Love is...

It is February: the month of Love. I am reminded of the lyrics to an old Foreigner song entitled “I Wanna Know What Love is.”  The chorus is -

Lets talk about love
I wanna know what love is, the love that you feel inside
I want you to show me, and I’m feeling so much love
I wanna feel what love is, no, you just cannot hide

So, let’s talk about “Love.” I want to know what love is, real love; the love that can only be experienced in deep, intimate communion with the Divine expressing as the One, yet individualized as each of us. We say, “God is Love.” If that is indeed true, it follows that when we know God, we know Love, and when we know Love, we know God. God is the Love I want to know. God is the Love I want to feel. God is the Love I want to show.

I invite you to join me in affirming:

            “I am Love. I Love. I am Loved.” 

This affirmation speaks of the holy trinity of Love. It speaks of being, expressing and experiencing - three in one, inseparable and complete. Not one of those statements can be true unless they are all true. When we embrace the full meaning and power of this affirmation, then we will know what love is.

First, we must know that we are Love; the Love that God is. When we say, “I am Love,” we are claiming the Truth. We are making a firm statement of the very nature of our being. It is first a concept that is embraced by the mind, a mental understanding. As we meditate on this affirmation, it establishes itself in our hearts, the center of our being, as a personal experience of Love. With attention and awareness focused in this Truth, we become the conscious embodiment of Love.

As the embodiment of Love, Love is our natural expression. “I Love” becomes our way of being in the world. When we know that we are Love, there is no thought of anything other than Love to block the awareness, so Love flows freely. Love is what we do. To suggest to one who knows himself or herself as Love not to express Love would be like asking the sun not to shine, or the river not to flow to the sea.

The circle of Love is complete as we experience Love. As we know ourselves as Love, we express Love, and when we express Love, we experience Love. Then, we can say with assurance, “I Am Loved.” It is in giving that we receive, but Love takes no thought of receiving. Love just gives.

As Unity cofounder Charles Fillmore says in The Revealing Word,

“Divine love is impersonal; it loves for the sake of loving. It is not concerned with what or who it loves, nor with the return of love. Like the sun, its joy is in the shining forth of its nature…Love in an inner quality that sees good everywhere in in everybody…Love is the great harmonizer and healer.”

           

Quoting from my book, In This Moment – Prayers from the Well of Awareness*:

Love is the very Essence of who I am – the spark of Life. It is ignited by the slightest recognition of itself and fanned by the very thought of it. The flame of love burns hot and engulfs the heart, but does not consume it. The light glows brightly and illumines everything and everyone within its reach. Love knows only what is good and true. Love recalls not the pain of the past; neither does it dream hopefully of the future, for it is all in the moment. Nothing is needed, only the complete acceptance of itself as Its Self. Could Love be anything less than the totality of the promise kept? Love can do nothing but give, and in its giving, it receives unto itself Its Self.

Love needs nothing; it wants nothing. Love is complete in itself. Love is. I am.

             

*Available for purchase in the Unity Spiritual Center Denver bookstore or on my website: DavidHoward.com