I love the innocent humor of young children. When my daughter was two-years-old she was insightful and funny without knowing it, which she showed one day as she was dancing in her chair eating spaghetti and meatballs.
“Mama, you are such a good cooker,” she said.
“Thank you,” I replied. “You are such a good dancer!”
Without pause she exclaimed, “And you are so good at watching TV!”
After a hearty laugh I realized what she’d said was more lamentable than funny. The words echoed in my heart and I felt a crushing awareness that I was wasting a good portion of my life on unfulfilling pastimes. The thought of writing this book occupied my brain for many years. I put it to the side, made excuses and ignored the still-small-voice within telling me to get to work.
The truth is, I had been working. I’d worked for decades to raise kids, pay bills, buy groceries and make spaghetti and meatballs. I was busy, tired, distracted and undisciplined. Finally, the words of my daughter got me thinking. If I had hours every week to watch TV, I had time to do what my heart wanted.
After many years working as a mental-health counselor I became aware that many of us are searching for deeper, higher, more meaningful love in our lives. I also perceived a collective need for more of us to be reminded of the incredible power and possibility we all possess. Putting my thoughts into words no longer became an option; this book was a fully-formed idea demanding to be born.
Once or twice I asked myself, “Who am I to write a book about love?” But after two-decades of mental and spiritual growth-work I realized we all, myself included, are powerful human beings whose unique gifts are infinitely valuable.
I hadn’t always thought this way, especially about myself. For much of my life I felt useless and unlovable. I had internalized messages from multiple sources that I wasn’t good enough, skinny enough or perfect enough to be loved the way I was. I absorbed religious and cultural messages that females are second-class citizens, and chubby ones are the least desirable among them. I learned from a relative’s looks of disgust that I was disgusting.
By age five I learned to ignore my feelings, please other people and keep my mouth shut. I spent considerable energy trying to gain the conditional, temporary approval of others. As a result I was insecure, anxious and depressed, which I learned to hide very well.
I am profoundly grateful for periods of my life when I have felt alone and forlorn. Sometimes only despair can drive us in search of help, or truth or God. If we notice the subtleties of Grace we find it alongside our despair, gently guiding us toward Love.
Some of us are fortunate enough to receive unconditional love from family and friends, but not everyone has consistently experienced Love that is patient and kind; abuse, neglect, deprivation and a lack of loving-kindness can deeply wound our capacity to trust and love.
Regardless of whether we’ve had idyllic or difficult lives, opportunities for love come as the sun rises every morning, again and again. Love is for everyone . . . every race, religion, age, socioeconomic status, abused or unloved child and suffering or struggling adult. Love is within every person on the planet, whether we have known acceptance and safety in life or not.
Love is universal. It always has been and always will be the most beautiful, powerful, energetic force available. Love is miraculous, magical and mysteriously infinite. The more it’s expressed the more it expands. The more we give away, the more we have. Love has the power to heal, transform and transcend darkness. Love is the greatest thing in the universe; Love is what many people believe God is.
Since Love is pure, Higher Love may initially sound like a misnomer. However, we can diminish the meaning of the word ‘love’ by overuse, or misuse. We may say we love someone and then treat them terribly. Many of us say we love things like our favorite pants, a particular golf club or that new restaurant down the street. But ‘Higher Love’ means Love with a capital ‘L’, or Love in a higher form. Higher Love is respect, devotion and a powerful energetic force.
To truly understand Love, it’s vital to discuss the importance of energy. Everything we do is infused with the energy we bring to it. Understanding this increases the awareness of our impact on everything and everyone around us. What we think, say, do and don’t do all matter more than we realize. Our thoughts, attitudes and actions bring either positive or negative energy into every situation we encounter. Love brings light and energy on a high vibration, while fear and the plagues inspired by it lead to various degrees of negativity and darkness.
Some researchers have found incredible links between our thoughts and energy. Photographs have shown how water can be affected by the energy of our thoughts.[i] This becomes tremendously significant when we remember that our bodies are mostly water. Quantum physics has shown what we believe to be solid matter is not actually solid.[ii] Mind-body researchers have discovered how negative thoughts and attitudes have a profoundly negative affect on one’s physical health.[iii] In other words, there is much more to our existence than we can taste, touch, hear, smell and see.
Although some people will deny what can’t be empirically tested in a scientific way, there are billions of people who have experienced things that cannot be measured by science or understood by the five senses alone. Love is one of those things.
