14. Love Relationships

Whether the marriage was carefully picked by loving family like many arranged marriages, whether some experts on a show used counseling and data to match us up, or if we gave it great effort and landed a great match, relationships are for growth.  Growth comes from trials.  And unconditional love has very little to do with human interaction.  

Love_Relationships_2_Michele_Stowell

Nyasha just pushed through the Netflix series, Married at First Site.  The people literally marry someone at first meeting.  Some ‘experts’ have matched human values and profiles to choose the (questionable) best couplings.

It doesn’t really matter what brings people together in life.  Usually there is a lot of dating and working out communication, life path, and values.  We look to see if there is a chance of growing with this partner.  You will grow!  I promise that there is no relationship that doesn’t push a person to evolve.  But we are normally looking for large glimpses of God’s unconditional love through the eyes of the partner IF we are choosing our own spouse.  And we are usually looking for long term relationships, spouses we will take to the grave.  AND we think or hope that we can maintain that reflection of unconditional love – rare.

Whether the marriage was carefully picked by loving family like many arranged marriages, whether some experts on a show used counseling and data to match us up, or if we gave it great effort and landed a great match, relationships are for growth.  Growth comes from trials.  And unconditional love has very little to do with human interaction.  

While seeing bits and parts of the Married at First Site program, it is easy to watch the humanity in our ordeal.  All eggs in one basket.  The basket drops; the eggs break.  The people in the show are trying to grow into love.  They are confused by the paradigm, because we are not a culture of arranged marriages.  But Nyasha’s roommate from college opted for an Indian arranged marriage because they work.  They have much lower divorce rates and turn out to be happier, in Gurleen’s interpretation anyway.

Love_Relationshipe_Michele_Stowell_indian-tamil-traditional-wedding-cerremony-23538078Marriage is not a guarantee of love.  And the word love can be a self centered, “what can the other do for me” word.  That can’t be further from what love is. But any kind of relationship will have lessons upon lessons, calling us to look to ourselves, within ourselves, so love becomes innate instead of reflected off of another.

The inner world, God, Higher Self, Divine connection… that is unconditional love.  I think everyone can and has seen it, and can even connect to it every day.  It is in the laughter of a child, in the eyes of the grandparent, in the heart shaped rock, or the whisper of a perfect warm breeze at the water’s edge.  When we stop, look, listen, it appears in the words of a stranger, or a quick interaction with a passerby.  We feel it when we give unconditional love outwardly, like an unseen contribution or act of kindness, where there is nothing to gain but the feeling itself.  It rolls over us when we do art work, or express ourselves perfectly at work or in performance or just in being ourselves completely.

It would be a better world if we all realized how love is pouring into us from every opening it can get!  If we reflected.  If we had gratitude.  If we just realized that unconditional love is a given part of our nature.  If we could only see ourselves as a gift to the world.  We are the unconditional love.  It pours out and it floods in, every breath, every heart beat, every action.  Open your eyes to the possibility that everything is perfect, because it is!

12. Unconditional Love

It is part of a large theme this week.  We were all born… and at the point when the soul pops into the tiny, frail, human body, the universal love comes with it.  In Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert outlines a spiritual practice of the people in Bali.  They recognize the baby as God.  The child does not touch the ground until it is six months old, because it is still sacred.  At the half year, the baby has decided to be human, and that is celebrated as a sort of baptism into our world.  And the feet hit the floor, literally and theoretically.

Soul entry is a big religious debate.  Many in the US say it happens at conception.  Religions tout varying beliefs.  In my observations of Nyasha and Shante, Nyasha arrived present and aware.  Shante didn’t exactly arrive at birth.  She popped in and out for a week, and when she landed in her body for good, she was only half there for… about six months.  There was a difference behind her eyes, and in her demeanor.  There was a disconnection from the planet.  

Nyasha was all in at birth, and furious.  Her eyes were bright and focused.  She wanted to be walking and talking and eating and being fully human from day one.  The more skills and capabilities she amassed, the more the fury drained from her demeanor.  She settled in.  Did the peaceful acceptance of her body land at six months?  Perhaps.

The undeniable disconnection from our Source happens.  Children run care free and happy for a time.  They can see things through the eyes of God.  And then the awareness leaves most.  It is a forgetting.  A forgetting of unconditional love.  And so we seek it.

7. Go Deep

Wherever my consciousness may be, it is in the perfection of the Divine plan.

Today, the page of The Medicine Woman Inner Guidebook (Carol Bridges) that opened is called “The Exemplar of Bowls: Ever-Deepening Love”.  It is everything one would dream it might be.  Do I need permission to just do and be what I “feel like” right now?

The book just spews endless wonderful quotes. “I have given to all who were young on their road to understanding.  I have shared all of my knowledge, my poetry, all of my heart’s expression.  I have loved deeply and long… When you are lost, I will point the way and let you know you have the feet to walk the road alone.”  

I hope beyond hope I have been there for you.  If anything has changed on the planet, I hope that you have found some form of support, inspiration, laughter, or drive from my presence.  And if not, the good news is I will be with you until the end of time, backing you up, crying your tears and illuminating the way for your dreams and potential.

The words in the lesson resound as appropriate too:  “It is time for you to settle back and integrate your love experiences. Count your blessings.  Bless others with your presence… Your service to others is as natural as breathing… The full thrust of your life now goes toward your devotion to higher being… For all love given, love returns.”  I feel this completely in every moment.  Wherever my consciousness may be, it is in the perfection of the Divine plan.