So what is the goal?  In life, I mean.  What is it that we all truly aspire to?

In my early twenties I had a HUGE spiritual crisis where I felt that I had to boil everything down to what was fallible and infallible.  What I came away with is really what has shaped my life through all the years after … the ONLY infallible thing is LOVE.  That’s it … the only element in the world that cannot be compromised or tainted.  You can say, “But there are all sorts of pains and hardships caused by love!”  Well, I am talking about LOVE, not the piddling excuse for love that most of us think is what it actually is (and I include myself in that).

God’s Love, Unconditional Love, is the only thing that cannot be compromised.

What most of us know about love is that it is something we crave, aspire to, spend our lives trying to find.  But why?  Why do we have this obsession?  Well, in general “finding love” is about finding validation … you find someone that loves you and it means that you are worthwhile.  Now you can move forward and build a family, and a career, and everything else that revolves around that love.

Here’s the problem … that love is selfish (for most people at least).  It is love that is about YOU … it makes you feel validated, it makes you feel happy, it makes you feel that your life has meaning.  The more meaning you feel in your life, the more positive your feelings for the people  you “love” become.  Something goes wrong though??  A career fails, an affair, a death … all of that changes the love.  Why?  Because you don’t feel good any more, right?  You feel awful, and therefore you must seek your validation elsewhere.

That is not LOVE.

In meditating on my prior post today, “Overcoming the Negative Inner Voice“, I found myself struck by what I felt was revealed to me … that we can never truly LOVE someone, unless we have mastered loving ourselves.  If we have not become savant-level gurus of loving ourselves … the result is that our love for anyone and everyone around us … will be flawed.

We will always have a selfish aspect to our love.  We will always have some sort of manipulation going on; even if it is only sub-conscious.  We don’t even have to consciously think about it … those wagon wheel tracks have been worn down SO deep that it takes a monumental effort just to act, and think, differently.  The problem is, if you focus on those exterior issues … trying to improve how you love others, for instance … it will not be a permanent change.  You will soon revert to what is easy; what you have learned over the course of your life.

The ONLY way to truly change this is to learn how to LOVE yourself.  In a sense, you could say that loving yourself is synonymous with gaining mastery over your mind.  The difference is that, at least for me, mastering one’s on mind seems like it is about some sort of gigantic effort of will … I’ve never really understood the reward though.  However, when you view “mastery of the mind” as LOVING yourself … to me, that makes a lot more sense.  All of a sudden all of these pieces fall into place … your own health, career, relationships, etc. … when you say that LOVING yourself allows you to approach life in the purest of forms; aspiring to be like God … for me, that makes “mastering your mind” something that is not purely intellectual … it is, and affects, EVERY single level of your life!

It really has kind of blown me away … to find that loving yourself, is really the most important thing that you can do.  That is where everything starts.  Then you can move on to having a healthy relationship that is not based on selfish intent, but rather unconditional love.  You can choose a career based on what makes your True Self happy; as opposed to what is expected of you.  The list goes on and on … but it all comes as a result from loving yourself.

Treat yourself as you would treat the person you love most in your life … start there, and don’t give up … take control, whenever that negative inner voice comes along, simply refuse to listen and engage it … speak whatever mantras of Self-Love have meaning for you.  It is difficult for a while, because you are changing a lifetime of habits … but just WAIT until you see where your life goes once you have changed those habits!!!

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Religion4All is an idea: that every human being (no matter their race, religion, sexuality, social status, lifestyle, or any other possible factor) is LOVED by God; just … as … they are.

We all are loved by God, and NO religion or person has a monopoly on it. Every single person on this planet is loved equally by God … SO many are cut off from God because they are told they don’t belong. God loves everyone … we ALL are beautiful creations … we don’t need to cringe when we hear the words “God”, or “religion”, or their judgments … God LOVES us all!

There is no requirement to change in order to be LOVED by God, or to LOVE God. God is LOVE, and LOVE is God … period. There is no one who God loves more than anyone else … there are only those who choose to LOVE more … to love God more, and consequently then to love each other more. In doing so, we grow closer to God … and know God.

By opening our hearts, and minds to God (free of boundaries like religion, or social trends); by LOVING God … we are exactly where we are meant to be. If we maintain that openness, never allowing any person or event to make us close our hearts, we will be guided by God to be who we are meant to be.

In that space of openness we can then live a life of LOVE, and be guided to where we are meant to be … forever in LOVE.

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