In my book 333 Keywords to Change Your Life, one word stands out above the rest: love. To me it is the most inspiring, powerful, transformational, and amazing blessing in life.
"The invitation of the keyword “Love” is to recognize it as one of the most important keywords in our life for fulfillment, happiness, joy, and spiritual growth. Loving ourselves is just as important as loving others. Loving our life as it is, as well as what it is becoming, can empower our days to be magnificent, amazing, and full of deeper experiences. Love is a journey in itself, and our journey can be filled with love.
We can send love to strangers through our eyes or our smiles. We can also love the divine presence in our hearts, shine our love into the world with our minds and hearts, and share love with our families and significant others. Love is a deep expression and need of our soul to connect with others and with the divine." - 333 Keywords to Change Your Life, David Lawrence Brown
If we have a belief or inner knowing that there is a Divine Spirit in our life then it makes sense to think of love as a form of that Spirit loving through us. From the center of our being, connected to our heart, we know that this Divine Spirit is pure love, that can saturate every moment, every situation, and heal anything and everything, and can melt away all fear.
If I am one with the Divine Spirit of Love, then love is who I am and can open my heart to this deeper truth of life and let love shine through in every possible moment of life.
In meditation I can open my heart to love to open me to the presence, and the joy that is the reality of the ever-present Divine Spirit within me.
Thinking about it is one thing. Living it is another. I remind myself constantly to live in love, and life takes on a different hue, a new vibration, and a warm feeling of gratitude.
In the receiving of guidance from our intuition, our inner voice, our heart, we allow love to guide us through this adventure and journey of self discovery in life, and give gratitude for any lessons that we have learned along the path of spiritual growth.
When I think of the times in meditation when I allowed thoughts of people to come up that I needed to forgive, and situations of pain and anger and very challenging moments of life that I also needed to forgive (that I thought I had already forgiven), love was the main focus and feeling that empowered the process to be complete. Love was the energy that I sent to those that I needed to forgive. Love was the energy that I also used to forgive myself for any actions, thoughts, or feelings that hurt others, or hurt myself. The process was natural and spontaneous. My usual routine of meditation was dedicated to it when it came up, and I noticed a profound release in some cases.
The title of this blog post - Open Our Hearts to Love - is written as a reminder to myself and an invitation to you to open our hearts in love, even more, to every situation, even in business, and especially in writing. Writing is a gift that I finally embraced and let happen later in life. Once the threshold was crossed, there is no turning back. If you have ever thought about journaling, it is an excellent way to express your inner thoughts and feelings, to support yourself and your journey in love, and to be creative in your descriptions of insights, experiences, joys and challenges of life.
The threshold of love can keep moving ahead of us, so that it can be crossed many times. In daily meditations, I want to cross the threshold of love and welcome it opening my heart even more this day, and every day.
I welcome opportunities to express love in meditation, in song and dance, and in relationships, and sharing of stories with others.
In gratitude, may the love that we are already celebrating continue to open our hearts to receive and share more of this precious gift of the Divine Spirit within, now and forever.
"May thy love shine on the sanctuary of my devotion, and may I awaken thy love in all hearts."
- Paramahansa Yogananda
