Love is our Natural State

We all have moments when everything we do seems to work. It is during these times that great insights occur. We feel abundant, happy and trusting of life. We are refreshingly stilled inside, our usual nagging “chatter” is quiet, and our energy flow is profoundly open. In this state we are able to experience our own true nature, love, and the full beauty of our surroundings. We feel alive, balanced and purposeful. Then suddenly, without any notice at all, this vibrant, loving state disappears as mysteriously as it came. Our soaring spirits and creative abilities seem to fall back to sleep, as we drift back into our old identity. We begin to once again “buy into” the illusionary, self-created tensions of worry, fear, and scarcity, which restrict us from being in the moment and living our full potential.

Darkness is the absence of light, just like fear is the “feeling” of the absence of love. When we let go of non-love feelings, all we have left is love. Love truly has no opposite. It is an energy that travels so fast that it’s everywhere at once. Even in our most darkest moments love is always present.We have some misconceptions about love however. The first is that it comes from outside us, and the second, is that it is secured through relationships. If we narrow love down to these two things, we are cheating ourselves out of the endless possibilities that exist within the power of love. Love is always present. Love is in everything. In fact love is everything! If love is everything, then our true essence must be love. So, if love is everything, and our true essence is love, then we must all be in love together.

Love is a word that many of us find difficult to comprehend. It is sometimes used to explain pleasure: “I love chocolate chip cookies.” Or to express an intention, I’d love to have that new car.” To measure how much we care for someone: “If you really loved me, you wouldn’t treat me this way.” Or in some of the songs we hear, to express an addiction: “I’m hooked on your love.” Or to express pain: “love hurts.”

Being “in” love doesn’t hurt us; being “in” fear hurts us. Fear is where the past and the future meet with the here and now. Fear is taking a past painful experience, projecting it into the future, with the anticipation of it happening again, and then living it in the present. Love only operates in the present. When we are reliving our fears in the present moment, we are pushing out love.

What we really get from being “in” love is joy. To be “in” love means to be deeply connected to source. The depth of that connection becomes stronger as we let go of the fear, doubt, anger, blame, etc., that we allow to influence our lives. Whether we’re talking about a relationship with another person, with God, or with ourselves, it’s all the same. The love that we are searching for in that relationship is always present; it’s only been covered up by our fears.

Many traditions and religious disciplines teach that getting in touch with the spirit/love aspect or our true nature is a long, drawn-out process, that requires a great deal of discipline and “special” techniques. The fact is that it is simple and easy. The thing we should realize is that nothing is so intimately a part of us as our own spirit, or own true nature. It can’t be lost. It can’t be separated from us. It is us!Love and happiness are our natural state, and for that reason we continually search for them. They are one in the same. We intuitively feel the pull toward our true nature of happiness. We recognize love and happiness because they vibrate within us. We are simply “homesick.”

When we resist the natural flow, by giving our attention to our fears, what we are really resisting is our own self-love, our own true nature. We are resisting the love that is always with us.

Trying to “earn” love by “acting” or “being” a certain way will always end in disappointment, because once we stop behaving in these “conditioned” ways, we are still left with self-doubt, which is exactly where we started in the first place. In order to end the search for real love, we have to go beyond behavior and start looking inside. When we do, we’ll discover our real self, the self who knows on a soul level that “I am love.”Before we can fully realize this fact, before we can be filled with love, we must first be emptied of our fears. In order to be reborn into a new way--in any area of our lives, we must first die to the old ways. We must let go of our fears.

One of the most basic fears we have about letting go, is the fear of the emptiness we believe will be there when we do. But in reality, when we die to the old, a vacuum is created for the new. That empty space is instantly filled with love. Trying to chase love is like trying to vacuum the carpet with a bag full. When we simply surrender a false belief, the vacuum is then filled with love, and it happens without any effort whatsoever.Our fears exist within love. Look at it this way. Our fears are simply a gift from love saying, “If you can let go of this (fear), you can have more of me (love).

We seem to be constantly looking back into our past, hoping to find some kind of guidance that will provide us with more love in our future. When we begin to stop viewing the future through the filters of the past, only then, do we have freedom from our past, and no anxiety for the future, because only then, do we truly exist where everything happens--including love--and that’s in the present moment.

When we begin to see that every seemingly painful event is truly a gift designed to show us the power of love, our true nature will then unfold. Remember: What we pursue will always elude us. What we become is what we’ll attract. If we pursue love, it will always be “out there” somewhere, in the next relationship, job, or outside event. When we become love through the process of letting go of non-love emotions, we then step into the universal broadcast of love. When we exist “in” love, we begin to discover it in everything we do, and in everyone we meet. We begin to transmit it in all we do---through our touch, our thoughts, our words, our eyes, our feelings, our handshake, our smile and our very presence.

In order to truly give love to another, we must first be open to receive it, because how can we give something we have not yet received? Receiving comes first, then giving. What we give to others, we also give to ourselves. Isn’t that wonderful?
And of course the reverse is also true: What we withhold from ourselves, we withhold from others, and again from ourselves.
Think of someone you could give love to today. By simply considering giving love to someone, you will automatically open yourself up to receiving love so that you can then give it. And when you give it, you receive it back again. Isn’t that great? And with no effort at all!

Here’s the most important point. Love only operates in the present. And by living in the present, we send love into our future, and at the same time we heal our past.

When we exist “in” love, our whole life becomes an endless stream of miracles.

If you do what you do with love, you’ll eventually have only what you love in your life.