I was just reviewing my “morning pages” that I write whenever I’m inspired… whenever an idea comes to me that helps me reconnect with my deeper essence and follow my heart with peace and joy.  I found this one today and I’d like to share it with you.

Discovering the Doorway of Love: a Story

Let me start with a little story first (or you can just scroll down to learn how, too.)  Many years ago, when I was just starting my spiritual journey in a more conscious way, I wanted to explore meditation and see where that could take me.  My dad used to meditate when I was growing up and he still does.  He’s a beautiful, spiritual person, so full of love and always willing to step up and help and share love whenever he can.  He was good at fixing cars and I often remember that he used to stop whenever a car was stopped at the side of the road with the hood up and do what he could to help.  Anyway, I had his wonderful example to inspire me to try meditation, so I’d tried his method a couple of times when I was a teenager but I couldn’t quite get to the place of Love that he reached at the time so I just let it go.

But back when I was in my “spiritual boot camp” phase, just starting my first real social work/therapist job right out of graduate school and drowning in anxiety, stress, and self-doubt, I really needed to find something that would help me survive because I really felt like I was losing it.  So, I turned toward my spiritual essence.  I started reading spiritual books and learning about meditation.  Unfortunately though, the recorded processes and more traditional techniques I tried didn’t really get me there and left me feeling more grumpy and unsuccessful than blissful.

The Inspiration to Love

Then one day, a new idea came to me.  I’ve always been deeply inspired and connected to the feeling of Love.  Without consciously thinking about it, I had always felt that experiencing Love brought me toward the deeper part of me… and of course, Love just feels really good.  So, that day, instead of trying another form of meditation, I decided to just sit down, close my eyes, and start thinking about everyone and everything I love.

I started with the sweet little dog I had as a little girl, Fluffy, who was such a wonderful Being, always there with unconditional love for me no matter what, and always there to receive my love unconditionally, too.  So that was the easiest place to start.  I pictured her in my mind, happy and content and smiling her little dog smile and then I told her how much I loved her in my mind.  I felt the love welling up in me, that wonderful sweet feeling and the tears began to flow.

And then I moved on to my family and my friends, picturing them each one by one, smiling and laughing and joyful and then I told them how much I loved them.  And the love just overflowed within me, so beautiful and sweet and wonderful.  I could feel myself expanding beyond the rut of anxiety and worry that I’d gotten myself into and I just felt such deep gratitude and Love and contentment.  It was wonderful.  And I realized then in a much more conscious way, that Love is a wonderful doorway for me, my favorite doorway in fact, to reconnecting with my true Being, my deeper Self, with God, the Divine, Spirit, or whatever you like to call it.  I was feeling it and I knew this was right for me.

Developing a New Habit of Love

So, in hopes that this will be a wonderful doorway for you as well, I’d like to suggest you explore this simple, blissful way of meditating for yourself.  All we really need to do is shift our focus and attention from what we’re worrying or upset about to what feels good, right?  Moment by moment, this guides us and takes us where we want to go.  And for me, what I want more than anything is to feel that sweet Love and gratitude and bliss of my Being in every moment.

Our bodies and minds do get into the habit of feeling anxiety, stress, sadness, irritation, etc. though.  And when it comes down to it, I do think it’s helpful to  just think of it as a habit.  Somehow we’ve learned to believe that this negative emotional state and mental focus will get us what we want at some point in the future.  But really, that’s not true.  We get where we want to be by letting ourselves feel the unconditional well-being and happiness that’s always here for us in this moment.  That’s what we truly want, after all.

And I really think it just takes practice for us to experience this unconditional Love and bliss as part of our everyday lives.  Luckily, this practice feels really, really good and it’s pretty easy to do, too.  Both of which put it at the top of the list of habits I like to practice.  🙂

The Simple Steps of this Meditation on Love

So, to help you get there, you can try this simple, sweet meditation on Love.  Here’s how:

Get comfortable somewhere and close your eyes.  Start thinking about someone you love, of course it can be an animal, a person, someone who you know now or you’ve known at any point in your life.  Start with the easy ones first… you know, those Beings that are easy to love and let you love them easily, too.  Imagine them there before you, smiling and laughing, happy and joyful.  And tell them you love them.  That’s all there is to it.  As you do, you’ll feel this sweet feeling of Love welling up within you.  Let yourself feel it, enjoy it, take a warm bath in it.  This is your true Being, your true Essence shining through your regular emotional habits, helping open up your consciousness and your nervous system to an expanded feeling of unconditional Love.

When you feel that Love welling up within you, you can shift to feeling Love for everyone you love in your life.  Again, imagine them smiling and laughing, so happy.  And then tell them you love them.  Expand this more and more and see where it takes you.

Healing through Love

Once you get the hang of this, you can explore loving everyone in your life, even loving people you might have issues with.  If you find it’s hard to stay in that feeling of Love when you think about someone, just touch on their smiling face for a moment and tell them you love them briefly and then move back to the people and animals that are easy to love.  Know that just touching on the others when you’re in this state of Love will help to gently heal whatever is not fully love between you.  Just trust that the power of the wave of Love that’s flowing through you will help to transform those feeling gently without effort.  And there’s no need to focus on them if you don’t feel like it either.  If you do feel inspired to heal that relationship in this way at some point, you’ll know it and you can just follow your heart and do what feels good to you in that moment.

Let Love Be Your Natural State

As you do this practice more and more, your body will get more accustomed to this state of Love and bliss as your new “normal” and it will be easier and easier to stay in this state more of the time in your life.  It also gives you the blessing of realizing that you can feel this wonderful feeling of Love anytime you wish.  It’s always here within us, we just need to remember to choose this instead of fear or worry or sadness or whatever else we might be feeling.

Expand Your Love to the Whole World

It can feel really good to end your meditation by expanding and sharing this feeling of Love with your neighbors, your town, your state, your country, and then the whole world.  Imagine the whole world and all Beings here being bathed in this Love that you are.  It can be a truly blissful way to end your meditation session.  I’ve found that the more Love we share, the more we feel in our Being.  The more we give, the more we receive.  It’s a beautiful thing to experience.  And it’s wonderful to think of the blessings of Love that we are sharing as we do this meditation as well.  Everyone you focus on feels it on some level of their Being, I’m sure.

I love that idea that I think I read in one of Eckhart Tolle’s books that Love is actually a recognition of our Oneness with each other and with all things.  That feels true for me.

So, I hope this inspires you to try this simple, beautiful meditation of Love for yourself.  This is an easy meditation to do every day and it helps open our consciousness to feel the essence of who we are and the Love that unites us all.  If you feel like sharing, I’d love to hear about your thoughts and experience of this for yourself.

Many blessings to you and I’ll see you next time.  🙂

Laura