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Thoughts on Human Love

It’s been said, Love is just a word until someone gives it meaning. Many of us have different meanings to love, because of our different experiences with love. For some love is to be guarded against, maybe even avoided due to painful experiences around love. Feeling betrayed, rejected or abandoned. Many learn to please others in hopes of love and acceptance, only to deplete themselves by giving so much, yet forgetting themselves. Some people act out a “crime of passion” toward a love gone wrong. Hurting the one they love or themselves, because love was denied. Others have even become ill, even died from a sad/broken heart, due to lost of a loved one. For others love means joy, passion, and sense of connection, so they’re eager to connect not just with people, but to the fullness of life.

Love can build up our sense of self, creating an emotional and physical high on life, or can put us down into a deep dark hole of loneliness and despair. Our brain is wired for love; we yearn for love, acceptance and approval. Human love is a drive and can be seen as a quest. To love someone, for someone to love me, and see me “as enough.”

Love is one of the most powerful emotions. Yet, I believe love is more than an emotion. Its a state of consciousness. The higher our level of consciousness is with love, the greater our willingness and ability to offer love, support, nurturing and forgive an unloving act.

Questions to consider: What does love mean to you? What meanings have you constructed about love? Do you have a belief and meaning about love that is including, accepting, supportive and offers freedom? Or is your belief and meaning about love, excluding, judgmental, and a barrier to love and be loved?

Feel free to leave a comment.

David Schroeder, LMSW, CPC from Grand Rapids, MI., is a licensed social worker, certified life coach, and author of Just Be Love: Messages on the Spiritual and Human Journey. My practice, Transition Pathways helps people find healthy pathways to love, greater awareness and higher potential. My book 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]

Being Love in Everyday Life

Many people ask: How do I Be Love? A part of us makes the concept and practice of love more complicated than it intends and needs to be. Love can be found and can be expressed in simple yet, powerful and meaningful ways. Smiling at a passerby, listening to a friend who’s stressed, offering a hug and saying thank you, petting a cat or dog; these are powerful expressions of love and caring. In my book, Just Be Love I offer several chapters of where love can be found, yet it’s often not recognized or appreciated. Consider how nature and the universe displays infinite love, when we take a walk in the woods, sit by a stream, honor the rising sun, reflect with the setting sun, or stand, looking up at the night sky in awe at the parade of stars, or watch a gentle snow fall or rain. These are simple ways of Being, experiencing and living Love. They are expressions of love through the divine, and these examples are ways that ground us to the present moment. Life and love are found and experienced in the moment.

Love is Unconditional Giving. The act of giving, of our time, our talents, possessions, a listening ear, or a helpful hand; are ways of expressing and being love. To freely give without consideration of a loss is love without measure. St. Francis of Assisi said: “The greatest measure of love is love without measure.” Being in thoughts and expression of appreciation and gratitude is one of the highest forms of love and giving, and is a pathway to our own inner happiness and peace.

Love is Unconditional Receiving. Many of us can give freely, and it’s a way we feel loved, accepted and worthy. However, we might struggle, even avoid, receiving openly and freely; due to our inner wounded belief of feeling undeserving and unworthy. The struggle to freely receive without offering something in return is often the result of being made to feel guilt or shame, from past experiences. To freely and openly Receive, is to Give.

Being Love Calls us to Our Imagination, which is the soul/spirit of us, to dare to dream and live the childlike qualities and wonders within us. We are called to embrace and be love, for love is who we are. Love is the innocence of our being. There is sacred wisdom and strength in just Being.

Love is Being Our True Self. To be our true and authentic self, is to let go of outside opinions and judgment, of whom and how we should be. Judgment is the withholding of love, and the way of the ego, critical self. Love is meant to be including and offer freedom. However, an aspect of love is about setting healthy boundaries with others as a way to prevent being taken advantage of and, is an act of care, concern and value toward the self. It’s healthy to love myself enough to know when a relationship/friendship is hurting me, more than serving me. So out of love it’s important to set myself and the other person free from what’s no longer healthy and constructive. When I do what’s best for me out of love, I do what’s best for others. Accepting the other person, might not understand your decision and actions at the time.

