How to live a love filled life

Now, this week we are talking about love.

Romantic love is what people think of first, isn't it?

Because that's the thing that people yearn for the most. It is looking for love from someone outside of them to really fill you up and complete you. Like Jerry McGuire said, ‘you complete me’.

That's not all Love is meant to be though.

From A Course in Miracles perspective, they always say that Jerry McGuire line, “You complete me." It's the biggest Hollywood story. Someone to complete us is not actually what we should be looking for.

Because somebody doesn't want a half-completed Audrey or a half-completed Kristina, do they? They want the full package, complete.

That means we must start with self-love.

The concept of starting with self-love triggers people as well. But from the perspective of really attracting in your other half, you must be a whole circle, and they must be a whole circle, and then your two circles come together.

Some people describe self-love as "tall poppy syndrome" or, they're so into themselves. But that's not really what we're talking about. What we're talking about is appreciating every part of yourself.

That you must have made friends and peace and love with yourself, all the bits. The good bits, the bad bits. Get a good understanding of how you are in the world, your hopes and dreams, the things you're good at, the things you want to learn about, and the things you're interested in. Having a good knowledge of what completes you and makes you somebody that is attractive to somebody else.

Attractive to somebody who's perfect for you.

You must know what you value. What are your values? What's important to you? What's your purpose here in life?

Because your purpose isn't just to find someone to love you, although for some people that might be. For some people having a partner and a family and caring and nurturing them is their purpose. But, you need to be clear about that. Because I work with so many people who get to that point, where they've got the house, the picket fence, the two children, and the great successful career, or the husband who has the great successful career, and then they're like, "I'm still miserable."

You must find the stuff that is going to fulfill you. To do that you have to know what you are about on the inside.

But I think the important thing, about learning to fall in love with yourself and create a life that you love, is living your life to the fullest that you can. It’s your life, however you want to do it, whatever is important for you. Different things bring different people joy.

We've all got to find what we love. Then cultivate feeling worthy of living a life that's full of love, and even knowing that that's even possible. So, even before we get to self-love, or exploring what is going to bring my fullest life, you must be willing to open to living a love-filled life.

Because everyone says, "But I do want love." And the question is, "But do you?"

"Your job is not to seek for love, but merely to remove all the barriers to love that reside within you." Rumi

So, the first thing to work through on a living a love filled life checklist is to look at all the grievances that you hold. Because if you're constantly referring to, "Oh, but I couldn't do that because of something else that happened," or I... It's sort of like not being worthy, isn't it, because you're still remembering all those things from the past.

Forgiveness is the next step. Because the light of love, that's innately who you are as a person. You must open to receive love, but you also must open to be love.

Every spiritual teaching teaches that love is the whole purpose of existence. Love is the foundation of existence. Love is what brings us into life, breathes us into life. And even Einstein said, love is the glue that holds the universe together. So then, the biggest illusion we have is that we are not love; that we are not lovable; we are not loving.

So, we can't give it and we don't deserve to get it.

So, you must be willing to open to living from a place of love, and receiving love, and giving it. And obviously, the best way to receive is to give. So, it's about looking at all your grievances and all the barriers within you that are blocking you from the experience of love within your own life.

So, that time that that guy dumped you, or you felt rejected, you didn't get that job, dad didn't look at you the right way, or maybe he told you off, or mum, didn't support you. All those moments become barriers to your ability to live fully in life if you are holding onto them.

Focus on the importance of living in right now. Now, at every moment, you're perfect. Yes. Perfect, just as you are. That's a strong teaching in all theologies, too.

Think about a baby. We all say "Oh, you're so cute." Because they haven't got any barriers to love, yet. And they're just sitting in this luminosity of their own being.

There's this obvious biological program that's in our body, which is, we must find a mate and we have to reproduce, and that's just evolution and biology. But we get this extra boost of oxytocin to make it work. You meet someone, and you're like, "Ooh." "Ooh, I like that person."

