Love vs. Power: Earthly vs. Spiritual

Love vs. Power: Earthly vs. Spiritual
~Unknown


What we call “love” on the earthly level is not love at all. “Love” on the earthly level is about getting something for ourselves - approval, security, attention, understanding, sex, affection. Love on the spiritual level is about giving something to ourselves and others - caring, compassion, understanding, attention, affection. Love on the earthly level is about getting our emptiness filled by things, activities, substances and people. Love on the spiritual level is about learning to fill ourselves internally through connecting with our own essence and with God, receiving the energy of love and compassion from God and sharing it others.

Power on the earthly level is about controlling events and people; power on the spiritual level is about personal empowerment - power within. It includes the power to receive love and wisdom from Spirit, realize our creative potential and manifest our dreams. Spiritual power is the power to remain loving and compassionate in the face of fear.

Our beliefs about God are often at the root of our choice to operate primarily from an earthly perspective or a spiritual perspective.

It is essential to understand that the Creator gave all souls free will. This means that you get to decide your own purpose in life, your deepest desires, your way of being. You decide whether you are going to be loving or unloving, responsible for your own feelings and behavior or put the blame on others. You decide if you are going to be open to learning about your pain or avoid it with your various anesthetics - your addictions. You decide if your deepest motivation is to love yourself and others or to maintain “safety” by protecting yourself against loneliness, rejection and failure.

When your deepest desire is to be safe rather than loving, you close your heart to avoid feeling your pain. When you close your heart, you cannot feel God - God can only enter through an open heart. Free will means that God has chosen to relinquish power over your will. Even God cannot control your intent - that is, your deepest desire in any given moment.

God is an omnipotent energy that you can open to and invite into your heart, but God cannot enter your heart unbidden. Once you shift your intent and ask God to help heal your wounds and teach you to be loving to yourself and others, then the Spirit of love, compassion and wisdom that is God will always be there for you. But it is you who must decide to open or close your heart. No force outside of yourself can open your heart to God. When our hearts are closed to ourselves, we are also closed to the suffering of others.

You may believe there is nothing you can ever do that will please God. You may believe that God sees you as inherently flawed, “born into sin,” and there is nothing you can do to change this. You might believe that no matter how hard you try, in the end you will be punished for sin: God will never forgive you for being human. But if you are “created in the image of God,” meaning that you have the same love within you that is God, then it is not possible for you to be inherently flawed. That would mean you were created imperfect; God doesn’t do substandard work. Nor is God unforgiving. Unconditional love is, by definition, forgiving.

When we do believe in God but feel ourselves unlovable and unworthy, we may believe that we can be instruments of God’s love for others but not for ourselves. You may conclude that God has chosen certain people who deserve to be blessed, while ignoring others, who do not deserve it. This conclusion, as with many of the other false beliefs about God, comes from seeing God as an unloving, judgmental, vengeful person rather than as an unconditionally loving Spirit or Supreme Being. People have favorite people. God doesn’t. People think some people are more deserving than others. God doesn’t.

When you believe that God is a person or that God is demanding, controlling and judgmental, then you may believe that God put you here as a punishment (because you are inherently bad) or because God doesn’t love you. This false belief relieves you of the responsibility of choosing to heal, of evolving your soul. When you remember that you came here to evolve in lovingness, then you will understand that being alive is truly a sacred opportunity, a sacred privilege.

Living Life with The Attitude of Gratitude

Living Life with The Attitude of Gratitude
~Joseph Rettig

Having an Attitude of Gratitude comes from being truly grateful for what is in your life. This is a conscious decision intended to realize the blessings in your life with the emotion that is coupled with it. This is real gratitude, a thankfulness that is true, coming from the heart and soul of your very being.

A person who is not grateful may find themselves uttering "Thank you" a few times a day, but never mean it because this is as empty as the heart from which it came. The words "Thank you" hold little power to engage the Law of Gratitude if there is no real gratefulness behind the words. It is as if some people forgot what being thankful really feels like.

Grateful individuals take great joy in their blessings, realizing the source from where their happiness dwells. They influence others with their words because of the light that shines from them. They realize that giving and receiving are the same and gladly give their pleasure to those who should receive it.

The Law of Gratitude is available for everyone. There are ways to cultivate this grateful attitude. All that is required of you is a willingness to change your perception and begin seeing more light from the end of the tunnel. Soon, there will be no tunnel of darkness left for you dwell in.

When you seek to become more spiritually aware, empowering, supportive, energetic and positive, seek out those traits in others to be with. Finding like-minded people that live positive lives will lift you up higher. In turn, you will lift these people and others around you higher. This is a part of the Law of Attraction at work.

Helping those around you become grateful is not to find fault and criticize them for their shortcomings. This is to judge something you do not fully understand. You cannot walk in anyone's shoes any more than someone can walk in yours. Instead, live by example without placing fault on others.

Make a conscious effort to stop complaining about your life, it goes nowhere and is wasted energy spent. The more you complain, the more you will feel your life is something that should be complained about. Like attracts like.

If it appears, at times, that life handed you a bowl full of rotten cherries, then throw away the cherries and be grateful for the nice bowl life handed you. Now you can fill up the bowl with something better.

Whenever you say "Thank you", pay attention to what it is you are being thankful for. Most of the time, it's the small things that matter to be appreciative of. Take the time to let others you love know how much you are grateful for having them in your life. It matters to them and will help them remember just how much you mean to them also.

Thankfulness and the Law of Gratitude are one and the same. When you are thankful and grateful from your soul, this goes out and brings to you more of the same. It can make your life a true heaven on earth. Taking the time to focus on what you have instead of what you don't have will eventually bring to you a sense of peace and understanding that becomes you. In this way, you will teach others what the Attitude of Gratitude is truly about.