When We Can Be Accepting, offering compassion and forgiveness to others and ourselves, we are being in the thoughts, energy and actions of unconditional love. Love should be one of our highest guiding principles in life. Love is not a condition to be obtained; it’s a certainty to surrender to. Love calls us to let go of our human ego’s will and surrender to the higher and wiser will of the infinite.

Being Love Means, I seek to keep growing and expanding in my openness and willingness to freely love to love. It’s important to keep learning and challenging myself, in order to be the best version of me. Being love invites the self to look for the good in others, the world and myself, and to view my experiences, especially the difficult ones, from the higher perspective.

Can You Just Be Love? After all love is all you really are. Questions to consider: What are some ways you can Just Be Love? What would cause you to be more fearful and resistance of loving and accepting someone for who they are? What could you do for yourself to release this resistance? What would be the benefits of this for you and your relationship with others?

Feel free to leave a comment.

Forgiveness: Moving Beyond the Injustice

Forgiveness is one of the most powerful healing tools we have for reconciling and moving beyond from the hurts and wounds of life. It’s also a profound act of love and acceptance, especially self-love. For when we forgive another person or ourselves for a wrong doing, we set ourselves free and we benefit the most from the forgiveness. Despite the healing and liberating power of forgiveness; for many of us, the act of forgiveness is one of the most resisted and thus difficult acts we can offer to others or ourselves.

I’ve come to appreciate the only reason we have forgiveness, is because we make something matter. When we make something matter, we create an intense emotional charge within us. So an unjust “cause” done to us creates a strong “effect”, often having lasting emotional, physical, social and spiritual “effects” on us. The act of forgiveness helps to lower the emotional charge and intensity within us and helps liberate us from the painful experience.

Forgiveness is not about excusing the offense or saying/believing it didn’t happen. Forgiveness is not really about the offender, it’s about the one who is affected by the cause, the one holding on to the anger, resentment, grief. Being trapped in resentment, anger, depression, grief; waiting for the offender to take responsibility and ownership of the hurt toward us, is giving away our own power, inner peace and freedom. The more we can take charge of our own healing without an expectation that the offender needs to say something to us, or do something for us, the more empowered and liberated we can be. The quote by Lewis Smedes speaks volumes about the importance of forgiveness: “To forgive is to set the prisoner free and to discover that that prisoner was you.”

Forgiveness is an act of love, and love is freedom. To forgive is to be free and a way to love. Forgiveness means to go beyond our wounded ego self, in order to free the self. The willingness to go beyond the wounded self is to rise as love, to let go of what no longer serves us, so in time we can be restored to wholeness.

Perhaps you’re not willing and/or ready to forgive someone. That’s okay and where you are currently at. Forgiveness is not something to be forced upon or to do out of guilt, if you are not ready. One should be open, willing and accepting in order to truly forgive. Human nature is such that, we are all at different stages of willingness and readiness. If this be the case, at least consider the importance of reconciling within yourself how hanging on to negative perceptions, create toxic emotions of anger and resentment leading to paralyzing beliefs and resulting self-defeating behaviors. How all this can affect many areas of your life in ways that are not helpful to you.

I offer you the possibility and opportunity of considering a process I call “inner reconciliation.” Inner reconciliation is a way of reorienting our perceptions and beliefs about the experience and ourselves within the fact that our life has been disrupted either mildly or severely by a wrongful act toward us. Our ego defenses and beliefs often says: “They wronged us/hurt us and so let’s stay mad, bitter resentful, etc, that way we have a sense of power and control; since we didn’t have power and control during the offending experience.” Our anger, resentment and such, become a lens through which we see ourselves and the wrong doing. Its destructive thinking, beliefs and behaviors we create as a way to keep feeding our hurt and pain, in order to keep it alive and justify it. This is only hurting ourselves now, within the fact that we were hurt by someone in the past. This is unfortunately how victim energy and behaviors begin to take root, and if not tamed and reconciled can become our way of life.

