea, all beings can come into the space of your life and, when it is time for them to move on, you will bless them on their journey.  And you will remember that you reside in the heart of God. And when you choose to be only in the presence of love, even the dream of loss will dissolve from your consciousness as a forest mist before the rising sun.

Love does wait upon your welcome.  And yet you cannot welcome love by expecting it from another. You cannot welcome love by setting conditions in which you believe love should be. You cannot welcome love when that welcome is attached to any condition whatsoever.  Love can only be welcomed where love truly resides—in this present moment, in this present situation exactly where you are. It is the core and the source of your very being.

Therefore, if you would know love, know that you are love itself.  Embrace this truth about who you are, and this truth will set you free.  Love flows through you and is you like sunlight that nurtures all living things. Love cannot meet an obstacle for it shines on all things. And you will look upon whoever is in front of you, and you will know that they are sent to you from God.  They have been guided to you for only one purpose—so that love can be given and received in a way that awakens you both.  That is why you are but the servant of love.  And that’s all that life is!

As you choose to surrender, as you give up the game of resisting the truth that is true of you always, you become a mere channel, a mere conduit.  You are no more a seeker, for you have found. The love that you’ve been looking for flows through you and is you.  There is no need to seek for love when you rest in the knowing that you are love itself.

For your work in life is only one thing—it is not to seek for love and never finding it. It is merely to turn within to discover and identify every obstacle that you have created to its presence and to dissolve that obstacle through awareness and forgiveness. In fact, this is what forgiveness is all about, to dissolve the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence. It is your only function here.

No matter how many times you have tried to convince yourself that you are unworthy, love does have a way of finding you. No matter how many times you have insisted that you are this body, it hasn’t succeeded.  And if death is the gentlest reminder, you will then come to know the radiance of your unlimitedness.  Therefore, the greatest gift you can give another is to transcend the insanity of fear while living in the world. It is the fear of love, the fear of forgiveness.

Fearlessness is the primary characteristic of mastery of life on earth.  And mastery is not having great power to make things happen.  Mastery is simply the recognition that what is true is true always and there is no other choice.  Free will does not mean that you can be anything other than what God created you to be.  Nor does it mean that it is even possible. Free will does not mean that you can choose other than the curriculum that life is offering you in every moment.  But it does mean that you can put it off yet another day.  And each time you put it off, you slumber in suffering.

But when you choose to follow the only curriculum that really matters; when you elect to use the power of your free will to say…

Now, from this moment on, I choose not to endure error in myself. I choose not to perpetuate this suffering emotional state. I choose not to play the game of blame and victim. I choose not to live in fantasy and dreams. I choose instead to be only the presence of love, for that is the truth of who I am.

All things under heaven and earth will then move to support you, to guide you to the right action, the right person, the right place, the right book, the right sunrise, in order to assist you in dropping the shackles to the presence of love. When you truly affirm from the depths of your soul, when you call out to God from the depths of despair, when you have come to the end of your rope and call out for help, rest assured, from that moment on, you can trust every little thing that unfolds.  For the angels will rush in and gather around and embrace you with loving arms to guide you home as you declare…

Yes, I accept Your Presence in my life.  I turn the whole thing over.  Now, in this holy instant, I commit my life to healing this illusory sense of separation from You that I once created in error.

Love!  In how many ways have you sought it? Can you count the ways? Rest assured, each and every soul is looking for love in so many ways and in so many places. You seek it in a million forms in which you already know that it is not there. All because you want to perpetuate the insane attempt to try to separate yourself from God.  And that is as futile as a sunbeam trying to separate itself from the sun. Indeed, there is only one question you need pose and also answer:

What am I choosing in this moment? What perception, what thought, what feeling, what behavior, what action am I choosing in this moment and how is it expressing the reality of my beingness? Am I extending love, or am I busying myself fearfully trying to grasp at what I think can give me love so that I don’t lose it?

Look at the image that you hold of your parents, and your siblings, and your mates, and your friends.  When you complain or feel sorry for yourself because you believe that love is not forthcoming when you perceive another as not loving you the way you think they should, not one of them—not one of them—holds the power to bring love to you, simply because you are blocking it in yourself.

