The Energy of Love

by Jennifer Hoffman -

Love brings up so many feelings and thoughts, most of them involving our past love life which may not have been pleasant. We think of love as the ultimate goal of our life but what we are focused on is emotional love, the feeling, instead of unconditional love, the state of being. Since we are emotional beings in our human state, we connect more easily with love on that level because it makes us feel good, from the ego’s perspective, in ways that unconditional love does not.

Our search for love is our desire for instant gratification and material proof that we are worthy and deserving of love versus the willingness to be in a state of knowing that love exists even if we don’t have the physical proof of it in our lives. Physical proof means, among other things, being in a loving, intimate relationship, having people who express their love for us through acceptance and acknowledgement and who let us know, through how they respond to us, that they love us. We have a ‘love agenda’ that clearly defines what love means to us. When others’ behavior and actions do not meet our love agenda we think they are not loving and we are unworthy of love.

There is an element to emotional love that feels temporary, confusing and anxious—does someone really love us, how can we know it will last forever? Every relationship has a temporary aspect to it that we may not want to look at but that we know is there. The person who loves us today could change their mind tomorrow and then we’re without love in our life. So often our desire for love is expressed as a fear of being shown an awful truth we don’t want to consider, that we are truly unlovable.

Unfortunately, when we have the fear of being unlovable and unloved, we attract people who mirror that to us. On a spiritual level they love us more than we can imagine but on the material plane, they have no choice but to mirror our beliefs about love back to us. In a message from Archangel Uriel several years ago I wrote “You will never receive more love from others than you have for yourself.” Of course we love ourselves, or at least some aspects of ourselves, but are we able to know love in the spiritual sense, as in unconditional love, no matter what happens on the physical?

Unconditional love is one of humanity’s greatest challenges because as long as there is one iota of judgment, we are into a conditional expression of love, meaning “if you do this, or act this way or say these things then I know you love me and if you don’t, then you do not love me.” And we extend that to how we believe ourselves worthy of love if we don’t receive that confirmation. But are we guilty of confusing love, as in unconditional love, with ‘like’? Because they are different energies even though we have lumped together all aspects and expressions of love into an emotional basket, in order to understand the true energy of love we must separate them.

The love we feel is emotional, the love we are is spiritual. The need for love from others is really a request for approval. Unconditional love involves acceptance but with emotional love that isn’t enough. We want to know that others think we are OK, worthy of being in their emotional love sphere, that they think we are good, beautiful, considerate and amazing enough to give us their love. All we really want, though, is to know that they like us because that is the emotional and material expression of unconditional love.

If we can move beyond our need to be liked, we can explore the possibilities of having unconditional love and then we are in the energy of acceptance, which is completely non-judgment and we are in this sphere because we already are and have all of the love we could even want or need. Then, rather than approaching others with our hearts in doubt, confusion and fear, we are confident because we know that we are worthy of love and whether or not someone likes us is irrelevant in the face of the love that we already are.

enlighteninglife.com

Within Your Own Reality

by Jennifer Hoffman -

One Light Can Change the World:

Any limitation that you feel blocks your path is an expression of a memory you carry deep within your physical, emotional and energetic bodies of times when your efforts were limited by situations in which your light was rejected. These are often expressions of your martyr and victim consciousness, when you offered yourselves as a healing light to your soul groups knowing that they were not yet prepared for their transformation. It was never your mission to change the world, your role in the world is to shine your light in all of its expressions. And you can do that, no matter what the world does in response. The world will eventually turn towards the light when it has experienced enough darkness. When the world can find power in love it will no longer need fear. But it must experience both to make that choice. You can be the love the world needs to have as one choice among many.

All Lightworkers have had lifetimes of service in the world, to be forces for change and transformation. The light was always extended even though there were many lifetimes when it was extinguished because the world wasn't ready to release its fear. Those times you felt betrayed by Source and the belief that you were abandoned and not supported as a source of light and love was created. This belief has reverberated throughout your lifetimes and it is strongly expressed within your soul group. Through the ego you have translated this role of bringers of the light to mean that you have come to change the world. But you have simply come to be a source of light, a connection to the light and love and Source for those who are willing to see and recognize it to acknowledge it and accept it into their own hearts and being.

