Category: love

Thoughts on Divine Love and Grace

From my book: Just Be Love: Messages on the Spiritual and Human Journey. Allow me to offer you a spiritual perspective on Divine Love and Grace.Sunset

Like love, I believe grace is hard to define, because it’s a spiritual and mystical experience. Grace is a quality we feel and experience within our hearts and souls, like we feel the expression of love, acceptance, compassion and forgiveness. We feel grace in the depths of us, much more than we see and hear it.. We don’t just see elegance or beauty in form; we feel it within the core of our being. Grace is experienced in movement of a loving expression or gesture. It is felt in the accepting presence of stillness. Grace, like love, is always present and holds a steady and continuous vibration that is part of the universal hum.

Many of us have been taught through religious dogma, that promoted guilt and shame. That grace is the manifestation of favor and God’s mercy on us. There is a commonly held belief that God doses out grace—the more we get, the greater the likelihood we’ll be “saved.”

I’ve come to understand Divine grace is not something we earn. Grace is the experience of God’s love, which is unconditional. Since we are love, we don’t need to “earn” that which we already are. Divine grace is already given, we only need to open to it and embrace the opportunity it provides to remember our worthiness of inclusion and wholeness. I believe, salvation means: Relinquishing our belief in separation from the Creator, and returning to oneness with our Source.

Grace is the unconditional gift and love from the Divine and is connected to the mystery of life. Grace makes our surrender to the flow of life possible. Grace happens in the unplanned and unexpected. When we are struggling with money or other needs, than unexpectedly we get a check in the mail or a friend offers us a helping hand. Grace is the expression of God through our higher and loving self. It’s the pathway to love and return to innocence; it’s a form of love in action. The pathway is created through acceptance and non-judgment of others and oneself.

A Course in Miracles states: “Spirit is a state of grace forever. Your reality is only spirit. Therefore you are in a state of grace forever.” To know ourselves as love and worthy is the beginning of our return to grace. To open to grace, is to accept our reality as spirit; in this we naturally experience grace for eternity.

Thoughts on Acceptance and Moving with the Wave of Change

Are you experiencing any change in your life?    As humans we seem to struggle with change.  Its been said, that resistance to change is the main barrier to both our spiritual and human potential and growth.

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but building the new.” Socrates

Change is a part of life. Life and all of us in it ‒ are always changing.

The universe is always creating, expanding and renewing. Since we are a part of the universe, we are always creating, expanding and renewing. To resist this natural process, is to resist the natural flow of the universe and our essence.

We are not like we were 10 years ago, 2 years ago or like we were yesterday. Whether we recognize it or not, something within us and around us has changed. True?

Today’s Reality: for numerous reasons, change appears more accelerated and intense now.

There are 4 main barriers to change: Non-Acceptance, Resistance, Avoidance, these are driven by the biggest barrier ‒ Fear.  Fear of the unknown. These barriers come about from our misperceptions and limiting beliefs.

On a scale of 1 -5, 5 being most important. How important is certainty/control in your life?

I’ve come to realize, the degree of uncertainty we can tolerate is directly related to the quality of our life.

If we need certainty i.e. control, and the need to stay in our comfort zone. Our fear and resistance will override the acceptance of change.

Acceptance is a moving forward energy and act of Love to self, others, and our life experiences.  CatAndLion

The following are 6 steps to accepting and moving through change:

1. Cultvate an awareness that life is impermanent – things change.
2. Accept and Embrace the “new normal i.e. Life/things will never be the same
3. Be open and willing to acknowledge and unlearn your misperceptions, limiting beliefs and created habits. Realize you are greater and wiser than you appear to be.
4. Notice your fear and resistance to change, and who you become because of this. Ask yourself: Is this change causing me to think and act from fear or love? How does fear, non-acceptance and resistance assist and empower me in creating opportunities?
5. Feel and admit the fear and say “Yes” to the change anyway. Accessing your “will and courage to change” helps you say “YES” when feeling the fear.
6. Focus on the benefits of the change, not what you believe you will lose or need to give up. Look for the possibilities and opportunities within the uncertainty. Trust your higher self and the universe; otherwise you will be consumed by the wave of change.

Put change to work for you. Transform fear “I CAN”T into fuel to change and grow. Turn uncertainty/doubt into Will, Courage and Determination. “I CAN.”