Like grief, forgiveness is a process and takes time, willingness and commitment toward moving beyond what has hurt us and seemed unfair. When we can change our perception and belief about the experience, we begin to change our world and the way we interact in it. The process of forgiveness, like moving through any change we experience in our life, is an inside job. The job and empowerment of moving through what I call the 4 R’s: Recognize: who and how I am being with my current perceptions, thoughts, beliefs, feelings/emotions and behaviors. We can’t change or move beyond something unless we acknowledge it and tell the true to ourselves about ourselves. Reconcile: The willingness to resolve the inner pain and torment. Release: To let go of what no longer serves and benefits us. This offers space for healthier and more empowering possibilities to enter into your reality. Reframe: Is to now choose to see the painful experience, yourself and the offender, in a different and more constructive way. To see the glass more full than empty. This creates the willingness and courage to construct a more positive and affirming belief about yourself, within the unfortunate experience.

In my own life, I’ve had many opportunities to practice forgiveness in what seemed at first, an unjust cause. I offer two experiences. One, was my wife of twelve years wanting a divorce, at the time it didn’t seem fair and not my choice. I was hurt, angry and frustrated. In time, I came to a place accepting her choice and let go of making her responsible for my feelings and behaviors within the stress and change. She made her choice out of self-love and what was best for her. I also had a choice of how I would move through it and who I wanted to be within a difficult situation. The choice of hanging on to anger, sadness and resentment and such, would only take me down a self-destructive and unfulfilling path. Through accepting the things I could not change, forgiving her and myself, and empowering myself to change what I could, which was only myself, this allowed me to change my situation from the inside out and move on in my life, and be a better version of myself and a father. Years later my ex-wife and I are friends and get along well on behalf of our sons and grand children.

Several years ago, while driving my car I was hit head on, by a driver who was attempting to pass the car in front of him. The driver of this car was ticketed for failure to yield the right of way and his insurance company settled with me. Several months after the settlement, this man decided to sue me for mental harm. It was amazing that it ended up in a jury trial. I was in disbelief and just dumbfounded how I could be setting in a courtroom on trial for something I didn’t cause. Fear, anger, and uncertainty filled my days waiting for the court appearance and the verdict. I was found not guilty. A part of me with its voice inside me, understandably wanted to turn around and sue this guy, and many people suggested this. But another voice inside said, let it go, just let him be, he’s an old unhappy man, no need to put more fuel in the fire. I had compassion for this man and his struggle with needing revenge and justice, while not acknowledging and accepting he was in the wrong. He taught me, you never win a war – with war. So I forgave the error. In his need to get back at me, he was unaware of what his anger and resentment was doing to himself. I was at peace and moving on with life.

This man was after all, another teacher and opportunity for me through this difficult life experience. Through his actions, he was offering me the opportunity of learning and practicing the gift of moving beyond the injustice and my wounded self, toward acceptance, compassion and forgiveness.

You see, when you realize we have choices within difficult, painful and unjust experiences to see the offender as the threat and the enemy or the teacher and the opportunity. Depending on how you view it and think about it, is how you will experience it. What we think about we bring about. When we can accept and understand that our experiences are really our teachers and opportunities to practice acts such as: acceptance, compassion and forgiveness, we take the high road with love, creating the willingness and commitment to move beyond the hurt, and learn the lesson for soul growth and self-mastery. Is this an easy task to get too? No. Is forgiveness a liberating and life changing act to engage in, that offers higher meaning? Yes, for sure. Life isn’t meant to be easy, it’s meant to be meaningful.

Questions to consider: Why might you struggle with forgiveness? What would be the benefits of forgiveness for you? How does acceptance and willingness aid the forgiveness process? Feel free to leave a comment, share your answers to above questions, and/or share your experience with forgiveness.

What is Eros and Agape Love?

The Ancient Greeks had two main words to describe love, Eros and Agape.
Eros Love, is the most common way human’s love. Eros love is physical, passionate, sensual; a desire, a longing for another, but in an egotistic and objectified way. In Eros love, we struggle with freely loving just to love. With Eros love, I make the other my love object; and responsible for my happiness. Eros love is conditional, and is the love of need and feels it lacks. One has a desire to be loved, but with expectations to the one they say they “love.” This type of love, loves to get something a payback, they form relationships based on “you owe me.” This love is always comparing and seeking what it appears to be more satisfying outside of itself. So we are rarely satisfied in relationship with another, because I may struggle with insecurities and self-love, I make people and things outside of me, responsible my happiness and contentment.

