Choose Love Excerpt

Chapter 3

Choosing Love

 Love versus love

 Love is the all-pervading energy of the universe. Love is expressed in our physical energy bodies as health. Love is expressed in our emotional energy bodies as joy and peace. Love is expressed in our intellectual energy bodies as creativity and curiosity. Love is expressed in our spiritual energy bodies as compassion and connection. Hope is a window in our mind through which we can see Love at work in the world and imagine Love at work in our lives. All disease is a symptom of being detached from the Love pervading our life. Any practice that opens us to Love is essential for Consciousness rising. Love is more powerful than any other force or condition in our lives or in the universe.

The seen (shadow) world has watered down the meaning and power of Love. We use the word love in all sorts of incorrect ways: I love pizza; I love your post on social media; I love my alma mater; I love a television series, and so on. All of these refer to a specific response from the pleasure center in our midbrain, which triggers the cascade of the reward pathways of our brain, releasing dopamine and other chemicals that give us a sense of pleasure. Even lovemaking, which in its finest form can bring us to an ekstasis experience, does not bring us to our purpose for existing. While pleasure brings positive experiences to our physical, emotional, and intellectual energy bodies, it is not the same energy as Love from the Creative Force of the Universe.Love is the force that permeates and animates the seen world. Love is the bringer of light. Love is the bringer of life. In every moment of our lives, we can choose Love or the absence of Love, which is fear.

 Choosing Love Is an Inside Job

 Making the choice for Love is not a response to our environment. Choosing Love is an act of creation, joining together with the Creative Force of the Universe to flow Love into the world. Flowing Love is a practice that grows into an art. Practicing Love first requires that we separate ourselves from the everyday world in order to learn the vibration of the Love that brought us into being. In this act, we do not respond to the world around us; we shut down the constant sensory input that keeps our mind distracted from the channel of Love that reaches everywhere and comes from everywhere. The work is to keep ourselves tuned to the frequency of the Love that created the universe, pure Consciousness. As we grow in our ability to hold that frequency, tuning out the noise of the world becomes easier and easier. As our individual practice deepens, we develop the capacity to hold the frequency of Love in the world for longer periods of time and in more challenging settings. The ultimate goal is to extinguish our human response to the events of the world and make universal our ability to hold the vibration of the Love that created the universe in every situation we encounter.

In the early stages of choosing Love, almost any disruption in the setting can create a distraction that takes us out of the channel of Love and back into our minds to process the events around us, our mind working overtime to keep us safe. In these early stages of reentraining to the frequency of Love, the importance of creating conditions for safety for one another is vital to the work. Stepping away from technology, minimizing distractions, and making the setting cozy and relaxing all encourage our mind to relax and reduce the hypervigilance of living that many of us have been trained to maintain. Once we enter the quiet oasis from everyday life, we taste the sweetness of our own heart space, a place of unconditional Love, safety, potential, and rest. Early on, because we are unpracticed with being in this space, any intrusion into the space can reactivate our mind to continue its job of keeping us safe. Our mind creates imaginary things from which to keep us safe: scanning the past, present, and future to identify and latch onto any possible threats to our being, like an antibody moving through the bloodstream to find a threat to the functioning of our physical body.

As we develop the capacity and skill of holding center in the channel of Love, our individual practice becomes stronger and more rewarding. We recognize the restorative power of time away from the everyday seen world, feeling the rejuvenation of drinking regularly from the deep, pure wellspring of life called Love. We feed and fuel our being from Source with the essence of our being. We experience inspiration—infusing spirit into our being. This beginning step is the cave of our creation—our rebirth into a spiritual being having a human experience. Consciousness rises; mind recedes. We come to know the source of our being again. Resurrection.

Just as a newborn human is not capable of fending for themselves in the world we have created, a newborn spiritual person resurrected from their human form is often not capable of fending for themselves as a spiritual person in the world we have created. It is easy to lose center, to entrain down to the vibration of the seen (shadow) world, the world that has forgotten its Source. Regular practice of setting ourselves apart from the everyday world both feeds our newborn spiritual person and strengthens our ability to hold center while engaging the vibration of the shadow world. As we grow into our spiritual presence in the shadow world, we find ourselves able to hold the vibration of Love in more settings. The first and easiest settings are the ones that do not hold a trigger of an emotional wound for us. An emotional wound comes from overidentifying with our physical being during the time we were sleepwalking in the shadow world. These wounds are harder to heal than physical wounds because they are invisible to the physical eye and we have been trained by the dominator consciousness to ignore them even when we recognize them with our heart’s eyes.

