Can you imagine living in a place where ‘love’ is actually believed more to be a noun? Can you imagine living on a planet where ‘love’ means you have to give up your right to freedom and identity in order to assure yourself a place or time of belonging? Can you imagine a place where ‘real love’ is more defined by your gender rather than your soul essence? These are questions I have posed of God and Goddess that arise from what people have shared with me over the 15 years in my professional service.
The challenge of any professional who walks beside those who seek deeper meaning, purpose or a true sense of soul identity in the midst of chaos, neglect, abuse and violence or even overlays of confusion is never to lose the deeper rhythms of the Universe or the faith that God and Goddess are more powerful and wise than any rampant evil or violence here on this planet. Everywhere we look we can see violence and betrayal—on the streets, on TV, on the internet, at our work, in our families and homes, in our words, even in our own minds and hearts for goodness sake. And what’s even more perplexing is that often our disorientation away from our core ethics permits our participation in such betrayals of our own True Spirit over and over again.
In a recent conversation with my Spiritual Coach, we dialogued about doing what we love. In other words, love is a state of being that is active and dynamic. Actively magnetizing what is truly our natural expression of love. Actively expressing our needs that fulfill our deepest soul purpose. Actively engaging the people around us to experience their own power to love. Actively inviting ourselves to follow through with what we most dream about. These actions require love to be in motion and for us to be in our truth. Even when we are asked to wait and be patient upon God’s and Goddess’ timing and do ‘nothing’, love still requires us to trust the task of waiting and do nothing. I have learned we are never left behind when we love and do what we love. That would be a contradiction to Universal Law. Love must complete itself. Fear can never complete itself. It has not gained the wisdom to do so. Love must find its union to be whole. Love seeks wholeness and truly is always whole.
When we truly love, we are in motion and so when we truly love our motion is guided by our principles. We often refer to these principles as our ethics. Ethics are our soul imperatives that serve as guardians and guides in making decisions and choices for graceful living and joyful peace-walking, for example. Such an example can be found in 1 Corinthians 13: 4-6 where the apostle Paul writes:
“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.”
When I read such soul wisdom, I am re-oriented to the ethics that require me to think with patience, to speak with kindness, to genuinely complement and to be delightfully forth-giving with praise. It reminds me I must treat everyone as equally worthy in the eyes of the Divine and cannot act in ways that puts others in doubt of this truth. When I love, I release control of the higher outcome in all situations, not because I am hopeless or feel powerless, but rather because it is imperative that I trust. Love trusts! Love tells the truth! Not just sometimes or some places, but in every time and in every place. In fact, the text says I must rejoice in my truth, whatever my truth is.
These principles are simple. They are ancient and universal in any true spiritual community. Yet, how often do we get trapped in our emotions and our negative cycles of thinking that we forget, truly forget that our soul has an imperative to love? With an imperative to love, then I must be patient; kind; truthful; affirming of others and myself equally; I must surrender to the path and knowing of love; and I must commit to its completion no matter how challenging the way. When I choose love then I must do what I love and stop the resentment that comes from doing what I don’t love.
Although I asked these questions long ago and from time to time I return to God and Goddess to ask them again, I am always returned to Love, not a noun I can cuddle up and go to sleep renouncing all responsibility of my soul purpose, but a verb that enlightens and evolves me beyond what I can imagine and believe I am capable. When I return to Love as a verb, it becomes the healing antidote to woeful feelings and negative thinking.
We have just stepped into the fall season of harvest and thanksgiving. Harvesting the fruit in our lives and being grateful for our abundance requires an attitude of love. They require the soul to be in inspired motion. Inspired motion of the soul is love’s ultimate purpose and divine desire. Today, when you sit with Love, what ethic guides you in choosing what you love to do? Will you release resentment for what you dislike or even hate, to follow what you love to do? Remind yourself: Love seeks its own completion. Then ask: What imperative lives within calling me to trust that love knows the way? Remind yourself: For the Universe is love. The Universe knows the way.
Today, join me and be willing to live this imperative: to live as though you love. The health and peace of our souls and the planet depends upon it!
Shirley Lynn Martin and Marzie (the one who has taught me to trust in love); Pepper (my cat who has taught me to be patient for love) and Cailie (my cat who has taught me to be honest in love)