I woke this morning and had a short Skype chat with Steve Beckow, in which I was accused of being a practitioner of universal love (unconditional love).
My first response is to laugh, my second is to agree with the practice part implied by the word practitioner. I surely wouldn’t see myself as having this perfected, though I do see I’m well on my way to making the practice habitual.
I went on to read the article about proof he wrote You Proved It to Me. (1) This leads me to consider what exactly goes into this practice of universal or unconditional love. How do I do it? How do we do this?
The first thing that comes up with this consideration is intent. The level of love I can manage at any given time is taken to that level by my intent to do so. The quality and intensity of this love is directly proportional to my focus and where I’m choosing to place it.
Steve said in this same article that those of us who are modeling unconditional love suffer less. No doubt it looks this way from a certain view, but I’d have to say this is inconsistent with my own experience. Those familiar with my life story know I’ve had plenty of invitations to suffer, and like Steve suggested most of it was self-inflicted too.
Even so, the most severe suffering I’ve ever had in this life was the mourning over the miserable state of the world, and in those times I felt like that there wasn’t enough love to create solutions for this cycle of misery. That’s what you call despair. (This actually led to having cancer, but that’s another story…)
What moved me out of that suffering was the intent to change my focus. The suffering still happens, of course it does! I allow it to be so, acknowledge it (giving it its moment in the sun), and move on, bringing my focus (by intent) to a place that I discern is more productive. What could be more productive than moving out of the focus on suffering and into the focus on love, when it’s so obvious that there’s a desperate need to have more of it?
What re-creates my suffering except my carrying of it, by my own volition, into the next moment? Though this happens mostly from a place which isn’t an aware place, it’s still a choice. It is I that freely chooses whether to do this or not.
I’m suggesting that those who are practicing unconditional love are doing this by intent and by managing their focus. I’m suggesting that this is an conscious act of mastery and a practice. And, I’m suggesting that this can form a habitual way of being which is within the reach of everyone with a consciousness, which means everyone, period.
All women who’ve experienced childbirth know that the pain of the birth is soon replaced by the wonder of the baby and the ‘true love’ experience of unconditional love. Perhaps this is a part of the reason we’re seeing women leading the way into this paradigm shift concerning love, and how we will be experiencing, modeling and building the new era on Gaia with it.
I’m not suggesting that paternal love is any less powerful than maternal love either, only that the balancing act of bringing back the focus on the Divine Feminine is playing out right in front of our faces from what I’m seeing. This balancing is taking the form of heart-opening (and the challenges that go along with that) in both genders equally.
Once intent and focus are managed, what are the challenges to habitually practicing love which is universal or without conditions placed on it? Wow, we could make a long list here, I think. Rather than do that, (which is another invitation to despair in my world), I’d like to keep my focus on what I carry with me that interferes with my true nature, that of being Love Incarnate.
Whaaa? Did I just say Love Incarnate? Yes, I did.
Again, all mothers know that the newborn is a tiny bundle of love. The allure of this is so intense it manages to create unconditional love in all but the most resistant. How much does one have to carry of ‘not-now’ misery to not notice the happy loving feeling in the presence of an infant, be it human or animal?
It’s no wonder it’s been said we need to return to being like children to find again the kingdom of heaven. This energetic signature is so obvious and yet we miss it in the shuffle to carry forward and re-create that which is ‘not-now’ and ‘not-love’. This is the big hint on what we value in what we choose to focus on.
Taking a closer look at how we do this and how this is, in fact, a choice, is perhaps the most powerful approach to manage our focus and to side-step the quicksand of ‘what are the challenges, problems, ad nauseum.’ List-making has failed to solve anything, if it had there’d be no more lists, and as we know, this isn’t so.
This is, I believe, the foundation of why Kathleen can say things like, “Love is all that matters.” This is the simplest truth, and it has to do with her choice of focus and with her mighty intent. While none of us (or none that I know of) are yet capable of maintaining this focus constantly, the beauty of this practice is that each moment provides another opportunity to choose again.
Each moment is the most magical place to be, and there isn’t any moment in existence where this isn’t so. Within any and every Now is a choice point that no power in Heaven or on Earth can take from any of us. The question here could therefore be framed as, ‘What do we choose with our intent to focus on in the magical opportunity of this Now moment?”
One could choose to ride down the habitual track of carrying forward whatever miseries have been experienced in the past. (I have the PhD in this one.) If this isn’t a sufficient amount to satisfy the choice to value misery over the constantly available wonder in life, then one needn’t look far to find some misery in this world to focus on, taking it into oneself and owning it. (Lightworkers love to do this! Yes, this can be a part of our work and our agreement in being here, but let’s at least realize it for what it is.)
Inherent in these choices, whether conscious or not, is the ‘value’ placed on that which is brought into focus. The most important (valuable) thing to carry is what? What goes into my survival pack to take me to my destination? If I fill my knapsack with misery (pain, loss, lack etc), and pack it around with me, then can I really be surprised when that is all I find when I open it? This is all I have to share with fellow pilgrims on the side of the trail? Ew.
So, yes, this modeling of the practice of unconditional and universal love is very important now, as are the discussions on how one may manage to do what seems so difficult as to approach the impossible.
What’s impossible (in that it doesn’t make for a world that works for everyone), and in my view, unproductive, is to carry forward (and therefore re-create constantly), that which actually has nothing to do with who and what we are to begin with. This is a message which our sources refer to constantly and yet it’s still being viewed by so many as something that happens only for the fortunate, or the few with some sort of special super-powers or something.
My story, my life experiences, awful as many of them were, are not Me. Finding the real me has been a process of realization that’s happened only after releasing enough of the ‘not-me’ and ‘not-now’ to reveal the Love I am underneath the dross of all that.
My proverbial knapsack has been emptied out (2), all of that business has to go in order to move forward. Rather than leaving me with nothing, (this is always the fear, isn’t it?), this insanely simple magic has shown me something that will be found by anyone that puts the effort into doing the same. Inside the knapsack which used to hold all my misery, is nothing but Love. The bottomless purse, if you will.
If interested in trying out this process, repeat after me: intent, focus, Love, intent, focus, Love. When the focus wanders, with intent bring it back again. That’s the breakdown of this homey magic spell, and it’s available to all beings.
Footnote
1. https://goldenageofgaia.com/2014/10/22/you-proved-it-to-me/
2. Yes, a continuing process…