819th Week: More About Focusing on Love

I seem to be returning to a theme I’ve written about many times in recent weeks—the healing power of love and the benefits of living with an open heart. Those of us in the United States, as well as so many people all over the world, find ourselves living in a world of loss, suffering, and discord. I’ve spoken many times about my sense that our species is in a developmental crisis, where we have an opportunity to grow into a deepening sense of oneness and a recognition of our underlying interdependence. The question that is not yet answered is whether we will take this developmental step into recognizing that we are inherently responsible for one another, as well as having responsibility for how we treat all our other earth-kin, including the care and well-being of the earth itself.

Because I can’t begin to imagine what the answer is to resolving this developmental crisis, I have consistently turned to calling on universal love to enter the hearts of everyone and, there, to elicit whatever healing is possible. I think I mentioned in an earlier post that I hold the intention that universal love will generate healing that serves the greatest good for the greatest number. I have some confidence in this particular intention because it draws on a wisdom well beyond my own that orients to serving the greater good, whatever that may be.

I recently ran across a YouTube video that speaks to the importance of, and need for, love. It offers sweet inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDTUJnGldGE&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR0O_j5XNdQgxh1fz7R4jV2tHfFjsF92v1zc1PWnKcevhwjq3vbMHTQdBN4

For this week’s practice in conscious living, I invite you to seek out sources of information and practice that support living from your heart and orienting your awareness to the essence, energy, and presence of love. Whether you choose a practice from HeartMath, or a Lovingkindness meditation, or orienting yourself to the essence of love, soaking in the qualities you find there, notice what it’s like to choose to engage your world from a stance of an open heart. Remember that an open heart is much stronger and more resilient than one that is closed or constricted by fear or other experiences of threat.

I mentioned in a recent post that each morning I fill myself with the rosy-pink color of universal love and I then spend some time imagining this color/essence/energy flowing down on the planet, filling and enfolding every living thing. For me, this practice allows two things: it nurtures my sense of possibility and hope, and it fills me with a deep and living sense of connection to everything and everyone in the world around me.

Whatever practice you choose this week, allow yourself to play with how it feels to you to experience a deepened sense of connection to everything and everyone around you, to touch even more deeply into a sense that we are all one earth family. Play with what I’m calling our current species-wide developmental opportunity—to explore more deeply a sense of oneness with all life, with everyone, with every earth-kin, with our beautiful and precious planet.

Please remember to bring along curiosity as your constant companion and to pat gently on the head any judgments that may arise. Allow any judgments to move on through without your having to do anything about them. Remember, they are usually signs of activation rather than being useful information. Remember to bring as much love to yourself and you choose to offer to your world…