Many years ago, my college roommates and I were targets of a peeping Tom. I felt someone watching me through the gap in my bedroom curtains, but I dismissed my feelings. This voyeuristic creep was later seen spying on my roommate as she was using the bathroom, making me wish I had responded to my intuition sooner.
If we pay attention, we’ll notice we can sense energy. Our amazing intuition is an innate, intelligent force and one of the most important gifts we have to protect ourselves. Because many of us are disconnected from our emotions, it may take a while to get back in tune with them, but it is wise to hone this ability.
It’s understandable that many of us have become at least partially disconnected from our emotions; some of us have been harshly disciplined as children, many have been abused. We may have been threatened with phrases such as “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.” Some of us were forced to finish all the food on our plates, even when we weren’t hungry. Others have been forced to hug relatives and to do other things that disrespect a child’s body and boundaries.
As we grow out of childhood, we can reconnect to our emotions. We can learn to respect ourselves, even if we weren’t respected by others. We can tune-in to our feelings, recognize body sensations and take back our power to set boundaries which feel safe and comfortable to us by using emotional awareness, intuition and our ability to sense positive and negative energies.
Some American Indian cultures describe positive and negative energetic forces as “good-medicine” and “bad-medicine.” To them the word ‘medicine’ has a broader meaning than in modern use and can mean spirit, power or energy. Many indigenous groups have been aware of the subtle energies embodied in the natural world for centuries. Through experience and observation they know it’s wise to embrace good energy and dismiss the bad.
Interestingly, the exact same substance, such as an herb, can be seen as either good or bad medicine depending on its preparation. For example, collecting herbs with disrespect for the earth and begrudgingly sharing them with an ill relative would be bad-medicine compared to the same herb collected with gratefulness and lovingly shared with healing intentions.
Higher Love is good medicine. It is positive energy which humanity and the planet desperately need. Too many of us have been deluded into believing we have to look a certain way or do certain things to deserve love. Too often we search for love and respect outside of ourselves, and are often disappointed. Believing there’s a lack of love in the world can make us feel jealous and competitive.
Reclaiming our authentic personal power means knowing true greatness comes from within, not something external or transient. Empowered people understand that our world, when properly cared for, is bountiful, benevolent and could never lack anything we truly need. Loving people realize that suffering arises from malignant greed and ego-obsessed minds that believe in separateness.
Fear, unhealthy competition and selfishness cause us to separate ‘us’ and ‘them’ into opposing groups. At this level of consciousness we fight endlessly over who will get the love, money and the power, while forgetting our ability to create these things. This is not only exhausting, it causes tremendous suffering.
Love-centered personal power sparks a heartfelt desire to reduce as much suffering as possible. It elicits the wisdom that alleviating suffering for others reduces unnecessary suffering for us all. Eventually, we all have disappointments and painful experiences, such as illness and grief over lost loved ones. However, collectively we’re suffering much more than life demands.
I’ve learned most of the emotional suffering I experienced in childhood was unnecessary. Not knowing how to deal with my emotions in a healthy way caused me to experiment with various eating disorders. I spent years stuck in self-loathing, feeling hideous and unlovable. One day I’d think my eyes were too close together, the next day they were too far apart. My cheeks, hair, nose and body were all defective in my mind. If I had learned to value myself as a kind-hearted person with unique intelligence I could have saved myself a lot of time and misery.
However, this confusion and pain led to questioning and introspection which allowed me to perceive distortions and replace them with my own truth. Discovering our own truth is vital because it helps confront the many influences which make even stunningly beautiful people feel unattractive and incredibly talented individuals feel unworthy. The light of truth confronts the lie that money is the key to happiness, and helps us see there are people with every material thing in the world who still aren’t happy.
My work as a therapist eventually led me to believe that my individual clients didn’t have a problem as much as the whole world seems to have gone crazy.
When my daughter, Elena, was in preschool she had her first encounter with racism. I expected this would eventually happen, but I never thought it would start at three-years-old. One day a little girl told my daughter she wasn’t beautiful because her skin was brown and her clothes weren’t as colorful as she thought they should be.
Although I offered Elena love and support I could see the criticism had affected her. Later that year my adorable daughter told me she wished she had blonde hair and blue eyes like the latest Disney Princess. I was crushed. I never wanted her to suffer insecurity about her looks, as I had all my life.
A few weeks later, while watching the cartoon-movie of “The Humpback of Notre Dame,” Elena announced to me that Quasimodo is ugly. When he started to sing I said, “Listen . . . he has a beautiful voice!”
