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Giving Your Heart
"I have never met a person whose greatest need
was anything other than real, unconditional love.
You can find it in a simple act of kindness toward someone who needs help.
There is no mistaking love. You feel it in your heart.
It is the common fiber of life, the flame of that heats our soul, energizes our spirit and supplies passion to our lives.
It is our connection to God and to each other."
- Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
It's the season when we see companies try taking the magnificent energy of love and squish into a few lines on a greeting card. While it is lovely to honor those people you care about, it surely isn't something that should be limited to just one day. Indeed, Love isn't just meant to lavish on one, perfect "other." It's not the limited domain of a "soul mate" or even something to be rationed among a very few. Love is a way of being. It's waking up and being grateful to the sun. It's taking time to feed the birds, tie a child's shoe, and sip tea with the attitude that all of life is a miracle.
Love is the act of doing good things in the world. One does them not to be recognized but because it makes life - better. Not just for the ones who might benefit from the action but to every being that is blessed by the vibration held in our heart as we do it. It's looking the waitress in the eye who provided your breakfast, smiling and addressing her by her name. It's thanking the postal carrier trudging through the snow or letting the other guy out of a side street when you're driving. It's realizing that the smile or kind word that you offer to a stranger who is on line with you at the market, may be the only sweetness that they receive today.
It is our extraordinary heart - celebrated in February's frilly candy boxes - that changes the world. By all means send a Valentine's card to those that you hold dear but also let your heart fill to overflowing with all the splendor of the Earth! Strive to see a loved one in every person's face. And look in your heart to find love even for those people that you don't like! Much of the strife and unpleasantness in the world stems from people forgetting that they are part of the divine. They forget that they are not only loved, but that they are an expression of light and love - manifested into physical form. In the amnesia of feeling separate, a person may feel hollow, or insecure, or insignificant. From this terrible place, they behave in ways that are hurtful to themselves and others.
In spreading love through our full our hearts and through our actions, we can heal those that feel the pain of loneliness, isolation or despair. We can also heal those places inside of ourselves that feel the echoes of those same feelings. Buddha once said, "You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection." So living a loving life is also a gift to yourself. As you love, you are the first one who is touched by that energy! The action of filling yourself with love, gratitude or compassion sends healing energy to every atom in your body. It makes you energetically coherent with All That Is.
When you experience this remarkable vibration you soon find yourself filled to overflowing. That which flows out from you, blesses everything and every being. Your coherence engenders harmony in the world around you and you become a healing force. If we believe as Elizabeth Alexander wrote in her poem for President Obama's inauguration, that "...the mightiest word is love...," Then we have the power to alter the lives of everyone, for the better.
My prayer is that we let the mighty power of our hearts fuel the strength of our hands and that we use our strength and purpose transform the world, to renew it's health and beauty and to lift up all of us. It is all possible through the radiant power of Love.
- Evelyn
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