As I drove home after picking up a few things for the grandchildren to celebrate Valentine’s Day, I started to think about writing this newsletter and wondered why a clear topic had not yet come to me from Spirit. A few minutes later as I entered the house, a song started playing in my head and I wondered if it had something to do with my earlier question. Well, Spirit persisted with the answer to that question. As I put things away from my shopping trip, Tina Turner kept singing a single line from the song over and over and louder and louder in my head – “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” Giving in, I smiled and sat down at my laptop. Here are the messages that came through...
First, let’s take a step back and look at what many are focused on this coming week, if not for the entire month – Valentine’s Day (also known as Saint Valentine’s Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine) celebrated on February 14. As far back as the eighth century, Christian liturgy has celebrated February 14 as the Feast of Saint Valentine which is said to have originally honoured two or three Christian martyrs. So, what’s love got to do with it? In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the day became associated with courting and romantic love possibly based on the tale of one of the imprisoned soon to be martyrs signing a letter to the daughter of one of his jailers with “your Valentine” or perhaps the sentiment is based on his practice of performing weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry. Whatever the inspiration, personal letters expressing love turned into commercially produced Valentine’s cards in the nineteenth century. Valentine’s Day has been a long time significant celebration of romance and love in many parts of the world. (Source: Wikipedia – Valentine’s Day)
So, as we near this day that celebrates love, what are your thoughts on love? Where is the love in your life? Our world seems to have made love so complicated dividing the emotion into many different types. Various scholars, including the Greeks, have attempted to categorize love all of which could be argued as straying from the true meaning of love. So, let’s keep it simple. Love is a universal emotion. It is part of our core being. It may have as many different descriptions as there are people, but generally, we experience love as a deep caring, compassionate, emotional attachment for another being. It brings us joy and happiness.
Can you recall your latest experience of feeling love for another or of being loved? Can you sit
in its calm warmth and beauty? So many are blessed to have beautiful loving experiences every day from a loving partner, children, friends, even strangers, animals/pets, and of course Spirit. At a foundational human level, that is what we all want and need more of in our lives. Unfortunately, some people have had very little love in their lives perhaps suffering from an abusive childhood, or living in isolation, or having the negative experiences of our world dominate their existence. These individuals need the love and assistance from those more fortunate so that they too can fill their lives with the joy of being loved.
In our world today, we seem to easily forget about the love in our lives. Instead, there seems to be a preoccupation with death and dark places almost everywhere we turn – the news’ repeated reporting of natural disasters, wars, or bizarre accidents taking innocent lives, then, giving us only five minutes of “good news”, pictures of puppies or smiling children at the end of the broadcast, that are supposed to lighten the burden that the previous two to three hours have assaulted us with; social media posts of those feeling lost and alone; water cooler conversations about pandemic death statistics with fearful blaming of others; topics for school assignments focused on fears of climate change and fingers pointed in various directions assigning responsibility for it; frazzled relationships within families stressed by changing economics, food or fuel shortages, or anniversaries of losing a loved one.
No one needs to or deserves to live in those dark places. So, let’s help each other, help the world move away from those dark places! How? By shining your light and helping love grow. First, see the love that is already in your life. Do you recognize it? Can you feel it in your relationships ? Are you open to receiving love and do you give it away freely? Can you reach out to others who need more love in their lives or can you reach up for someone to lovingly pull you from darkness?
When you look at your relationships are you wondering like Tina Turner “What’s love got to do with it?” For her, when she starts to feel something new in a relationship – love – she starts “thinkin' about my own protection” and talks about “who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?” Are you afraid of love like Tina in the song? Have you been hurt, disappointed, scared so many times that you have walled off your emotions so you can’t feel love any more?
Can you release those emotions from the past and open up to what someone new is offering you? Granted, it can be scary but if you do, you will become unstuck and can move forward in your life. Another song came to me as I was writing this –“Broken Glass” by Annie Lennox. Like in the song, for some, they have been abandoned by a love and their lives have crashed down around them. They have been hurt and cut deep and as Annie sings, “I'm living in an empty room with all the windows smashed and I've got so little left to lose that it feels just like I'm walking on broken glass.”
The hurt and fear from a traumatic past can be difficult to work through. It involves knowing you are not to blame, practicing forgiveness, and learning the life lessons we chose to have taught to us through that experience. I know that is so difficult to even start to comprehend when one has had a traumatic childhood, as it seems unforgiveable for anyone to harm a child. It is difficult to understand the meaning behind the broken trust of what was thought to be true love in any relationship. When we are able to step back and take a different viewpoint, remembering that we are Spirit having a human experience and that we are here to learn and grow as a soul, then it is easier to understand. Sometimes that understanding and forgiveness comes quickly, and sometimes it takes a lifetime or several lifetimes. Engaging the help of others and the love and support of Spirit helps a person to move through the process.
One story that I am repeatedly reminded of is one I heard a couple of years ago. She told the story of her childhood, growing up in a home where her father was an alcoholic and abusive
to her mother. She hated him and was glad when her mother finally left him and he was out of their lives. After her parents passed, this person connected with her father through a psychic medium. He explained that he and her mother had a soul contract where she asked him to present as he did in their life together so that she could learn the lesson of standing up for herself. Her father actually loved her mother so much, that he agreed to live a life where he was hated and despised by his family, so that she could grow as a soul. This explanation about her parents’ relationship, helped the person move forward in her life and release the trauma she had experienced by observing her parent’s interactions. Can you find a way to release any past traumas you might be holding that might be stopping you from finding and experiencing love? You may need to go back to your childhood or perhaps to previous lives to find the root of the trauma. You do not need to do this tough work alone. Reach out to people you are comfortable with and who have the skills needed to assist you. Know too, that Spirit will be there, lovingly guiding and supporting you. All you need to do is ask.
