Staying Happy
"With life as short as a half taken breath, don’t plant anything but love.”
—Rumi
"No matter what is happening in the world of appearances, beyond the veil of illusion there is love and only Love.”
—Marianne Williamson
All We Need Is Love
Without love an infant child will die; without real connection to others, people go into experiences of depression and addiction. You and I both need love. Just like you need to exercise your muscles to keep them toned, you also need to practice sharing love, the type of love that doesn’t judge or create conditions, that instead relates to others. The better you get at mastering the ability to love, the happier you will be. When you understand the fundamentals of unconditional love, you can choose it in any given situation.
Love And Fear
Fear comes up because you need to focus, it is a call for action. What will help you act is love. The force of love opens you up, helps you create and release energy to take action. Fear makes us hold our breath, love expands our chest with air. When we make an ally out of our fears, look them straight in the face, we can count on love to save the day. Not the romantic kind of love, nor the parental kind of love that nurtures and guides you. A love force that is inherently universal that is all around us and in us. Imagine an invisible energy that connects everything in the world in a grid. An invisible energy that nourishes you on a deeper level and expands your mind and heart so you can be brave as you face the challenges of life. A love that will set you free to be your happy self.
My Success Story on Learning to Receive Love From My Father
Since I was a kid, my relationship with my father had been confusing and complicated. For a long time, I didn’t feel like I had a relationship with him. Mostly, what I experienced from him was anger and negativity. I don’t remember ever receiving a compliment from him growing up. I do remember him occasionally help me with my homework. Once I gave him a father’s day card that said he was the world’s greatest dad and he lit up like a Christmas tree. In my experience, I rarely connected with my dad and had a hard time really relating to him as my father. In other words, I didn’t feel like he really loved me, and I had given up on seeking his approval in my grown up years.
Two life changing events happened that propelled me closer to my father. At age 53, my mother suddenly fell very ill and passed away. Her illness and death compelled me to get to know my father better. Days before she died in the hospital, I told her that I had started to speak to my father. “It is about time,” she told me. My mother was one of my best friends and it was, at the time, hard to imagine that I could ever have that kind of relationship with my father.
I spent the next ten years after my mother’s death getting to know my father, which took a lot of commitment. The second event happened, when my father helped me escape an abusive relationship. It was the first time I remember asking him for anything really important. And he was truly there for me. I decided then that I would move on and heal my relationship to my father because I knew that it would help me make any new male relationships I were to establish much more harmonious. I returned home with this goal in mind and heart. And I did it! It was much simpler than I thought it would be. I asked my friends what they thought about my father, and they all agreed that they felt that he loved me. I used this confirmation to support my own conviction. I removed the filter that I had been carrying for so long that said he didn’t love me and opened up to the reality that he possibly did. I looked him in the eye for a long time and I felt the love, and I haven’t stopped feeling that love ever since.
“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.”
—1 Corinthians 13:7
The Intelligence of the Heart
Did you know that according to many years of research done by the Heartmath Institute in California, the heart has an electromagnetic field or ‘energetic aura’, which can be read and felt by other people’s hearts and brains? This energy that the heart emits is always pulsating and affecting its environment and can help reduce stress and increase cognitive functions and intuitive discernment when it is coherent. The Heartmath Institute suggests that this energy is our heart’s intuitive intelligence and when we listen to it rather than our ego, we have a beneficial impact on our environment. We increase this energy when we hold genuine emotions of compassion and appreciation. This research supports the age-old symbolic use of the heart being the seat of our love and intuitive intelligence.
Read more at heartmath.org
