Nourishing the Heart - Continued

I just wanted to share a few thoughts with you on Nourishing the Heart. One of my favorite books on this subject is Love for No Reason - 7 Steps to Creating a Life of Unconditional Love by Marci Shimoff. I'd like to share a few thoughts from this book.

Compassion or unconditional love is an inner state of love. When we love and accept ourselves completely, old patterns of beating ourselves up, criticizing or condemning ourselves actually dissolve. When we have that inner state of love, we no longer need to look outside ourselves to get love. Marci describes this as going from a love beggar to a love philanthropist - dispensing love, kindness, and goodwill wherever you go.

In the field of energy, love is one of the highest vibrations. If we master love, we've got happiness by the tail, and the power to transform our inner world as well as outer world. There's strong scientific evidence that when we raise our own level of love, we radiate that to positively affect our families, communities and ultimately, the planet.

When love flows in our lives, it opens our hearts, our arms and eyes. We blossom like a flower in the sun. When love is missing, we wither and close, protecting ourselves from the harshness of life.

Love isn't just something we feel for others, it's who we are.

Our ultimate purpose is to grow in our ability to give and receive love. Everything that happens to us can actually help us expand our ability to love. It's easy to love things that are easy to love or charming and attractive. The real challenge is to experience love in difficult situations with people we may not even like. To maintain that open heart requires a commitment to love as the number one priority in our lives.

We may be used to figuratively wrapping our hearts with bandages to protect our hearts because we have been hurt. When we do this, we actually are closing our heart to love. It takes courage to take off those bandages to be open and vulnerable. The more open we keep our hearts, the healthier, happier and more loving we are.

Good luck this week to opening your hearts, becoming vulnerable, forgiving ourselves and others and sharing that love. When we share love, it comes back to us multiplied!