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At the Life Enrichment Center every Sunday, no matter what the talk title may be, our focus is on Love—because Love is what we are, even when we’re not feeling loving; because Love is all there is to be, even when we’ve taken on a temporary unloving identity; and, because Loves all there is (period) here, there and everywhere, no matter what appears to be.
We read in The Way of Knowing, “Reality is the Love, which is God. It is the Creator’s Will to extend Love. You were created out of the Will of the Creator and, therefore, your will to express Love is the Will of God. They are one and the same.” Every time we feel Love, every time we express Love, every time we’re willing to choose Love above every other choice, we are expressing the Will of God in us! It’s there, or else we would not have a will to express Love at all, no matter how big or small that Love feels within us.
Despite appearances that make us look separate from God and each other, despite appearances that cause us to feel the way we feel about our self and others, there is not one of us that doesn’t want to feel Love and express It in some way. When we feel Love, or any of the feelings that Love gives birth to—compassion, kindness, patience, tenderness, understanding, unselfishness, and generosity—we feel good, and when we don’t, we don’t! When we express Love freely we feel peaceful, happy and filled with a sense of well-being, and when we don’t, we don’t! Even if our head tells us that we have good reason not to feel Love or express It in any moment, and even if we agree with our head and feel justified withholding Love, we’re in conflict with our heart that beats in Holy Rhythm with the Will of God, and that conflict never feels good!
You would think that the Will to Love would be so powerful within us that it would be impossible for us to be unwilling to love everything and everyone; that our head could never get in the way of that. But when an unloving thought comes to mind, and we give that thought the time of day by evaluating it, and deciding whether or not it has merit, our focus and attention gives that unloving thought creative power to manifest in form and expression in our life. And as it does, as it manifests as unloving forms of experience, the more convinced we are that we have good reason not to be willing to Love.
The power we give any thought is our power, and that power is the Power of God in us. They are one and the same. We don’t have personal power, but we are so free that we can use that Power in any way we decide to, including to block our awareness of the Love that we are. We read in The Science of Mind, “Talk, live, act, believe, and know that you are a center in the One. All the Power there is; all the Presence there is; all the Love there is; all the Peace there is; all the Good there is and the Only God that is, is Omnipresent; consequently the Infinite is in and through man, and is in and through everything.” We don’t have the power to change Love because God is Love. We don’t have the power to prevent Love’s Presence from being everywhere all the time. But we do have the power to choose whether or not that Presence is expressed as us.
When we try to manipulate Love by trying to convince others to behave in a certain way so they’d be easier for us to love, when we try to behave in a certain way that doesn’t feel authentic to us because we think it might make it easier for someone else to love us, when we limit our willingness to Love to a set of ideas as to what Love should look like, and to rules that determine when and how It should show up and how others ought respond, we’re trying to make Love happen with our head, and that is not the place where Love originates.
Emerson wrote, “What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.” What lies inside of us is that feeling Place where our will is one with the Will of our Creator, the Place where the Will to Love lives as us. When we live from that Place we are guided by Love. We know exactly how to express It. There’s no judgment or fear no matter who or what is before us.
No matter what we’ve been thinking in our head about Love, no matter what we think next about anything, that feeling Place in us won’t change or disappear. Thoughts change, emotions change, but Love isn’t a thought or an emotion. Love is Reality, and Love is what we are eternally. Thoughts come and go, thoughts can be quieted, thoughts can be revised and replaced. But that doesn’t make what we think unimportant because what we focus on and think about creates the vibrations that create our life experiences. Emotions come and go depending on what we’re thinking about because we feel the vibration of our thoughts. Still, how we feel is important because as Abraham-Hicks reminds us, “How you feel indicates your point of attraction.”
If we’re feeling good emotionally, then what we’re thinking is attracting something good. But if our thinking is in conflict with the Will of Love in us, we’re not going to feel good emotionally or attract anything good into our experience. Our thoughts cause a vibration we can feel emotionally. The good news is since our thoughts can be changed, we can change our thinking and change how we feel.
But sometimes we can have an unpleasant feeling without knowing what we’ve been thinking because we haven’t been paying attention to our thoughts. We’ve been on mental auto-pilot. Our thoughts can become so habitual that, just like any other habit we don’t notice we’re doing, we don’t notice the thinking that is causing us not to feel good emotionally. Ever try tracking down a thought because you suddenly felt emotionally uncomfortable and you wondered why? Then, when you tracked it down and felt a little better (“oh that’s why”), you left it there rather then deciding to change that thought about whatever it was? It’s easy for us to believe that how we’re feeling has nothing to do with what we’re creating. But that thought that didn’t feel good will go on creating experiences that don’t feel good until we change that thought to one that feels better.
Last summer a friend embarked upon what appeared to be a huge undertaking and it’s still ongoing today. The project has a whole lot of moving parts, and it seems that those parts all move to the beat of different drums. Some are moving more slowly than she’d like them to, and some are not as steady as she’d prefer them to be. It appears to those who are observing the situation that she has plenty of justifiable reasons be impatient and frustrated. But she’s remained amazingly calm. The other day I told her how inspired I was by her patience. She responded, “Every day, and sometimes several times a day, I get to choose between being patient or not, and feeling good or not. I like feeling good in my life. There’s far more to my life than this project.”
How often do we give some project, or some person, or some event power to cause us to feel bad, and then blame whoever or whatever for how we’re feeling when feeling good or bad is always up to us. Every moment we’re given the opportunity to choose how we want to feel, no matter what’s going on in our life or the world. It’s not pie in the sky thinking, it’s not fantasy or magical thinking, and it’s definitely not a lack of caring. It’s knowing the importance of caring how we feel; it’s understanding how the Laws of the Universe work; it’s caring about our point of attraction by paying attention to what we’re thinking. Then we’re able to change our thinking if we want to change our point of attraction.
If we’re not enjoying life and what we’re attracting to us, it could be time for us to care about how we’re feeling moment-to-moment, and intentionally join our will with the Will of our Creator that lives in that good feeling Place within us. Then we’ll attract a different life experience. When we intentionally think our way into feeling good with whatever thoughts cause us to feel good, and we don’t let up until we find that good feeling Place, we discover our purpose for being created. The Way of Knowing tells us that “We’re here to celebrate the Reality that we are already ‘in Love’” (because Love is all there Is) “and to celebrate the Reality that we are already “as” the expression of Love” (because Love is all we are).
In every moment, no matter what may be happening around us, even if those around us think we should be going crazy, we get to choose how we want to feel. If we choose to feel good, Love and all that Love gives birth to—compassion, kindness, patience, tenderness, understanding, unselfishness, and generosity—will flow into our life experiences without impediment, without obstacles, and without mistake. The Love that created us requires nothing but our willingness to Love. When our willingness to Love doesn’t require the world to show up in any particular form, we realize we’re already “in Love” because there is no other Place to be.
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