Do you really believe that when another changes, when they finally conform to how you think they should love you that you will finally experience love? No! It is futile. Even if you are successful in finally changing someone to conform to your expectations, you will not experience love. You will question it; you will doubt it and you will live in fear of losing it. To expect love, to demand love in relationship with anything or anyone, will not bring you love. It is not out there! It is, however, quite appropriate to extend love in each relationship, with everyone and everything.

But the extension of that love requires that you awaken to the truth of who you are, that the only relationship that truly holds value is the relationship between you, as a soul, and God, as your Creator.

How many times are you going to insist on looking for love where it is not!

“I’ll try this person, I’ll try this career, I’ll try this thing. Well, that didn’t work, that didn’t last. Maybe it’s over here, maybe over there. Or if this person would just be more this way or less that way, then maybe I could feel loved.”

And then you get angry and frustrated and blaming because you are not getting what you want or feel you need. So, it must be their fault.

Can you be honest with yourself right now? Has it ever worked?  Can it ever work?

Imagine trying to grasp flowing water in the palm of your hand by squeezing the fingers together. How much are you left with?  Doesn’t it just run through the fingers, no matter how hard you try?  It finds the little holes and it flows away.  You open your hand and there is not enough left there to wet the tongue.  And yet, each time you look for love—whether it’s a parent or sibling or friend or mate or teacher or whoever is in your life; every time you look to things to bring you happiness and joy—whether it is a new car, or house or smartphone, you miss from where love is. It is in you and as you.

This is your moment to remember, nothing holds value except your relationship with your Creator. To live as you are one with God. To love as you are one with God.

You have experienced moments. There were moments of bliss or peace that passes all understanding or moments of fulfillment so sweet and so sublime that no word could touch it, much less express it.  What you experienced in those moments is the flow of the love of God through you.  It was not caused by that person or thing.  It was caused because, for just a moment, you stepped out of your drama, you stepped out of your dream, and allowed the truth to be lived.

Then, of course, you tricked yourself. And you tried to grasp the water. You held on to the experience and made the other responsible for the experience. You turned it into some thing like what you can do with water; you can freeze it so that you can hold onto it. And so, you have done this with your relationships. You have frozen them into something so that you can now hold on to it. But then of course it has lost all of its fluidity and grace and flow. What you now call “love” is nothing more than expectation about how the other “should” be and if they are not a certain way, you are entitled to be upset. That is the nature of all “special” relationships. Special relationships are governed by expectations, not the grace and flow of love.

In your special relationships, you have forgotten who you are. You have forgotten what you bring to a relationship and have now substituted that with trying to get love from the other. Love is all you need because love is all you are. Love fulfills all things. Love embraces all things.  Love heals all things, and Love transforms all things.  Therefore, remember well—you, and only you, can become the cause of your fulfillment, of your peace, of your completion in time.  And this requires that you do nothing but remember your connection with your Creator.

Accept this truth, that what you desire beyond all things is the living experience of love.  And then remember that nothing you do can bring love to you.  Nothing you do can keep love for yourself in a form of your choosing.  Love can never appear in the form of your insisting that it be there.

But stepping outside of the drama, releasing the dream of how you think it all should be, choosing to remember the truth that is true always, reminding yourself by saying to your Creator…

“I want only what is always true. Love is here. It is what I am. It is what I receive.”

Here, and here alone, do you discover what you seek because it’s already here as you already are. And then you become free to be in this world but not of it at all. The people around you are drawn to you because they feel the quality of love.

In truth, you are like one who has been given a priceless jewel.  And you have placed it in your pocket and forgot that you possess it.  And so, you run around trying to look into everybody else’s pocket believing that they have it and you do not. And you’ve tried to seduce and control certain ones to surrender so that you can possess the jewel that you hope is in their pocket.  But the truth is, you have the love and you inhabit it. You have simply forgotten. And you will remember that your fulfillment does not rest in trying to get love from another but in giving love to everyone.

And so, the truth is very simple. Get out of the way and let love live through you. You are given all good things eternally. Grace is reality.  You need do nothing but let love in. Abandon the resistance to love in each and every moment. Live the experience of love in all your relationships with everyone and everything.

“God is but Love and therefore so am I.”