Thursday, September 22, 2016

Simple Practice: Bring more Love into your Life Babies radiate love. People are draw to these beautiful, little packages that know only love. We connect with them and want to experience the simple joy of a baby. Puppies have the same effect. They automatically love you. You don’t have to do anything to earn their love. It is unconditional and holds no bounds. This is our true state – radiant love without bounds. But what happens to reduce and diminish us to a consciousness of fear and restriction, of distrust and anger. Somehow we forget who we are. Instead of expanding our love to include everything and everyone, we start to retract and become selective. You love your ethnic group, family, tribe, your religious sect and close out those who seem different. We are afraid of those we look, dress, or speak in dissimilar dialects. Soon we are retracted into balls of opinions, delusions, judgments, and preferences where before there was radiance. As thinking, rational beings we have the ability to make choices. We can look at the outer shell and project our own insecurities, fear, and unknowing or we can see the light in each person and recognize that the outer form is just a defense or definition. Inside there is light (love) beaning its boundlessness and desire to share. Holding in love when it needs expression is painful. Why? Because we are going against who we are – our natural state. We are still babies ready to grin, giggle, and share our inner essence. Let’s return to that state of innocence and purity by making it a practice to smile at people. That is what babies do. Tell them (mentally, if you wish) how much you love them. You love their light. You love the purity of their essence, even if they have lost sight of it themselves. See it for them. This can be your practice with each person you encounter. See their inner essence of radiant light and love. Bless them with a smile. And, guess what, through the law of cause and effect, what cycles back to you will be love! Take the restraints off your life and guess what – fear and restriction disappear. It is a choice. Order Set Yourself Free: Live the Life YOU were meant to Live! http://rdrpublishers.com/products/set-yourself-free-life-the-life-you-were-meant-to-live

Monday, September 19, 2016

The Supremacy of Love One way we demonstrate love is through friendship. Buddhists have a term, metta, for the quality of boundless friendship toward oneself or others. Metta refers to being loving and kind. Practicing this principle, particularly toward people you don’t know, expands your innate capacity for connecting. Through the quality of loving-kindness, you are able to break the habits of apathy and judgment that generate a feeling of separation from others. Separation fosters fear and prejudice. Every person has the potential for friendship and kindness. It exists within everyone, no matter what dire experiences each have endured. This capacity cannot be destroyed, although it can be ignored or neglected. The way you can rediscover your metta capability is to take a positive interest in people. We’re often running through life so fast that we overlook or discount people. They don’t even register. Yet relationships make up the fiber of our lives and constitute our greatest challenge and opportunity. Practice being attentive. Start with someone you don’t really know. As you pay attention, you will learn things about the person and yourself. Next, hold that person in your heart with a feeling of genuine warmth. At the same time, mentally wish that person well. In short order, you will no longer feel like a stranger. Your world will begin to change. Your life will suddenly feel freer. The next step is to practice with someone you feel ambivalent toward. Aha! It gets easier. With success, you get bolder, which ultimately leads you to people with whom you’re in conflict. Choose someone you have injured or who has harmed you. With tenacity, you will get past the lightning bolts of anger. Your rage will dissipate over time and you will discover increased energy and deeper love, deeper than you had ever imagined. As your attention opens to the people you formerly dismissed, your world expands, along with your connection to yourself. Work on your ability to be kind and loving, and you will discover how truly unlimited and safe you are. Why does this work? Because God is Love and we are individual sparks of God. Love is our inner essence, our core. When you remove the blocks of fear, shame, guilt, anger, and unforgiveness, which obstruct your true nature, love radiates from your center, illuminating the mind, body, and situations. At that point, practicing metta becomes a way of life. All things appear new in the light of love. Jesus, our prototype, not only centered his teaching on love, he emanated it. His teaching demonstrates love’s supremacy and overriding power. This blog is excerpted from Set Yourself Free: Live the Life YOU were Meant to Live. To order Set Yourself Free go to: http://rdrpublishers.com/products/set-yourself-free-life-the-life-you-were-meant-to-live