"God is love. This means that even the greatest source of negativity is love.
Ultimately, you must come face-to-face with that and recognize that whatever negativity presents itself is still of the true nature of God, which is love."
-- John Morton
As the previous articles in this Laws of Spirit series attest, this sequence of spiritual wisdom steps can be enormously useful in extricating ourselves from the challenges we face each and every day. It is practical spirituality at its best. In order to get to the loving, we have to first work our way through our "issues." This means doing what is necessary to achieve acceptance, cooperation, and understanding about whatever person, situation, or circumstance we are grappling with. Then, we are simply left with the loving that joins us together as one.
Spiritual love is characterized by deep peace, freedom, and an absence of resistance or "againstness." When we love in this way, we unite and embrace the other. When love is unconditional, there is no withholding of our self in any way, nor is there any judgment of our self or others. There is no hidden agenda of how we want the situation or person to change. We may not like the person or situation involved very much, but we recognize that there is more going on in life than our personal preferences.
This love that joins us together as one is different from romantic love. It is not about feeling all warm and fuzzy and affectionate about something or someone. It is not characterized by intense desire and attraction. Rather, it is a sense of connection to an underlying unity of all that exists. It is a choice to be kind and compassionate based on an awareness that on a non-physical level we are so unified that whatever I do will affect you. It is transcendence over a personal agenda to a desire for the highest good of all concerned. Spiritual love says, "I might be distressed by you or your behavior on a personality level, but I know that spiritually, we are all one and I wish us no harm."
"You are in this world to learn to use the energy of creation wisely in order to bring about completion. An important key to remember is that the energy of Spirit follows the thoughts you hold. Wherever you direct this spiritual energy in the material world, things are manifested.
There's an old saying: "What you fear comes upon you." It means you become a magnet for what you fear, and you create for yourself the very thing you're afraid of. Is there a real source of fear? No. Is there real fear? Yes. It is inside of you, and you are the creator of it. You give birth to your own fear.
Under the energy of fear is the energy of pure Spirit, which allows you to create whatever you want. This is the unconditional loving of Spirit, allowing you to do whatever you will with your body, emotions, and mind.
-- John-Roger
Loving is love in action. It is about what we create, promote, and allow -- our contribution. We don't need to live our lives engaging in big and little battles each day with other people trying to further our personal agenda while they seek to advance their own. Alternatively, we can know ourselves as powerful creators and meet the situations in our lives from an awareness of oneness and caring about the highest good of all concerned. What would this look like? Consider the last time you and your spouse or a friend had a serious disagreement about something. Did you become curious about how and why they arrived at their point of view or were you too busy trying to get them to see things from your perspective? Regardless of what they were doing, the question is what were you doing in the discord? Were you seeking to restore harmony between you through mutual understanding or were you building a case for how wrong and unacceptable they and/or their behavior were? No matter what the other person did or did not do, when practicing spiritual loving we hold ourselves accountable for how we respond to the situation. We hold the intention of not doing any harm to ourselves or others. We do not fuel the fire of discord, but seek to remain connected at a deeper level in spite of our respective flaws.
I can't help but wonder what would happen to our divorce rate if spouses were held accountable for their vows to love, honor, and cherish each other in good times and bad. The laws of spirit provide excellent guidance in how to do so. The missing ingredient is practice, practice, practice. The true value of working with the laws of spirit is that you feel better about life and about yourself and you are far more likely to be kind and compassionate to others.
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Donna Labermeier: How I Found My Purpose: A Personal Story of Transformation
MeiMei Fox: The Life Out Loud: Making New Dreams A Reality
Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D.: Refusing to Forgive: 9 Steps to Break Free
The love you write of is essential to the love a husband and wife should.
Thank you for this and the other articles in this series. I love each one. Your discussion of spiritual love reminds me of the Dalai Lama’s repeated statement that Kindness is his true religion. My husband Vic and I learned the value of this teaching while he was dying of cancer. For two years, Vic was often alarmingly ill and mentally jangled by the medicines and the disease, but decided from the beginning that even though he was too messed up to focus in meditation or study his favorite spiritual teachers, he could be kind to everyone—me, his sons, the nurses, the custodians in the hospital, his students,his doctor. Everyone. As you would expect, he received buckets of love and kindness in return and everyone who helped him get to the other side learned the power of spiritual love and human kindness. Looking forward to your next post, Elaine Mansfield (http://elainemansfield.com/)
And, thank you for your ongoing support of my writing.
Blessings,
Judith
http://www.actuallyitsaboutlove.com
Yes, forgiveness is not a luxury it is a necessity and done for ourselves and not for another. I do understand it intellectually and on rare occasions have experienced unconditional love ... Perhaps it is our purpose for being on this planet.As Judith mentioned.. to learn ( re-member) to love ourselves and to know our own worthiness vs guilt and shame ... just saying..
Thanks !
" Practice, practice, practice"... and practice some more :)
Love your way....
Blessings,
Judith
Amen.
"What you fear comes upon you."
Whatever our brains search for- good or bad it will find something to confirm it's own opinions about ourselves or others.
I just hope to learn from life- myself & others. That is all I can hope for.