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Episode 105 Transcript
Principle IV: Choose Love
Hello friends and listeners. I am happy to have you here for this series on Metaphysical Humanism.
I’ve been hosting this journey into metaphysics and the 5 core principles of metaphysical humanist life mastery. So far I have shared ideas on self-exploration and knowing your values and beliefs – and about emotional maturity – and last week I talked about self-control.
These principles ask you to take a good hard look in the mirror and discover your place and role in the world – and that’s not easy – but it is vital to your self-actualization.
The good news is once you master these skills of knowing yourself, being responsible for yourself, and respecting the free will of yourself and others – you’ve tackled the hardest part of life mastery.
Leonardo da Vinci is quoted as saying, “One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.”
And these first three principles are about just that – mastering who you are and living your purpose in the world.
As we move on to the final two principles they are going to still focus on your life mastery but with more understanding of yourself as a spiritual being living in this worldly incarnation.
Again, these are the 5 Metaphysical Humanist Principles:
1. Know yourself.
2. Be responsible for yourself.
3. Honor and respect free-will.
4. Choose Love.
5. Become Self-Actualized.
Today we are talking about Principle IV: Choose Love – this is the AGAPE Principle. I call this agape to distinguish from other types of love. Choose love isn’t specifically about choosing romantic love in the way we think of love. It’s not about falling in love. It’s not about saying “I love you”. Those can be part of it yes. But it’s a much deeper concept of love – and making a choice to live from love – to embody love – to become love.
A Course in Miracles talks about this love and says there are two states of consciousness for humans. LOVE or FEAR. The course says that our true self is love because we are a thought in the mind of god and god is love, we are then a thought of love. Fear is seeing ourselves separate from not only god, but from one another. We are a wave in the ocean that thinks it’s separated from all the other waves, yet if you look, you can’t tell where one wave ends and the other begins. It’s one wave. Just as we are one light. We can choose to see the oneness of humanity – we can understand that what I do to my brother I do to myself and so loving my brother means loving myself. We can choose love.
This is very deep spiritual stuff here.
This principle is very special to me. As you may have heard me talk about before, after age 7 I grew up without my mom in my life. My father was very controlling – very angry and violent – and lacked compassion. There wasn’t any kindness or understanding, no soft spot to land. I didn’t see any examples of love in that house – not even towards others. It was an empty way to grow up – and we’ve heard that saying you can’t pour from an empty cup – I had nothing to give someone else or myself. After I grew up and was struggling with depression and anxiety, I knew I was missing something but didn’t know what.
Soon after I started my spiritual journey in 2010 – I started a Facebook page to share the things I found interesting. I called it “Ethereal Quest” – and that’s how I described my journey. I was in search of something.. out there… something that was missing in me…. I sensed it was an invisible spiritual …something… ethereal…. Mystical… of what I would now I call … metaphysical.
Eventually I would name that missing thing – it was love – all the types of love – I found that I could connect to the energetic field – the ethereal field – and be part of the greatest love – agape love. This is unconditional, pure, eternal, creative, love of god –universal love. And it changed my life.
I no longer had to live in survival states of fight and flight, I could open my heart, I could be vulnerable, I could give unconditionally. This meant I could begin healing because I love heals. I chose love.
This kind of love puts you in a position of understanding, humility, compassion, and empathy. It isn’t coming from your heart or your mind – it’s a love from your higher self – that part of you that is connected to the infinite – to god or the goddess – to the holy spirit – your spiritual Self with a capital S. Pure love from pure light.
The Greeks had four different words for love — agape, philia, eros and storge (store-gay).
Philia was the kind of love we have for our friends. Eros is romantic love, and storge is family love.
Agape love is a selfless, unconditional, and sacrificial love that is often considered the highest form of love. It is not just rooted in ancient Greek philosophy but also in the Bible where agape love is most often associated with the love of God for mankind, and the love we should have for this life in return.
