Make Love Your Goal

Well friends.....
Here’s to closing the door on 2012 and opening the floodgates of life on 2013. 

In my house, the 31st of December is not just New Year’s Eve. It is also my birthday. Auspiciously, it is also the day, 51 years ago that my parents met car-hopping in Arizona, and fell in love--years before I would come into the world. They are still life-partners, best friends and lovers—a rare inspiration these days. 

My birthday and the birth of a new year has found me contemplating on what is most important. I’m poignantly aware of the ways we human beings engage with life and the present shifts that seem to be emerging within so many people…..is it all a part of this twenty-twelve thing? Maybe. I don’t know. I only know that I’m feeling it……

I’m discovering first-hand that there’s nothing “out there” but what I live out and project within my own mind. There is a “living” sense within me that if I can pause long enough, in the face of apparent difficulty, to pull my own pain back into "me" where it can be healed, then the “You’s” of my life have a very real chance to know love with me. We’d have a chance to share something genuine and worthwhile.....Reality, peace, understanding. That is worth the giving up of an entire world—my world—the one that I’ve created—just to have a genuine, heart-filled moment with you.

So few people arrive at this one goal in a very big way—living all their moments for something truly real and lasting—Love. To reach this one goal, this life called mine will have been worth something. I’ve never been into New Year’s resolutions, but this year I feel different. This year I resolve to make love my goal.

So now, to you I bring this question:
Who or what is it that you’re yearning to love in a bigger way? who is waiting for your fore-giveness? Is there someone? Something unresolved? This year, we have a beautiful chance to be the “fore-most” one to give first in our relationships. we can make a choice to be a power of resolve for each situation “out there” and inside ourselves. I've come to find that everything is worth my full attention and understanding. The life in each one of us is truly that precious.

This year, above and beyond all other motives, make love your goal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNpeK7sDLzE  (click on link for music video)

A music youtube clip by an unsigned young budding youtube artist. She so beautifully sings the power of love.

With love & grace for the new year,
Nicole

Rise Above the Battleground

When great teachers speak of awakening to the light of Heaven within, they are pointing to a conscious emergence from the dark, binding nature of a fixated mind. When Jesus said, “Ye are the light,” he wasn’t speaking metaphorically. He was describing the literal truth—that each of us exists as the luminous omniscient presence of God itself. He was expressing that quite literally, all there is is light—an infinitely intelligent light appearing as various forms—and all else is a lie, a made up story, like a dream that ends the moment we wake up.

To recognize this is to free oneself from the mind-field of the race, to “rise above the battleground,” as A Course in Miracles calls it. Self-realization is not something that can be figured out. It is only something that can be experienced. The way to recognizing omniscient love is not one of understanding spiritual concepts, but is rather an active moment-to-moment disentanglement from what love is not.  It is only when we disengage from our ideas about what love is, that we finally meet love face-to-face. In other words, when the mind is quiet, we can see clearly.

It is actually very, very simple—perhaps too simple for most minds—when illusions dis-appear, what is real remains.

Realizing love is about learning to see, to live life with all of your eyes wide open. Perception happens through far more than the eyes of the body and our sight is greatly affected by our degree of openness. The heart does not see clearly if it is closed. Neither does the mind. Most of us think that we’re seeing life the way it really is, but unless the heart remains open and the third eye activated and awake, our perception of reality is crippled and limited at best.

This is why a process of healing is so very important for human happiness. Without love there is no happiness. Yet paradoxically, love is the power that heals. Strangely it is love itself, that nudges us towards the right book, the right film, the right teacher, the right therapist, the right relationship that will help our hearts to open up so that more of the same love can enter in and heal the illusory woes of our imagined past.

Through healing the heart, the mind naturally follows, seeing everything anew and an authentic inner-shift takes place. It is through an open heart and mind that the soul emerges and begins to live through your personality and life. From this moment on, a much higher faculty of mind takes over, the faculty of conscious loving awareness. One is set free of the old paradigm of egoic thinking and perceiving. The ego sees itself in everyone. So it is with love. Love knows only love appearing everywhere in a miraculously intelligent play of self-evolution.