I now tell my daughter that everyone is beautiful in their own way, and I truly believe this. Higher Love is about looking for the beauty that exists in everyone and everything. It’s about searching for what is beautiful with our hearts, not just our eyes. It is about teaching our daughters and sons to see beyond the superficial, because mean girls, racists, and bullies of all ages are created by experience and indoctrination, not by birth.
A loving person sees the value in each human being beyond any of the qualifiers used to separate one another: rich, poor, beautiful, ugly, fat, thin, white, black, gay, straight, democrat, republican, educated, uneducated, Christian, atheist, Muslim, Jew, man, woman, etc. Cultivating Higher Love is about bridging our self-imposed chasms of separation. It is about recognizing our shared humanity beyond our differences, and respecting our fellow human beings as they are.
Higher Love is not only about finding a deeper, brighter love in ourselves and discovering more joy in our existence, it’s also about putting Love higher than other things. Why should we do this? Because Love is our bridge back to one another, and it is our most powerful agent for peace. Even a small increase in human loving-kindness will create an astounding healing effect in the world.
Thankfully, we’re remembering that we are the light that shines away the darkness. This awareness has become a vision which is harbored in the hearts of billions of people and, when fully awakened, it will have the power to make life better for everyone on Earth.
This intention of this book is to give this vision form, so ideas such as the following can be more easily perceived and shared:
1. People anywhere can reclaim their power, self-worth and capacity to use their unique genius in their own way for the good of all.
2. We collectively reject the delusion that worldly power, financial wealth or physical beauty are what gives us value.
3. Our collective awareness affirms that no matter how lofty or lowly a human being appears, we are all created equal and unique.
4. The lost, lonely and longing to be loved are reminded of the immeasurable power and value they possess.
5. We deeply understand the only real, eternal power is Love and our Love can save us from needless suffering and heal our beautiful planet.
We are going to progress in one direction or another. Let’s move in a loving direction. One mind alone may not be able to shift the collective-consciousness, but millions of minds in agreement definitely can. Those who use their lives to create more love and less suffering, in any way their hearts guide them, make the world a better place.
Everyone is capable of becoming a more loving, respectful, patient person, so this book is for everyone: all races, all religions, all sexual-orientations, atheists and agnostics. It is for you. The world needs you . . . your creativity, your genius, your brilliance, your smile, your compassion, your patience, your voice!
I hope you choose to become part of this wildly diverse revolution of authentic personal power, which decries the worldly power some greedy people think they can amass for themselves. I hope you reject the belief that we are our belongings, religions, bank accounts, or our beautiful or defective exteriors and embrace the truth: we are brothers and sisters in humanity, and we are capable of anything when we work together with love and respect.
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[i] From the book (and free e-book) The Hidden Messages in Water, By Dr. Masaru Emoto July 5, 2011
[ii] From the Article ‘Nothing is Solid and Everything is Energy – Scientists Explain the World of Quantum Physics.’ By Arjun Walia, September 27, 2014, Collective-Evolution.com at http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/09/27/this-is-the-world-of-quantum-physics-nothing-is-solid-and-everything-is-energy/ “What we perceive as our physical material world, is really not physical or material at all, in fact, it is far from it. This has been proven time and time again by multiple Nobel Prize (among many other scientists around the world) winning physicists, one of them being Niels Bohr, a Danish Physicist who made significant contributions to the understanding of atomic structure and quantum theory . . . Quantum physicists discovered that physical atoms are made up of vortices of energy that are constantly spinning and vibrating, each one radiating its own unique energy signature. Therefore, if we really want to observe ourselves and find out what we are, we are really beings of energy and vibration, radiating our own unique energy signature -this is fact and is what quantum physics has shown us time and time again. We are much more than what we perceive ourselves to be, and it’s time we begin to see ourselves in that light. If you observed the composition of an atom with a microscope you would see a small, invisible tornado-like vortex, with a number of infinitely small energy vortices called quarks and photons. These are what make up the structure of the atom. As you focused in closer and closer on the structure of the atom, you would see nothing, you would observe a physical void. The atom has no physical structure! Atoms are made out of invisible energy, not tangible matter.”
[iii] Science of the Heart: Exploring the Role of the Heart in Human Performance—an overview of the research conducted by the HeartMath Institute at www.heartmath.org, 2017 https://www.heartmath.org/research/science-of-the-heart/
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