Agape Love is spiritual divine-centered love. With Agape love, one has the awareness that it was created in the image of God, and this knowing dissolves any concept of separation into oneness. Agape love has no needs and makes no demands; its intent is offering understanding, and unconditional love, acceptance and good will. This love is the truest form of intimacy, a love without measure. With Agape love the perception and belief of a threat or an enemy dissolves. For you see others as a reflection of yourself, so you see love as the teacher and opportunity to higher awareness and soul growth. The search for love ends, when I have the awareness that I am love, I remember who I am. This is the desired freedom we seek. It’s the journey of the soul in human form. Agape love is not about falling in love, this is Eros love. Agape love, is rising as love, to ascend in the energy and awareness of love, because love is who we are.

Signs Eros Love:
If you are with someone, who appears judgmental, controlling, demanding; presenting conditions to loving i.e. I’ll do this if you do that.” This is the withholding of love to get my own needs met, with little concern for the other person. If you need someone, to the point of losing yourself because you need them, you are being conditional or maybe in your neediness and dependency you can more easily be controlled and taken advantage of in relationship. With others, if you need to be right more often than not, you are offering Eros love. If you believe being with someone will make you happy, your love is Eros, because in time, you will make the other person responsible for your happiness, causing you to be more unhappy and unfulfilled. If you bounce from relationship to relationship, have had affairs; use food, alcohol, or porn, etc. to cope with and find satisfaction within a relationship; you are consumed in the unsatisfying love called Eros.

Signs of Agape Love:
Pure love, divine love is freedom. Agape love, offers a sense of freedom to the other person. You have a good awareness of self and a confidence, which allows you to be strong, yet flexible in the relationship; without losing yourself or pushing the other away. Your love is more unconditional and you value accepting people with where they are at; without judging or needing to change them. One can easily compromise without a sense of feeling slighted or that you’ve gained the upper hand. Agape love is not a power over the other person; you embrace a relationship that is more inclusive and work toward having power-with the other person. You view your relationships as learning and growing experiences, especially during difficult/challenging times with this person. You often say to yourself within relationship experiences: “What is this person teaching me?” “What am I to learn from this experience?”

Agape love is heart-centered. This type of love, offers awareness, acceptance and compassion to acknowledge that sometimes for the highest and greatest good, a relationship is no longer healthy and constructive. So out of love I set myself and you free, in forgiving and appreciative ways. Love is freedom and freedom is love.

The way to Agape Love: Is to first and foremost understand, accept and have the awareness that you are love. Reconciling our wounded past gets us on the pathway to this higher understanding and acceptance of the love that we are. This allows us to be more accepting and offer loving kindness to others.

Free your ego of selfish needs and wants. This minimizes the degree of conditions and expectations of how love should be. Divine love is the unconditional love and acceptance of the spirit of all that is. Pure and Agape love is free of conditions and expectations. This is the way to rise as love, happiness and freedom.

Which type of love do you think you express most often, Eros or Agape? What makes this so? Which type of love would offer you more happiness and peaceful relations with others? Why? Your answers are appreciated to these questions. Leave a comment about this blog.

David Schroeder, LMSW, CPC from Grand Rapids, MI., is a licensed social worker, certified life coach, and author of Just Be Love: Messages on the Spiritual and Human Journey. His practice, Transition Pathways helps people find healthy pathways to love, greater awareness and higher potential. My book 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]

Is your Heart Open or Closed To Love?

In my book, Just Be Love, I write about the importance of the heart as the seat of love in the human body and its experiences. The heart is one of the most important sensory organs in the human body. In the fetus, the heart starts beating before the brain is totally formed. The heart has its own neurons, as many, if not more than the brain. The heart may well be the true brain of the human body, since it is sending as much information to the brain in our head as this brain is sending to the heart. The human heart’s electromagnetic field is five thousand times more powerful than that of the mind.