The more we can relax around what we see, especially if we experience pain and constriction over what we see, the more our perceptions have a chance to be replaced by true vision. When we find ourselves relaxing our minds around just one fixated idea—perhaps the way we see our spouse, for instance—and suddenly we’re struck by how sweet or beautiful he is, when only moments before he had appeared to be a harsh and critical person, the spiritual and energetic relief is so tremendously freeing that we are impelled to address every thought that follows in the same way.

“Really?” we might say to ourselves. “Is that really true? Is Ralph really that way? What if I’m not seeing correctly…… perhaps I’d experience greater peace if I inquire rather than assume that I’ve got all the facts strait.” Suddenly through the willingness to inquire and investigate what is appearing in the mind, the mind, heart and body all relax together in a single breath and the possibility for freedom and peace becomes apparent.

The way to a lasting realization of love and the freedom it brings is to love our illusions away, one appearing thought at a time. Eventually a figure/ground shift is experienced and it is as if Love is “thinking us” into being without any effort on our part. When Love is fully realized, the mind has finally healed and returned to sanity.

First to Love

By Nicole Rose

A disgruntled husband complained to his friend about his unhappy, uncompromising wife. The husband, fed up, was considering divorce.  His friend, however, didn’t support his idea of divorce, and instead suggested that the husband “choose” to Love his wife. 

“Love her?” replied the husband. “What on earth do you mean? We hardly speak…..”

“I mean Love Her.” countered his friend. “Really, really love her. Make her needs more important than your own. What’s her favorite movie, favorite flower or favorite food? Put a smile on her face! Try it and see what happens.” 

The husband did as his friend suggested, and to his delight, discovered over time, that he was married to a very beautiful and caring woman.

Now, I realize that not all unhappy relationships are resolved this easily, however, in a society where so many marriages end in divorce and many relationships barely “get past go” before they fall apart, this little fable yields a powerful message regarding the deeper ways of love and relationship.

A Course in Miracles states, “Only what you are not giving can be lacking from any given situation.”  The challenge is to bring to the table of our relationships whatever it is we feel is missing. If we want less conflict, then we must look inside ourselves to see, “Where am I conflicted?” If we want peace, we must be the one who brings it.

All encounters are opportunities to love and be loved—to recognize what is “real” when things feel difficult or painful. Those are “golden” moments—chances to forgive and thus transform and make holy what was once a grievance in the heart. With every resolved grievance, the heart opens further and loves deeper, and love, itself, is increased, amplified and glorified anew. 

Published in Maui Vision Magazine, Feb/March, 2012

Healing the Healer
by Nicole Rose

The Course in Miracles speaks of the “unhealed healer,” one who has not fully undergone the treacherous journey of healing himself, yet seeks to heal others. If we are still struggling to find our own way, how can we know the way for anyone else?  Many of us, as healers, find ourselves facing this question. The Course also explains that we teach what we most need to learn. We teach spiritual, emotional and physical freedom because it’s what we want most for ourselves. We are overshadowed by the feeling of our own desperate need for wholeness. We need healing the way we need air and water. We yearn for self-realization…..the unbroken peace of one resting in Divine Consciousness.

The Course in Miracles is one of many gateways leading to the great transformer within. It remains true and consistent throughout, asking us to walk with unshakable conviction. As a Reiki Master, I find myself being asked to live the same principles, the same radical integrity with life as in ACIM.

What’s so sublime about Reiki energy is that it transforms each healing situation as it sees fit. The healer cannot manipulate its influence. Reiki energy is Divine Love. The most one can hope to do is be an ever deepening state of surrender…….to become so devoted to the Divine Presence from which Reiki springs, that we remove ourselves from the equation entirely.

And so, what if we look at ourselves and still see “unhealed parts?” There is a great chance then to love ourselves anyway, to let go of needing to be anything, and relax our minds around what we see.  In the depths of relaxation we discover the wholeness that we already are.

Published in Maui Vision Magazine, June/July, 2012