So, when I say “choose love” – I mean choose to love your life, love your community, love your neighbors, love your enemies – the way god loves them, creator, source – unconditionally, selflessly – and without ulterior motive or expectation of a return. … and this is no easy task. It’s one of life’s challenges that we fail over and over as physical beings. But forget who we are – we are not physical beings – we are spiritual beings having a physical experience.
Why choose love? It’s good for you!
- It calms your nervous system allowing you to handle daily stresses and frustrations better
- It raises your vibe to love and joy, and raises the vibe of others around you
- Creates healing – in your relationships, in your body, in the world.
- Your life improves, you create better results, you attract abundance, and you live a life you love
- When you model unconditional love to someone who has never known it, they transform
- It brings Peace –peace comes when you aren’t fighting everyone all the time. .. when you are not hating others or jealous of others or fearful of others… People say all the time that they just want peace – it starts inside of you –you need peace inside you and that comes with agape love. No one can give you peace – you choose peace when you choose love.
- The biggest reason I think– because this happened for me – I stopped being a miserable, angry, gossipy, cranky, complaining, ungrateful, and unforgiving person when I chose love!
Yes, I acted very unloving a lot of the time! Another thing the course in miracles says is that that there are two motivations for every action people take– its either a demonstration of love or a cry for love. So, according to A course in miracles, when people are acting unloving, its because they are in need of love. But for me the kind of love the course is talking about is agape love. A universal, nonduality, oneness love that is not about how we feel or what we do – but it’s knowing the truth of who we are.
A beautiful thing about agape love is when you are choosing it – you also receive it from your own connection to source. No one has to give it back to you for you to benefit. If you need love, give love – become love. For any of you Reiki practitioners out there – I am a reiki master – and I very much align the process of the reiki session with agape love – you aren’t just a channel for energy, you are connected to the energy field – you are energy. You aren’t just a channel for love – you are love.
Still, we are not very experienced with agape kind of love. We know love – we love our children, our friends, our family, the people in our lives – but then we have a hard time loving those others – those people we disagree with – the people in other countries with different religions and ways of living – even that neighbor with the political sign that isn’t in support of the person we align with, or criminals even– it’s hard to say with all sincerity that we love those people.
And yet – that is what Choosing Love calls for you to do – agape doesn’t distinguish between friend or foe, democrat from republican, or Christian from Atheist. Good guy from bad guy. Agape is love with no strings attached, no judgments, no expectations, no assumptions, no rules. You love and you are love – and so is everyone else in truth. If we believe in spiritual nonduality – that we are one with the creator – or that god is love – then we are all love. No matter the form we take in this physical realm.
This is a tough one for many people. We resist loving those we have judged unlovable.
How to know when you aren’t choosing love? You have feelings of jealousy of others, you are resentful of others success, you are holding grudges, you expect favors when you help others, you hate entire groups of people, you just are generally dissatisfied with your life and blame others. You have a good life, but you still aren’t happy. There is a disconnect with love there.
Why don’t we choose love – why do we resist it?
We get weighed down with our problems and with the news and drama going on everywhere – our nervous system takes over and we are faced with feeling like we have to fight to be heard, or fight to get justice, or fight to be right, and in the most unloving ways. It’s hard to love others when you are suffering or to love someone that causes suffering. But then, we are denying ourselves love too and increasing our own suffering by denying the truth that we are love.
And when I say we struggle with it, I absolutely mean ME. I mean, I still have unforgiveness issues from my childhood that I am still healing. And as a historian I am very much paying attention to the news and to politics and I see what my friends and family post on social media – I wasn’t full of agape this past election cycle and I have struggled to choose love many days in recent months. I give my opinions, and I feel like fighting. I have to remind myself how important agape is to healing fear in the world in these times. Choosing love is definitely one of those choices that you have to make each and every day. And some days fear wins and it’s not a loving day for me.
How is it possible to choose love in bad times?