From these experiences you have pushed yourselves further into dimming your own light, limiting the expression of your gifts and not choosing the path of powerful creation for yourselves. If the world does not change and accept you and your gifts, you believe that you are not worthy of the joy, love, abundance and success that are your divine birthright. You martyr yourselves on behalf of the light and yet that is merely an expression of your own fear that by being powerful you are a threat rather than an inspiration. You can be all you desire and want to have, every dream is possible for you when you shine your light and are willing to accept blessings for yourselves.

The path of the martyr and victim is not the highest expression of your energies and limiting your abundance is not in integrity with your truth. You can be all things within your life as you express who you are to a world that may or may not accept it. Be your truth, that is all you can do, and allow the world to follow its path until it is ready to make its own transformation. You have come to bring the truth of divinity and ascension to the world, express that in your own life and you will be the change the world seeks. Each of you can change the world when you begin within your own reality and shine your light within you, illuminating your own shadows, releasing your fear, connecting to your inner resources and being the light in your life so you can also en-lighten the world.

enlighteninglife.com

Dance of Evolution and the Big Shift

Finding Grace in Transition:

by Anodea Judith, PhD -

Evolution. It's not just a good idea, it's inevitable.

One thing about evolution: it's always moving to the future. Even when it seems like we're moving backward in some kind of bizarre regression like the Tea Party -- the actual movement is still forward -- sort of like the planets going retrograde every so often. They haven't actually changed direction, it just appears that way from our stationery perspective. Astrologers will tell you that retrogrades can represent the disruption that leads to a new order. Retrogrades are also times to clean up the past.

So here we are, at the front end of 2012, perching on what we believe will be evolution's Big Shift Year. Decades ago, when I first thought about it, I imagined we'd be much farther along by now -- that we would have figured out how to live in peace, share wealth, take care of the environment, and live elegant lives supported by advanced technology. I certainly didn't think a world teeming with overpopulation would be arguing about women's legal right to use birth control (thank you Rick Santorum), or that 115 days into the Occupy movement we'd be listening to Wall Street brokers threatening to quit if their bonuses were reduced.

But wait, isn't it always darkest before the dawn? Aren't we just barely crawling out of the darkest time of year, still at the pink-orange sunrise of the new year, let alone the dawning light of the next era? Here's something to think about as the light grows around you: Like a holograph, whose parts always contain the whole, each photon of light carries information in a 360-degree perspective. That's what light does; it helps us see where we're going, helps us see the big picture. If we listen to each other's perspective, we can see the whole take shape.

The dance of evolution moves toward greater bodies of wholeness -- more parts working together in larger numbers. From single-celled organisms that took 3 billion years to cooperate as simple creatures, to ego-based individuals who must now figure out how to run a planet together, evolution is a cauldron of creativity always finding new ways to melt its disparate parts into a greater whole.

To transform into that whole, we first have to melt. We have to be willing to let go of old forms, attachment to outcome, to believing that we know everything. We have to let go of the illusion of separation, even as we hang on to our own important agency. Our unique note in the symphony is necessary, but the symphony is something we create together. We can consciously co-create with evolution -- as long as we understand that it's the senior partner in the dance -- much, much older and wiser than we are.

Where there's pain, that's evolution urging you somewhere else. Feel it, pay attention, then melt your stance. Listen to the heart, which moves toward greater expansion. Anytime you create more organization, harmony, beauty, truth, or goodness, you are moving in the direction of evolution. Where can you create more beauty in your life? Where can you find more harmony with your friends, neighbors, co-workers, home environment, or within yourself? How can you use this time to get more organized for the year ahead? Step outside, into the light, and see the bigger picture taking shape, one photon at a time, all around you.

Grace is the music that coordinates separate parts into a greater whole. When those parts move in harmony, singing to Divine's not-so-subtle urges toward greater perfection, try to surrender and ride the waves -- even through their ups and downs. Have faith that you really are going somewhere -- just like all the rest of us on this bumpy ride to the future.

sacredcenters.com