All You Need Is Love"For in every act of love and will - and in the long run they are both present in each genuine act - we mold ourselves and our world simultaneously." --Rollo May It's February and the stores are filled with red hearts. It can seem trite, like a Hallmark ploy for profit. And sometimes it can generate unrealistic and often unfulfilled expectations. Why not use this year's Valentine's Day to celebrate what Love is really all about? What is Love anyway? Instead of being that fluttery feeling of longing we all associate with "falling in love," Love may actually be the sensation we feel when we get in touch with the universal energy of our universe -- the feeling we experience when we turn our awareness to our inner Selves and feel its compassion and open-heartedness. As I discuss in Active Consciousness, it is from this vantage point that we not only feel the sensation of "Love", but also become more effective co-creators of our world. Love may indeed be the true essence of our inner being. Many individuals who have undergone a near-death experience (NDE) come back and report that after their physical death, they enter a realm of almost impossibly infinite Love. The sensation is so overwhelming and blissful that most NDE'ers do not wish to return to their bodies. For more details and scientific studies about near-death experiences, check out the amazing work of Dr. Kenneth Ring. I also recently watched a series of online videos that feature people who describe their own NDEs -- in segments of a movie called Life After Life. Interestingly, after they returned to this life, all of these individuals began to live differently; their NDE had taught them that the most important thing in life is Love and our acts of loving kindness towards one another. As I suggest in Active Consciousness, when we die, our higher astral and mental bodies may detach from our physical selves, enabling us to enter a higher dimensional realm whose limits exceed the confines of our familiar three-dimensional world. That's why NDE'ers say that time and space don't matter in the "after life" -- that they can instantly transport to any time and place they choose. This inner aspect of ourselves, of course, also resides within us when we are alive. We simply need to learn to access it better -- through meditation, through activities like lucid dreaming, or through other methods that humanity has utilized for attaining non-ordinary states of awareness. And it is from the loving vantage point of the inner Self that we can most effectively wield the power of active consciousness. Why do we associate Love with the heart? As the research of Dr. Paul Pearsall showed, the heart is not just a blood pump, but the link to an important part of our consciousness that even transcends death. For example, in The Heart's Code he describes how heart transplant recipients often "remember" aspects of their donor's lives and even develop some of their idiosyncrasies. Perhaps the heart really is a physical link to our higher Selves. Native traditions have always understood that wisdom lies more in the heart than in the head. While the rational mechanisms of the brain may be useful in planning and evaluating options in life, in the end, the wisdom of the inner Self is probably best accessed through the heart -- as I say in Active Consciousness, by CHOOSING JOY: that which creates an inner sensation of ease and expansion and happiness, the joy of the heart. On February 14, why not give yourself and the world the gift of Love? Utilize the meditations described in Active Consciousness, contact your Self, and rest in its wisdom and joy. And when you meditate, reach for NOW+ -- the state of presence in the Now that holds love and compassion in your heart and a smile upon your face! |