Just Be Love as you move through the winds of change my friends. Namaste, David

Loving with Freedom or with Possessiveness

Love thought of the day: From my book Just Be Love: Messages on the Spiritual and Human Journey. Chapter 11: Loving with Freedom or with Possessiveness.
“The measure of love is love without measure.” St. Francis de Sales
Love is much more than a word or emotion, its our essence. The search for love ends, when I have the awareness “I AM Love” – “I AM now Free.” Living in the alignment of the Divine is to live in love and serenity; this is our greatest freedom and our soul’s birthright. Out of Divine Love we have the gift of free will. The Divine loves us so much, we are allowed to live our life as we choose; while the Divine is still loving us in all ways and always. Wow, that’s love without measure! Ascended Master St. Germain said: “In order to love as God loves, we must give freedom to all parts of life, including yourself; and then we must trust as does a nesting bird in the heart of God, in the heart of goodness and mercy.” Loving with freedom requires trust of self, and most importantly, to trust and unite our will with the will of God. Just Be Love this day my friends. Have a blessed day, David

Just Be Love

In my book: Just be Love, I mention Lise Bourbeau, an expert in human development and decoding illness on the metaphysical level. She says there are five core wounds of the human personality: Rejection, Abandonment, Betrayal, Humiliation or Injustice. Through our human experiences most of us are subject to two of these wounds. One is a dominate wound from the first three listed and the second wound comes from one of the last two listed. These core wounds, shape our beliefs and cause energy blocks, which limits our potential and growth. When we do our inner work, reconcile these wounds, i.e. remove the inner blocks, we discover our perfection, within what our ego self defines as imperfect.In my own journey, and working with others, I’ve realized that: Self-Understanding, Acceptance, Compassion and Forgiveness are also keys to remembering our perfection and the love that we are. I found in my own inner work and working with others. We usually struggle more, with one of the four keys to self love: Understanding, Acceptance, Compassion, or Forgiveness. Whichever is the hardest one for us to embrace is the one that’s most important in our healing journey and we will reap the most benefit from, if we embrace it and live it.

Life isn’t meant to be easy, its meant to be meaningful. Our ego wants us to take the quick and easy way out. No learning and growth happens through quick and easy, this is just spiritual bypass. Our judgement of ourselves is also a block to our growth and potential. I view judgement as simply: the withholding of love; as fear is the absence of love. Our journey is to remember: Love is who we are!! So let’s, Just Be Love.  

Just Be Love is available for purchase through the publisher: Global Summit House email: infoglobalsummithouse.com and Amazon.com. If you would like an autograph copy of his book, contact David by email: [email protected]

Unconditional Love: To Rise as Love

As humans we have a desire to love and be loved. To be accepted and appreciated for who we are. It seems today more than ever, many feel judged and unaccepted for who they are. That people’s version of love and acceptance has many conditions and expectations, perhaps even demands attached to it. Leading those yearning for love, to feel “not being enough” in the presence of these conditions and expectations. One begins to avoid and isolate, fearful of vulnerability and more judgement. As fear is known as the absence of love, judgement can be seen as the withholding of love.

Love is intended to create freedom and offer space to create and grow individually and/or collectively. Thich Nhat Hanh said: “You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.” If love is conditional, it’s not pure authentic love. It’s love by possession and the need to control. Pure love is freedom and freedom is love.

A definition of divine love. I’ve come to appreciate divine love is: the unconditional love and acceptance of the spirit in all that exist. The divine loves and accepts the spirit-the energy of all it creates. This love is free of conditions and dogma, for the divine, only knows us as a vibrational aspect of itself.  IMG_2634

The power of unconditional love, opens the heart and expands the mind. It creates a feeling of worthiness and significance to those who are exposed to this type of love. It offers inclusion and is grounded in the knowing of oneness, i.e. you are me and I am you. It seeks power-with, not power over.

As we attach conditions and expectations to those we say we love. It is important to realize the conditions and expectations we attach to ourselves. Self-love is critical in order to freely love others. What we do or don’t do to ourselves we will consciously or unconsciously do to others. If we struggle offering loving kindness to ourselves we will struggle offering this to others. I’ve come to understand, we hurt others, because we are hurting in the depths of ourselves.

As a soul in human form, we are here to experience the many aspects of life. We are here to remember our divinity and that we are love. We are here to expand our minds by opening our hearts through gratitude and compassion. We are here to create a higher and richer meaning to our lives and our being. We are here to not just fall in love, but more importantly to, rise as love. Because love is who we are. Love is our essence. To rise as love, is to aspire in ascending to a higher, more profound awareness and experience of unconditional love.

Love is the pathway to understanding, acceptance, compassion and forgiveness. Love will push every button, test your values, try every ounce of patience, challenge every strength, and trigger every wound and weakness. Above all this, love is an invitation to freedom and inner peace. Freedom and inner peace come through an open heart and a mind that is quiet; a mind free of unhealthy attachments and misidentifications.

Choosing unconditional love, especially in intimate relationships, offers a pathway to develop a high level of understanding, the willingness to accept each other where you are at, to have compassion towards yourself, and others, and the willingness to forgive or reconcile mistakes and differences.

Honest and open communication, mutual respect and commitment to each other, working toward common goals; and the ability to develop consensus between each other, are also pathways to a loving and fulfilling relationship.

David Schroeder, LMSW, CPC is author of new book, Just Be Love: Messages on the Spiritual and Human Journey, which is available for purchase through the publisher: Global Summit House email: infoglobalsummithouse.com and Amazon.com. If you would like an autograph copy of his book, contact David by email: [email protected]