Sit in calmness as often as possible. Breathe. Focus on your heart center and breathe. Slow down everything inside you so that you can feel yourself as a separate and contained being. Let the world outside of you disappear as you breathe, and just be at one with and within yourself. Sitting in heart-centered calmness is the magic pill you don’t even know you need, but it will serve you well to take it as often as you can, for it will not only connect you to yourself, it will also connect you to the divine.
You are not just a physical being. Beyond everyday life lies another life, life in the etheric field, the life of spirit. Try to connect with this other self more often, in waking and dreaming, so that you begin to understand the self as more than physical matter. Your dreaming self, for instance, is a real self, a part of you as real as the hand in front of your face, capable of just as much, and more, than your physical self. Find our who you really are. Meditate to connect with your greater self. Intend to be aware of your dreams, and to be aware of your heart-centered self more often as well. Eventually this other self will become more known and a real asset to your daily life. Eventually you will discover that you are so much more.
Though the wind blows in different directions each day the path of heart continues along its dedicated route. When the intent of the spirit is strong nothing, not even the strong winds of a hurricane, can stir it from its path. Hold steady through thick and thin, through the tough times and the easy times, through all kinds of turmoil. Weather through with the spirit in charge, the heart in synch and the whole self determined. There is nothing so rewarding as a goal achieved with body, mind and spirit in right alignment. A path of heart is just such a path.
I, like all of us, have been challenged in this life to ascend another rung on the infinite ladder of love. I call that ladder infinite because love forever broadens as it rises to embrace the infinitude of all.
The challenge of reopening to love, once you’ve experienced love, as we all have, regardless of its level of fulfillment, is to grow that love forward. Love can only build upon the plateau of love you have already accrued.
We accrue love in many of our relationships in life, be they with humans, animals or trees. Letting go of a physical relationship can never erase the fact of that love, regardless of its ending in the materiality of this plane of life.
If you are to love again, you must include all the love you have ever experienced as the foundation for new love. However, that growing love must be separated from attachment to the nostalgic familiarity of forms and habits already lived. Love cannot grow if it remains tethered to a past life. And yes, one can have many lives in one physical life.
A sense of undying loyalty to a relationship that has physically ended binds love’s evolution and hinders maturity into new life. Successful mourning ultimately frees everyone to continue their journey into new possibilities. Allowing oneself to be vulnerable in a new encounter, while knowing through experience the disappointments of failures or missed opportunities in love, is a major growth point.
Jeanne and I had a contract in our earthly marriage that insisted we never impede each other’s growth. As our wedding song honestly stated, “our love will grow for all we know.” Vows simply do not guarantee that love will grow. If it’s not right, love insists you set each other free. It’s the truly loving thing to do.
We launched that contract to new levels when Jeanne left this world. She has since been an impeccable warrior; and she has almost completely refused to grant me a moment of familiar connection to our once-treasured earthly existence.
Our love grows now on the premise that we independently assume total responsibility for our lives and exercise total freedom in the different planes of existence that we currently reside upon. For Jeanne, that is life in the formless plane; for myself, it remains the continued life in physical form.
Of course, I must admit that Jeanne is a magical trickster, whose maneuvers upon the earthly plane have offered me enormous growth opportunities. But these gifts always come with the insistence that I assume total responsibility for the decision to live and realize the possibility in the seed of the offering. Our loved ones in infinity often challenge us to evolve in ways we’d prefer to avoid.
Jeanne was instrumental to the possibility that I might grow love forward in my relationship with Jan. To achieve this, I needed to fully embrace the love I’d accrued with Jeanne but then totally take it into new frontiers with Jan, completely detached from Jeanne in a personal sense. Yet that growing love is fully given to all, as we mature into beings who love with equanimity.
Jeanne, Jan and I are fully aware that we are part of the same soul group, whose goal—similar to the goals of all soul groups—is for all its members to fully master their individual challenges so that their group, as a whole, can ascend the infinite ladder of love.
Ultimately, there is only one soul group, the soul group of infinite Oneness. Ultimately, all soul groups will merge into that Oneness. An analogy would be the human body, which consists of countless soul groups, such as the soul groups of the liver, the heart, the kidneys, etc. All these distinct organ soul groups ultimately merge into the oneness of a human body.
I would venture to assert that all lives that currently reside upon this Earth plane are members of the same soul group. Yes, I concede that within that group are smaller more intimately connected groups, but we are all extant at this time to both challenge and support each other to advance the Earth dream we all reside in, to rise another rung on the infinite ladder of love. Clearly, to love is the only way to keep that dream alive.
Each of us have the opportunity to ascend the infinite ladder of love in this life. It begins with releasing attachment to the past life of our family of origin. While cherishing its memory and foundation in love, we allow all the members of our nuclear soul group family to shed their previous forms, as they grow their individual lives forward, whether it be upon a plane of form or a plane of formlessness.
Perhaps most significantly, we must allow our evolving selves to molt, to shed the skins of completed life, in the form of attachment to old ideas of self, and to be fully present to new possibility, as we bring life and love to the unlived sides of our soul’s potential.
To love the many lives of self through the developmental stages of this life, as well as all the people with whom we’ve shared those lives, while at the same time releasing all to their new lives, is the foundation to build new love upon, as we take another step upon the infinite ladder of love.
Life offers many opportunities, some good, some not so good. Freedom of choice is a privilege of maturity, the ability to stand alone as an adult and decide the direction that is most compatible. There are all kinds of people and all kinds of directions to take, but a person of integrity, intent upon a path with heart, will easily know what direction is right. In staying connected to guidance from the heart, each life decision comes with clear instructions on how to best proceed so that good may prevail, within and without. Choose always the way of the heart, for a true heart will give true and honest advice and thus true progress may be made in the direction of the good.