The heart holds the energy and expression of love. Imagine there is a doorway to love within the human body, and this door is through the heart. For many people, due to difficult and painful life experiences, love can seem to have gone wrong or broken apart. The heart can become guarded, even closed to protect the wounded self. When the heart is emotionally closed so is the door, and we can become fearful and cautious. So we’re not free and happy within the chambers in our heart. Then the mind follows the path of the heart, through fear, avoidance, resistance and non-acceptance of “what is.” A closed heart contributes to a person becoming resentful, bitter, isolated and depressed. It’s like a dark prison, which we ordered ourselves to be confined to. Our inner judge; for various reasons saw fit to impose this self inflicted sentence, as a way to make sense of something that perhaps makes no sense or seems so unfair to us. We experience such inner torment and pain, which this prison seems to offer safety and security, as only a distorted illusion can do. Research has shown, we can become sick even die, from a closed, sad and lonely heart.

When the heart is open, we are free and vibrant, love flows within and through us, as a free flowing energy exchange called, giving and receiving. An open heart is an including heart. Love is inclusion, fear is exclusion. An open heart is one that has found acceptance in “what is.” Acceptance is often the pivotal step toward freedom from the grips of grief, resentment, depression, anxiety, addiction, you name it. To put it simply an open heart is a free and loving heart, and is a way to expand the mind in possibilities. An open heart values the importance of expressing gratitude and appreciation. It allows for compassion, reconciliation or forgiveness to be. An open heart is the key to unlock us from the self-imposed prison we may be confined to.

I offer 3 tips to open your heart to love and goodness. These can help alter your life in heartfelt and liberating ways.

Be in Appreciation, Gratitude and Care, Toward Yourself and Others: This creates heart coherence i.e. balance, peace and harmony within the heart center; which will transfer to a calmer, more positive impulses, responses and behaviors from our brain.
Do Your Inner Work, to Reconcile, the wound and/or grief of your past. Your heart does not create coherence i.e. openness, balance, peace and harmony, if it’s closed, bitter or sad.
Be Love: Allow yourself to accept you are love. In this gift of acceptance, give yourself permission to do acts of loving kindness to yourself and others, without conditions or expectations.

David Schroeder, LMSW, CPC from Grand Rapids, MI., is a licensed social worker, certified life coach, and author of Just Be Love: Messages on the Spiritual and Human Journey. His practice, Transition Pathways helps people find healthy pathways to love, greater awareness and higher potential. My book 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]

Reclaiming Our Self-Worth

It seems the need and search for love and acceptance dramatically impacts our sense of self-worth. Yes, we get hurt in the name of love and some people don’t accept us for who we are. In this, we believe love can hurt. But that’s not the truth. Its actually our expectations, judgment, need for control, our feeling of rejection, loneliness, and loss that hurts. These are the results of fear, our belief we are not enough, we are not lovable, which closes the heart and thus we diminish our sense of worth.

The feeling of unworthiness is most often the byproduct of growing up. Many of us have had unpleasant experiences throughout our life. Painful and traumatic experiences, especially in childhood, create lingering physical, emotional and spiritual scars in body, mind and spirit. Growing up, intently or unintentionally we get wounded in a variety of unloving ways. In my book, Just Be Love I mention the “five core wounds” of the human personality: Rejection, Abandonment, Betrayal, Injustice and Humiliation. We generally have one of the first three listed as a primary core wound and from this wound let’s say: Abandonment, comes one form the last two, Injustice or Humiliation, say Injustice. So my core wounds would be Abandonment and Injustice, because they have the strongest emotional charge for me, when I think about my life from childhood to present. These wounds have negative self-beliefs attached to them such as: I’m not enough, I’m not deserving, I’m not lovable, I’m not worthy, etc. These beliefs, along with the perceptions and feelings that go with them often create self-defeating behaviors and outcomes in certain areas of our life.

