Living in Love and Unity

Love attracts love; conflict invites conflict. Conflict is not loving and love knows no conflicts. Conflict and divisiveness evaporate and fade in the presence of love. Love is always the answer. It is never loving to welcome the illusion of separation and dwell in the thoughts, words, or acts of conflict.

This truth, that conflict is not love, is undeniable, simple, and always clear when we are in a place of peace. Nonetheless, it's not so easy to be loving in the face of harm, violence, and the selfishness that is the way of many in this world we share. Being loving in the face of conflict requires courage, often much courage. But it's the only real choice to those of us who choose to live the way of love.

Manipulating and controlling or attempting to control others is another form of divisiveness. It is not loving to attempt to persuade others, even to persuade them to higher states and truths, if they're not ready to face these values, these realities of existence we perceive as true. People can only grow from the place they are, or perceive they are, at that current stage of their development. No one has ever gone from pure fearfulness to pure love in an instant.

It takes time, choice, and a progressive set of lessons, accepted and lived, for growth to occur. To attempt to short-circuit this process is neither kind nor loving. Though our intentions be noble, to not see clearly, with compassion and understanding, the level, the “evolvedness,” the place of another on their specific and unique path, we risk creating divisiveness in the name of love. And love is not divisive. Never. Love is patient and gentle. Love leads, never forces. Love teaches, never demands. We need constantly remind ourselves of our choice to live the way of love and ever increase our mindful living of this choice, in thoughts, in words, and in action.

As we live free of the need to control the world and others in it, we begin to feel the true peace of that freedom from conflict. Others who live their lives in this way will be naturally attracted to us and those who don't will gradually fade away from our lives. The more we practice peaceful acceptance, the more the world becomes peaceful and accepting. Like always attracts like. If you are finding new people and situations of conflict in your life, look within and identify the areas of conflict in your ideas, beliefs, and values.

To believe that the world is fearful, evil, or utterly meaningless is to not forgive the world. Dwelling in this mindset of unforgiveness tends to hold us securely in this same unforgiveness. When we begin to accept that the world we perceive (whether real or not is not relevant in this specific process) truly serves a divine process, and further, that love and peace are present in the world, we can begin to truly forgive the world and all its perceived flaws.

If we stubbornly cling to the idea that the world serves no loving purpose, we find no peace in this existence. This is not love. This is not the Truth we Know in the quiet places deep within.

The more we embrace this fact, with certainty and trust, that we are One in Love, the more the world reflects this Love back to us. This is the one and only pathway to peace, lasting peace. And as we are all One in this world, the peace and love each of us accepts, embraces, and reflects, adds to the peace and love of the world.

In the unifying miracle of Love, the barriers fall away. We begin to realize that our perceptions of lack, loss, and fear lose both meaning and strength. Faith and trust allow us to live the love that is our highest calling, our highest purpose. Could there really be lack, loss, or fear in the Divine and Loving World that is our home?

All of our “negative” feelings are results of one of these core misperceptions. Anger is the result of either not receiving the love we feel we deserve or receiving love's opposites. Anger always has the illusion of lack, loss, or fear at its core. We perceive lack, and feel we didn't get what we deserved; we perceive loss, and feel we've lost something we needed; or we perceive fear and are afraid we won't get something we want or will get something we don't want. The cure for all these misperceptions is trust, trust that the Universe gives us all we need, even if what we need doesn't feel in line with what we're actually receiving.

Sadness is the result of loss, the perception that we've lost something we wanted or needed. When we trust, in life, in the process, in the Universe, sadness falls away. Grief too, falls away, and we are returned to a state of contentment, of “okayness,” of peace. Resisting the Love that is available to us, stubbornly remaining in the illusions of lack, loss, or fear, brings us more of these unwelcome illusions. Choosing faith, trust, and love, in as high a level as we are able, invites and attracts more faith, trust, and love, in time, yielding the peace that is our Home.

Heaven is peace. Peace dwells only in heaven. Heaven is the Home of Love. Peace is Love's true nature. When we allow peace, through faith and trust, we invite Love, and we invite heaven. Heaven need not be but a future hope, dream, or belief, but is available to each of us, in our present circumstances, in each moment, if only we will invite, welcome, and allow its home in us through the mindset and practice of faith, love, and trust.

Peace is our birthright, our home, our destiny. Embracing change, embracing the dismantling of our old way of thought and returning home to Love, allows our perceptions to change, to be healed, at a real and deep level, and indeed allows heaven to be our manifest and true reality.

Allowing the misperceptions to fall away, choosing love and trust in increasingly greater amounts, brings us increasingly closer to the truth of heaven that is within each of us. We need only seek heaven to see it. We need only release the illusions and embrace the truth to find it.

This allowing of the coming of heaven is only possible in a place of peaceful unity, accepting ourselves, others, and the world as a whole as a place of peaceful unity. Conflict, whether expressed in words or actions or merely dwelt upon in the mind, is the antithesis of this peace, the peace of heaven.

We have within us the ability to be loving and peaceful and to be messengers of that love and peace in the world. In loving recognition of the oneness of all of us, from a place of deep forgiveness, we can indeed be peacemakers, and in doing so we change the world to a world of peace.