As we engage the world with Love, when we lose our center, we can retreat to the safe space to regain our center and clean out the emotional wound, allowing it to heal with the salve of Love, the one and only healing force in the universe. Each cycle of retreat and reemerging strengthens us as conscious conduits of Love, healing within and healing without. We begin to hold center in more and more circumstances, for longer and longer periods, until we arrive home—manifesting the Love that we were created to be in every time and space. Being Love. Holding the center of Love radiating out into the shadow world to help complete a full transformation of human consciousness. Becoming the Love we are. A full and complete expression of our Creator. Homo sapiens into homo luminous. The light of the Creative Force of the Universe shining through us without restriction or distortion—full force and full spectrum. First illuminating ourselves. Then illuminating all around us. Finally illuminating all of creation.

 The Path of Love

Many of us have journeyed this path of becoming the Love we were created to be in the world. First we catch glimpses of it, having moments of clarity and peace in an otherwise suffering existence. At first, these breakthrough experiences are often confusing or unexplainable from the shadow world perspective. With introspection or help from others, we begin to search them out and make efforts to replicate them. Unitive experiences, that feeling of oneness, is hitting the note of Love. Over time, we string together enough unitive experiences that we can see across from one to another to recognize that the shadow world is not the only reality. Peacefulness, that feeling of contentment or all is well in the world, is being able to hold the note of Love. Nonviolent resistance is the ability to strike and hold the vibration of Love in the midst of the lower vibration of hate and fear. Enlightenment is sustaining the note of Love. Everything is energy. Energy is vibration, with different vibrations being experienced differently to our senses. Enlightenment, living in a state of oneness, is being able to sustain the note of Love in the midst of an environment filled with the noise of lower vibrations, including hate and fear.

As more and more humans are able to hit, hold, and sustain the note of Love in the seen world, we embody Consciousness rising. We are in the midst of a shift from bottom-up thinking to top-down thinking. In the past, we have clamored up the hill to the top to claim we are on top of the world, attempting to reach the Creative Force of the Universe by reaching up from the pinnacle of our human condition. In the near future, we will start with the grandeur and majesty of the Creative Force of the Universe and bring it down into the human condition, starting with the energy of Love and bringing it into physical form.

This difference was illustrated to me a few months ago. I was sitting on the beach on Longboat Key in Florida on the evening of July 4. From my vantage point, I could see the Independence Day fireworks display in Sarasota and other smaller fireworks activity nearby. On this particular summer night, there was also a large thunderstorm just south of the Sarasota fireworks display, providing me a comparison of the two in real time in one view. From the earth, a small trail of light arose, followed by a spray of light fading into sparks. From the sky, a brilliant burst of light erupted, followed by flashing of light in the clouds and the roll of thunder like waves crashing on the shore. As I sat and watched the display of humans contrasted with the display of the Creative Force of the Universe, the differences came into sharp contrast. It was like humans striking a match compared to a volcano erupting. Like humans clearing a tract of land for building a house compared to the growth of a forest. Like building a shelter of wood and stone only to have any evidence of the shelter disappear in the powerful wind and water forces of a hurricane.

In the past, humans have scratched the surface of the planet to sustain their lives, extracting wood, coal, oil, radioactive materials, and natural gas to create energy to fuel our activities. Today, we sit at the cusp of calling down the inexhaustible supply of energy from the Creative Force of the Universe by accessing the energy that comes to us naturally every day—wind, sun, and water—to create a human existence that minimizes our impact on the rest of the created natural world. It is the dawning of the age of stewardship, replacing the age of domination. We are learning to live in the flow of Love instead of living in the absence of Love.

(I invite you to read more in my book, Consciousness Rising, available everywhere and on my Shop page.