Our core wounds are often unconscious, and they get triggered by present experiences and people. If the core wound is not resolved, we can experience similar feelings/emotions and beliefs in the present situations, like we did during a difficult/painful experience when we were younger. In other words, the present experience, reminds the unconscious little boy or girl in us of a similar childhood experience, and so we feel and thus act out the present situation in unconscious and often immature ways. This is part of the human condition and living an ego with shadow parts. The ego or lower self, being our internal defense mechanism and internal police officer, that serves and protects us. The shadow is what we repress or deny within ourselves, or project on to others. If all this is left unconscious and unresolved within our psyche, it has unchallenged power and influence in our life. That often leads to low motivation, limited potential, low self-esteem, a disconnect with the spirit within, troubled relationships and unhappiness.

The following are 6 ways to improve self-worth. Be gentle, patient and determined in the practice of these tips. Realize as you work these tips, the lower/wounded side of you will resist these and other tips you may seek to incorporate. It will do its best to talk you out of reclaiming your worth. Because, there is a part of you that doesn’t believe you are worthy, enough and lovable. If you give in to this part of you; you give away your power and sense of happiness, peace and contentment. The higher more loving part of you wants you to remember the love, worthiness and goodness you are. It’s time isn’t it? Out of love, give yourself permission, space and time to remember, and return to the love and value you are. The choice and opportunity is yours. If not now, when? The time is Now, love is in the now. Change and growth happens in the Now. Please say yes to loving yourself. What do you say? You can do it, and you so deserve to reclaim your worth and goodness.

1. Important to Recognize: Become aware that you have diminished your self-worth, by the negative perceptions, thoughts and beliefs you hold about yourself. We can’t change something until we are aware of it, and accept it. The first step to change is awareness and telling the truth to ourselves about ourselves, without shame or guilt. When we accept ourselves in this moment and how we’ve learned to be in life, we begin the process of changing it. This truth telling is an act of unconditional love and acceptance. The very thing we would like from others, we first should offer to ourselves. This is an act of self-love, showing concern and value to the self. This is changing from the inside-out, empowering ourselves, to be a better version of ourselves.

2. We are Always and in All Ways Love: Despite the difficult and painful life experiences, that may have seemed unloving and/or uncaring from others. It’s important not to give up the love and goodness we truly are. This is part of what we are to learn from our life experiences, not to lose the love and goodness we are. No one outside of us really takes our sense of love and worth away, we decide to give it away, because someone hurt us.

3. Reconnect with Your Shadow and Wounded Parts: This is an expression of compassion to the self. It shows concern and value for the parts of you that feel betrayed, rejected or abandoned. The parts of you that believe they are unworthy, unloved, or enough. Acknowledge and affirm to them they are doing the best they know how to be, yet you desire now to reclaim their innocence, to show them a better, more loving way to be and live. Tell them the truth of your innocence, divinity and goodness. Treat yourself as you would treat others, and want others to treat you; this is your birthright and part of your purpose.

4. My Mirror: Practice daily, looking in the mirror without shame, guilt or embarrassment. See, acknowledge and honor your innocence, beauty, strength, resilience and gifts. The true reflection from the mirror sees and knows your innocence, strengths, beauty and goodness. When we judge who we see in the mirror, we are withholding love and reinforcing unworthiness. To acknowledge our innocence and gifts reflecting in the mirror is offering unconditional love and acceptance, reinforcing our worth. I have a moving chapter in my book: Just Be Love, entitled Love and the Mirror, that offers a story and poem of “My Mirror.”

5. Commit to the Practice, of catching yourself falling into the gibes, belief and ways of your lower/wounded voice. Acknowledge the voice of the lower/wounded self, and say thank you for its opinion and how it’s may seem self critical and judgmental. However, we desire to be in the energy of love and acceptance for the wounded self, yet not give in to him or her. In this, than make the loving and caring choice to turn the negative self-defeating thinking into positive, uplifting and empowering thoughts and actions. It’s simply a matter of choice, and willingness to create a new habit within the mind. When you commit to yourself, you greatly reduce the emotions of the past to control your circumstances in the present. To say Yes to yourself, is saying Yes to Love.