I think that’s part of the big question of spirituality – the whole idea of duality vs nonduality – how do I live this human experience of duality with pain and suffering – and yet be in a state of nonduality and oneness with others that I don’t even like? How can I be human and be this ethereal essence called love? I am going to dive deeper into these questions in the next episode.
For now, I think its important to focus on why we should choose love and how to do it.
How Can I choose love?
- Transformational Gratitude – love your life and the people in it – not a gratitude list – and sincere and heartfelt feeling of joy for the things, experiences of life and the people in your life.
- Meditation, prayer, energy work like yoga or reiki helps you be open to love
- Empathy – this is deeper than compassion. Empathy is feeling what another person feels.
- Forgiveness – this is about realizing you are human and make mistakes, and so does everyone. You want forgiveness, and so does everyone. Release the suffering.
- Grace – grace is carrying yourself with kindness, gentleness, courteousness, civility, and acting from goodwill. It’s creating a loving aura about you – people are drawn to those who carry themselves with grace –
- Find the silver lining is every cloud – this is something we talked about in the last episode – it’s about attitude. In every situation there is a ray of light – even if it’s just a lesson you learned from a mistake you made – see the light – harvest the good – find the gratitude
We don’t really have mentors to teach us to live this way – maybe some saints or enlightened people. We all have very good people in our lives – and I’m sure we’ve all known someone we thought loved everyone and was good to everyone. And usually, we don’t understand how they were so good. We don’t pick up the lesson on how they were able to maintain such a good heart. We see it, but can’t duplicate it.
Mostly, this is a principle that we learn in our individual spiritual studies because spiritual practices can lead us to direct experience with the divine – which is an immersion in love
Unfortunately, many religions don’t promote spiritual or direct experience with the divine. Religious ceremony is wonderful and connects us to EACH OTHER – weddings, communion, fire ceremony, death rites – but direct experience happens inside us and it’s an individual thing. We’re often discouraged from that because we aren’t trusted to have a relationship with the divine on our own– with god or angels or goddesses – or consciousness with a capital C. Someone else acts as the mediator for us – the priest, the shaman, the yogi, the oracle – these are the people designated to speak to us on behalf of the divine.
But if we aren’t getting the direct experience to feel this love– we are missing out on the divine, ethereal, agape love. The good news is that you can choose to connect to that love on your own or with help from a spiritual teacher.
This is a deep level training here. Choosing love isn’t for beginners… go back and do principles 1 through 3 first if you haven’t, otherwise you’ll resist what agape asks of you.
Almost every day I connect in some way with my spirit –and I remember why I want to make the choice… because I don’t want to be the cranky, angry, complaining, miserable person I used to be! Sometimes I meditate, sometimes with being in nature, and sometimes doing some visualizations…and sometimes I study A course in miracles or another modality. There are so many ways to have direct experience and connect to love – That’s why having a spiritual mentor can be a good idea.
But I’ll leave you today with something you can do quickly for a tiny experience – Take two deep cleansing breaths – in through the nose and out through the mouth –
Now, think of moments in your life when you felt happy. Whether it was a family gathering – your graduation – when your team won the championship or when you met your hero… or when you are doing your favorite thing – for me it’s dancing like no one is watching – that’s when I feel joyous and free… whatever it is for you, bring it mind the most joyous of moments… your wedding, holding your first-born child – Play the scene in your mind like a movie – hear the sounds – see the action – feel the emotions – what does joy feel like.
This feeling of unbridled joy and happiness and perfection – this is god or the universe smiling on you – this is agape – at this moment there is nothing negative in your world – everything is right – at this moment you aren’t worried about anything – at this moment you love life, and you love everyone and it feels magical – blissful – you feel like you are soaring through the clouds – this is how it feels to radiate agape love – to become love.
Choose to sit in this moment if you can – engulfed in joy and light and love.
Here’s the gift of agape love – This doesn’t have to be a state of being reserved for special moments. You can choose to connect to this love energy anytime you want. Everyday. Find more moments of joy. Practice your spiritual tools. Remember who you really are – a being of pure love. You can return to this love anytime you choose.
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