There are only two forces at work in the cosmos: Love and Fear.
Love is an expansive force. Love expands consciousness. Love is connection.
Fear is a contractive force. Fear contracts consciousness. Fear is separation. Separation each other and from our True Selves.
We tend to use the word Love freely, as in “I love chocolate cake”, “I love those shoes”, “I love Jason Momoa (even though I’ve never met him)”.
What we more likely mean is “the flavor of chocolate cake is extremely pleasing to my taste buds”, “the color and style of those shoes appeals to my sense of style”, or “I find Jason Momoa to be an exceptionally talented actor and very sexually attractive”.
Now I realize those are perhaps clumsy statements to have to speak. But they are more accurate.
Choosing our words carefully offers two important benefits:
- when we choose our words carefully we have to look inward and really assess what we mean to say, rather than carelessly using words that we don’t mean. Words are vibration. They matter. They affect our energy and the energy of those around us. Choosing our words wisely and carefully is an important exercise.
- When we overuse the word love, or any word for that matter, it loses its potency. It means less. The fact that we have the phrase “unconditional love” shows that there is conditional love. If the only love that we ever experience was unconditional love, it would just be love. Would you still “love” chocolate cake if it tasted vanilla? Would you still “love” those shoes in a different color? Would you still “love” Jason Momoa if he were a scrawny blond guy with pimples and glasses?
When we misuse the word Love, or “abuse” (ab-use) it, the word loses its ability to express our greatest gift as humans: the ability to Love and the expansiveness that Love brings to our experience of life and the world around us..
If you were in the expansive state of true unconditional Love, you would actually LOVE the gorgeous actor you never met, and you would LOVE chocolate cake and the shoes and everything and everyone else because you would FEEL your oneness and connection to ALL OF IT. You would even Love all the people you never met, those who disagree with you, and even those who have hurt you.
On the other hand, we don’t often say “I fear …” the way we say “I love …”. We do say “I AM anxious, mad, depressed” or whatever we are feeling. A better way to say that would be “I am experiencing anxiety, anger, depression, etc” which creates a sense of separation form the state of being anxious. It’s no longer what you ARE, it’s what you are EXPERIENCING.
The underlying experience of anger, depression, worry, anxiety, uncertainty, loneliness, all of the feelings we label “negative” that we don’t want to experience, is FEAR. When we start to understand that these fear-based feelings are simply our body’s way of pointing out that we are not choosing Love, we can take a step back, take a deep breath, and make a different choice.
What we ARE, each and every one of us, is Eternal Spirit experiencing a temporary physical existence. We identify so strongly with our physical experience that we lose sight of our true nature. Fear is a natural reaction to a lifetime of conditioning to believe we are only this physical body. But we are LOVE. And we can choose Love in every situation.
I invite you to try the following steps to help remind yourself to choose love:
- When you are experiencing a fear-based emotion, take a breath and describe the physical signals that you feel. For example, “My palms are sweaty, my heart is pounding, my breath is shallow, and my jaw is clenched. My body is having an experience of anger.” Just this act of noticing can start to break the hold that fear has on you.
- Next, take 5 slow, deep breaths through your nose, and expand your belly on your inhale. Slowly exhale and feel tight muscles soften, even a little, and invite your mind to slow down. If your muscles don’t want to soften right away, or your mind doesn’t want to slow down, that’s okay, Be gentle with yourself. Braking the fear cycle takes patience and practice. But it is so worth the effort.
- When your body and/or mind release even a little, take 5 slow deliberate breaths in and out of your nose and expand the center of your chest. Imagine your heart is a balloon and your inhale expands it and your exhale releases any constriction or holding around your heart.
Please join me this Tuesday, 3/31/2020 at 5:30 pm PT/8:30 pm ET for a guided meditation to anchor the feeling of love in your body.
Here is the Zoom link to join:
https://zoom.us/j/388551607?
Please share with anyone you think might want to be part of the group.