At first, so there's this lust, there's this oxytocin, there's this bringing someone to you. Then after about three months, you start to see the real person. And they start to see the real person as well. And here's the thing. Like attracts like, so you will always draw in the perfect person for where you are right now.

The universe has a perfect plan for your growth. Because the universe wants you to lean deeper into love, and to step more fully into the rivers of love. It's calling you in every moment.

So, through relationship, we are looking for a special person, who's going to treat me special. They'll be special, we'll be special, and get a little bit codependent and all that fun stuff. But the attachment issues, and all those things that really you should have figured out before you start diving deep into relationship will start to flare up. The perfect person will come to meet you to shine a light on all your barriers to love. So, if you've got a few, they’ll be there.

All the people in your life were important to me because they shined a light on some of the things you might be holding onto about yourself. A lot of people think, near enough is good enough, but it's not really, is it? Because you're saying that you are only partly deserving of love. That’s about the inside stuff you and, you deserve the best.

The more that you step into the stream of recognizing what love is and what love isn't. Unfortunately, not all of us have been role modeled what love is and what love isn't. We're probably more role modeled what love isn't, like control, and expectation, and demand, and putting down, and criticism, and bullying, intimidation, and some extremes, like people who... and violence, and they do it because "they love you." No they don't. That person's got a lot of work to do, and your job's not to heal them.

So, there's all this what love isn't, and then there's all this what love is.

When you are sitting in the energy of Love, it's palpable, and you know it. And even just being in that energy is very healing. And, I think, again, a lot of the religious texts will talk about that. How just being in the presence of someone who embodies love is so powerful.

That's why meditation is such an important practice in terms of helping you get over all those grievances that you carry from the past, all of those areas that you hold shame or humiliation or whatever it might be, where you thought you weren't perfect in that moment, and you still haven't forgiven it, meditation helps to shine the light on it, because the light will turn it from darkness into light, obviously. Be willing to give it up and let it go so, that you can live in love's presence.

Once you do that you will be attracting from a different level because you cleaned up your side of the street, and then that flows out even beyond relationship, romantic relationships, into the friendships in life.

In David Hawkins book Power Versus Force, he has this scale of called the map of consciousness. Basically, what they say is that the more we as individuals move up that scale out of fear, and if we are honest with ourselves, I think most people live in fear. And fear is not the reality of our world. Love is, but we are trained to live in fear. So, as you move out of fear and through anger and depression and apathy and anxiety and all those low vibration energies, and then move into joy and happiness, and I think peace comes after love, you start not only changing your energy, but you start transforming the energy of the people around you.

Depending on how strong your heart is and how anchored you can be in it, you can send out vibrations that touch other people's hearts around you.

If you hit self-actualization, 1% of the population get there. And you can probably think of the ones that... Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Desmond Tutu, Dalai Lama, Wayne Dyer. You can name the handful of people that are sitting in that place. If we get someone to the point of being totally sitting in love and not being able to tell the difference between their own individual love versus the divine love that flows through all of us, that person can transform the consciousness of the whole planet and pull us all out of fear.

But if we all just do our own work and move our own vibration up one or two steps, or 15 or 20 steps, or whatever, towards love and peace and self-actualization, then actually it's so worth it for everybody. It's not just an individualized thing.

It pulls us out of our self-interest into service. is what is so powerful about going through this process of opening to receive love, just being open to even believe that love is the ground of being, then moving into really removing all the barriers to loving yourself. Then stepping into using your relationships to learn how to love everyone as they are. From that, moving into sitting in this place of just being in love; where you will say “I can see the beauty of this world. I can see that love is the ground of being. I'm good now. I've got a great job. I've got the picket fence and I love it.”

The more you step into self-love, then the better person you're going to attract into your life. And that means that that quality of love that you have, in terms of romantic relationship, or friendships, or with your family, just explodes.

Namaste.