Receiving and giving love is also tied up in our self worth. In her song, Tina calls love a “second hand emotion” and nothing but a “sweet old fashioned notion.” Is love a second hand emotion for you? What does that even mean? Do you feel the love offered to you is only there because it was rejected by someone else? Understand that love is as unique as the two beings involved. If someone is offering you a relationship as their “second choice” then it is not love. They are catering to their ego. You are amazing and you deserve and will have better! You deserve a love that is purely for you.
Or does “second hand” have a more general meaning where we have replaced it with other emotions to take top priority in our lives? What would those emotions be? If we look around, what is the predominate emotion in our environment? Is it love? Why not? Can we replace negative emotions around us with love? Yes, we can! When we have the will, there will be a way to see and present to others a different perspective on the stress, fear, anger, hate that confronts us. We have freedom of choice. We can choose how we feel. The more of us that choose love, the more of it we will feel around us. Its high vibration is contagious because it makes us feel good!
When love presents in your life do you recognize it or are you confused by love? Is love an “old fashioned notion” to you? Does that mean loving relationships are not applicable in our human world right now or that we have just forgotten how to recognize them? For example, the appearance of loving relationships may be different to some in the rapidly changing world of gender fluidity/identity. Or, if we have only seen fearful or hurtful relationships, do we miss recognizing loving ones? We need to see past fear, lack of understanding, defiance, self righteousness to recognize love. No matter who is experiencing it, love is a pure, shared, beautiful emotion that lifts up all parties involved in the relationship.
In order to make love grow for ourselves and the world, we all need to focus on and be grateful for the love we DO have in our lives. We need to open our hearts and really feel it. Love feels good. It makes us happy. We feel cherished and accepted. And we want to return that love. The more we get, the more we want to give and vice versa.
So, look around your life again and FEEL the love that is already there. Really feel it and cherish it. In all loving relationships you are accepted and loved for who you are. At times, our behaviours may not reflect that, but as long as the love is there, so is the acceptance. Love feels good. It brings in the joy we are meant to have in this life.
Start with yourself. Look in the mirror. Can you feel the self love? If we don’t love ourselves, it is difficult to love another. For more discussion about self love see The Ripple Effect Newsletter – Self Love.
Feel the love in your relationship with your partner, be it a new passionate and exciting love or the warm comfortable glow of the enduring love of a long relationship. See it in your partner’s eyes, feel it in their touch and in your heart. Feel its strong bond supporting you through rough patches and feel the shared joy of the good times.
Feel the love in the children in your life – be they family or a child you pass in the grocery
store. You may have experienced the gift of the unconditional love of a newborn or a smile or warm hugs from a child. Nothing melts a heart more and has a person feel a deep rush of love, than the unsolicited, impromptu “Mommy/Daddy/Grandma/ Grandpa/Auntie/Uncle, I love you” from a child. When adult children tell a parent regularly “Love you” or “Love you more”, their love wraps around the person like a warm blanket.
Feel the love in the relationships you have with your siblings, parents and friends. Feel the affection you have for one another and the familiarity of shared experiences. As we grow older and build our separate lives, we may become separated by physical distance (some cultures more than others) but we can still feel the bond. When life presents challenges to us, it is our love for one another that keeps us together, keeps us supporting each other. If you have become estranged from family or friends because of hurtful behavior, abuse, or simply proceeding down different paths, you can find the love again. At everyone’s core we are loving beings. It just takes one person to behave lovingly to bring out the love in others.
Feel the love you share with your pets based on the unconditional acceptance and trust in who you each are. You each are accepted for your own uniqueness. There is no judgement. Feel the love from Mother Earth. Walk in nature and take in its beauty and ability to simply be. Feel nature’s unconditional acceptance of who you are as you stand in it.
Feel the love you have for God/the Creator/Source/the Universe and your entire spiritual team and the love they have for you. When I pause to really feel that love I, without fail every time, am brought to tears - the unconditional love is overwhelming. The more I am open to that love, the more I feel I can give back to everyone and everything in my life. When our cup is full, we can share.
If your partner, child, family member, friend, pet, or other love in your life, has passed, the love is still there. They are loving you from the other side. Your souls are still connected. If your partner, child, friend, pet, or another love is still to come into your life send your love out for them to find. Feel the love in your heart for the kind of love you know you will find.
So, in this month of love, or at least on February 14th, I hope you receive more love for yourself – you deserve it! I hope you can also spread love far and wide in your contribution to making the world a better, happier, more joyful place. As another popular song from the 1960’s, most memorably sung by Dionne Warwick, says:
No not just for some but for everyone…”
Isn’t it interesting that the same words from the 60’s unfortunately still ring true today, if not more so?
As my valentine to you, I leave you to listen to “What the World Needs Now”. Even though
the song was written as a letter to God, I think we can all take heed and spread our love far and wide starting this month. Even if you feel you are wanting a love you are missing, still send love out. Like attracts like. Your love will bring more to you. Remember, you are a being of love and light so shine that light on the world to bring others out of the darkness. Love is the answer and we are all part of it.
Lots of love and hugs,
Marilyn
Resources
If you would like to learn more about how to bring love into your life here are a few resources I have found helpful:
Websites
Dr Wayne Dyer: How To Forgive Someone Who Has Hurt You: In 15 Steps
Dr Wayne Dyer: The Love Equation
Dr Wayne Dyer: Move Back to Love
Intuitive Counselling and Angel Card Readings
If you have the need a helping hand to bring love into your life, I am offering intuitive counselling and angel card readings online or in person (in Calgary).
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