Think of a situation when someone offers you something, but you really don’t want or need what they offer. The polite and empowering response to this person, is to acknowledge and appreciate their offer, by saying: “Thank you.” Then saying: “I am not in need of this offer.” In other words you are politely saying: “Thanks, but no thanks.” Practice the “Thank you” exercise to the lower self for expressing its opinion/perspective, yet say: “Thank you, but no thank you” to where it wants to take you with its thoughts and belief. Share with the lower/wounded self, the more positive and affirming thoughts and belief you are choosing to hang with now and the benefits of this. Affirm, it’s negative and self defeating thoughts and views no longer serve you, and you are now choosing more positive and uplifting thoughts, beliefs and ways. You desire to affirm and live the ultimate truth of yourself, not your manufactured false truth about yourself you created years ago. Invite the lower/wounded part of you to come along with your more uplifting and empowering thoughts and beliefs. Notice how much better you feel, when you make a more loving and affirming choice for yourself. Acknowledge the self-love and goodness of this choice.

6. Use Affirmations Daily, which seek to reinforce the truth of you, such as: I am love, I am innocence, I am freely loving myself, I am goodness, I accept all parts of myself and love them unconditionally. I am worthy, I am whole, I am compassionate to myself. I choose to be my best friend. I am a lovable, capable and worthy human being. I am a perfect, capable, lovable, worthy and radiant spiritual being, having a human experience. I am learning to be a better version of myself, and this feels good ‒ I deserve this worthy and good feeling.

As you journey back to worthiness, allow yourself to seek out support through friends and if needed experts in mental health. Seeking support and/or assistance is a sign of strength and expresses value to the self. Call upon your “I Can” spirit to assist you in reclaiming your worthiness. With a compassionate heart and willing mind, summon the courage to change and create a new more empowering direction for yourself; and more loving, accepting connection with all parts of you. Just Be Love – For only Love is real, and Who you are!

David Schroeder, LMSW, CPC from Grand Rapids, MI., is a licensed social worker, certified life coach, and author of Just Be Love: Messages on the Spiritual and Human Journey. His practice, Transition Pathways helps people find healthy pathways to love, greater awareness and higher potential. David’s book 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]

2014 men’s retreat

A Gathering of Men

Fall Weekend Retreat

The Way of Self-Mastery

October 3-5 2014

He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.—Lao Tzu

A retreat for men seeking greater understanding, spiritual growth and connection with fellow men. The weekend is designed for self and collective exploration, reflection and celebration.

Retreat theme The Way of Self-Mastery. The spiritual masters of past and present have a way of being and living upon the earth. It is my understanding that many of the masters including Jesus often saw and affirmed the master in those they interacted with. We are all masters in our own way and essence. Michelangelo said, upon carving the statue of David, that David was already in the stone. Michelangelo’s role was to remove/chip away at the stone wall that hid David. We all have a wall and barrier built around us that hides and represses the mastership of us.

Through open dialogue and shared information, this retreat offers some of the common traits and ways of the masters and how they lived upon the earth. We will explore what we as growing and evolving men can do to more effectively live in self-mastery.

Facilitated by: David Schroeder, LCSW, CPC

Retreat dates: Friday evening Oct. 3 – Sun. Oct. 5 mid-afternoon

Site: Camp Emmaus Mt. Morris, IL

Retreat Fee: $125.00 includes retreat materials, 2 nights lodging, meals are pot luck with shared food expenses.

Registration deadline Sept. 24, deposit fee $50.00 required at time of registration Contact David @ 815-238-4521 or [email protected]

Weekend includes meditations, soulful reflection and fellowship

Camp Emmaus is just east of Mt. Morris, IL off route 64, 34 miles south of Rockford, IL. Camp has 97 acres of wooded area along with a graceful pond, creeks and walking trails. accommodations in retreat lodge are complete with bathrooms showers, kitchen & dinning area. Sleeping area are bunk beds with mattress.

As a soul explorer, Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Life Coach, David understands and works the task and tools to transforming wounds into spiritual lessons and self-actualization. His Practice Transition Pathways in Rockford, IL seeks to assist people in using their inner pathways to growth, healing and potential. For over 25 years, David has been assisting people in healing, personal and spiritual development. David has been leading men’s groups and retreats for the past 6 years, offering pathways to self discovery, growth and fellowship. He is also finishing his first book, Just Be Love: Messages on the Spiritual and Human Journey