This article has been the direct result from questions received regarding the booklet “How to be Intimate with yourself.” The term ‘intimacy’ is an embracement of our humanity.
A man who was diagnosed with serious eye damage due to glaucoma and cataracts followed the doctor’s advice to medicate but the results in taking eye-drop drugs produced side-effects in exhaustion and lack of clarity. Turning within to embrace this problem with the full knowing that nothing happens by chance, he wanted to know what was the cause of it. No answer emerged except a deeper knowing that we are the cause of everything that happens to us. He dwelt on this knowing that he is the Cause and not an effect. This self-responsibility opened up ways to look at this situation differently. He stopped the medications, got rid of his prescription glasses while out walking and fully embraced his blurred vision. Soon this acceptance brought a different viewpoint. Few months later he was called for an appointment at St. Paul’s hospital for some eye-photos and visual-field test. His condition remained the same and the structure of the damaged eyes revealed no change, however, the visual field-test revealed something entirely different – his actual vision improved. Embracement was the healing factor.
In my work conducting one-on-one sessions has proved to be an eye-opener over the years. The body’s ability to heal itself is remarkable and miraculous when there is the embracement of what happens to it.
Just a few weeks ago from this writing I had a client on Skype who was suffering from insomnia, aches and pains, headaches and frequents bouts of anxiety. After an intensive hour of deep exploratory questions and openness of heart listening with deep intent, she reported great progress just from one session – had a good sleep for the first in a long time followed with a more relaxed attitude with hardly any aches. Her embracement of her situation after we talked became the healer.
“The world is falling into greater chaos. The whole earth is quickening. The heart of humanity is quickening in anticipation of the culmination of this epoch, this era of your history, to come into harmony, and into non-separation. In this timing, as the change of consciousness, the expansion, is brought forth in these last years, so will the fear also be brought forth—the polarity of harmony—at last to be embraced into the Light.” (P’taah’)
What is Embracement?
It is to love – to learn to love every little thing until nothing you feel can ever feel wrong again. It sounds like a tall order when you first read it or hear about it, until you start discovering something within you that love was always your greatest love. It is natural to enjoy, to want to be loved, wanted, appreciated, paid attention to and feel you belong. Love is complete, whole and it swallows up everything else and turns it into itself. Love loves to love. As children we cannot do without it; as teenagers we seek it constantly and as adults we suffer deep pain without it.
The most important thing, the most outstanding thing is you, it is who you are in your natural state. It is your unlimited potential for love. Love is the most extraordinary thing and is the beauty and glory of life. Nothing has meaning without love because it is the ultimate truth of you. The best definition of human being is this – you are love, period. When love is not experienced as a feeling then there is emotional suffering immediately.
All emotional suffering is a lack of love for oneself – lack of self-respect, self-hate, feeling less-then, feeling incomplete as if something is wrong with you, feeling as if you are not good enough. All guilt, shame, fear and suffering stem from loss of love. We hang on to people we love because it is our way of feeling that love. Once we discover our true nature as love then we no longer cling because oneness is not only the law but the only truth. When you love who you are just as you are then you automatically accept and love others. Nothing is separate from anything else.
Love is not acquired, attained like a goal or accomplished. Love is this very moment as you read this and it can never be any other way.
When we feel love by allowing ourselves to experience life as it is then we are filled with gratitude, joy and a peace that surpasses the intellectual understanding.
Did you ever feel the wonder of life around you? Did you ever feel heart-felt laughter? Did you ever feel so happy that nothing bothered you at that moment? What is that, other than love-fulfilled?
How often people have asked and sought enlightenment thinking that it was something to be achieved. What is enlightenment except loving every facet of life as it is.
When you feel love then you are everyone you are with – there is no separation, no judgement and no fear.
When you feel love then you are being all you can be, in fact you are God. Did you ever wonder who or what God is? Pause for a moment and contemplate is – isn’t God love itself? It is not an entity outside of you since nothing can possibly be outside of you. God IS! These two words of “GOD IS” says it all and you need no further knowledge. Once you fully realize the truth of these two words you have grasped the simplicity and yet profoundly of the ultimate truth.
We feel the richness of life when we love and pulsate with that love. Just pause and FEEL out all the qualities that love generates and you have the sum total of not only what you are but all you can be. There is nothing greater than love and there is nothing that can be outside of love.
How to regain love
(embrace that which is not love)
When we don’t feel love how do we regain it? Simply say ‘thank you’ to the feeling that is now devoid of love. A feeling devoid of love could be a hundred different feelings of negativity such as boredom, listlessness, fatigue,apathy, indifference, gloominess, sadness, loneliness, heaviness, fear, anxiety even leading to depression and desperation. What are these feeings but a loss of love. This is why even in relationship we fear loss of love or rejection of love. We can’t help feeling either love or fear.
Love or Fear
There are basically only two emotions – love or fear. Emotional feeling is not true feeling but a conditioned state. For example, if you haven’t known much love as a child between 1 to 7 years of age then chances are you suffer some inner drama and fear because you have been deprived of the very life-force of love. So emotions show up as either emotional love (needy love) or fear.
Love is wholeness and therefore life itself known as Oneness. When this fear is not experienced then we suffer some form of fear either subtle or gross. Subtle fear can be skepticism, cynicism, lack of trust, loss of innocence, resentment, judgement, disliking, self-consciousess or discomfort. Gross fear could be depression, anger, desperation, suicide-proness, self-hate, deep loneliness, paranoia or desire to hurt and kill.
So how can we overcome these fears if we have never known love as a child and many fears have taken over our life?
Fears arise because love seems to be missing and so feel unsafe, insecure and alone. However, here’s the good news. You don’t need to get love – you are IT already whether you like it or not at the moment. You are born in love simply because Love is Oneness and nothing can be separate from it. Yet it is this unawareness of our Oneness that generates feelings of separation. Therefore, just as LOVE is Oneness, so is fear separation.
How do you deal with moments of fear?
Since love is like the sun always shining yet it can be covered up by clouds and gives us the feeling that it is not present. Similarly when we suffer depression, upsetness, sadness or gloominess (any fear) we hav merely covered up the love with the clouds of darkness instead of the ever present light. So how do we embrace this darkness? How do we start?...
Well, the first rule is this – while gripped in the feeling of darkness are you willing to see the light even though you don’t actually see it? Just like when it’s a dark day hiding the sun you can still ‘see’ that the sun is hidden above the clouds. If the answer is ‘yes’ then simply say “thank you for the gloominess or sadness or upsetness or hurt or whatever. Just say, “thank you for making me aware that even though I don’t see the sun yet I know it’s there.” It is this simple to embrace every negative quality that reacts upon you.
Some people have said that they can’t get rid of the drama even if they tried. So what’s wrong there? There’s nothing ever wrong but simply do not feel like getting rid of the anger yet because they still seek justification for the feeling no matter how dark, and, it is also okay.
If you feel this need for justification of your anger then acknowledge it and say “Thank you” or making me aware that I wanted to feel validated, acknowledged and that, my friend, gives you the validity and justification you needed. Remember always – you are NOT a victim. Always acknowledge how you feel without judging or blaming another. How you are is how YOU ARE!! The world of your experience is the world of your perception.
Therefore, how you FEEL is how you have chosen (consciously or unconsciously) to feel. You are not a victim. No one has the power over you unless you give them that permission to have that power over you consciously or unconsciously.
You can learn to love fear when it happens by simply understanding that fear is the frustration of love. Fear is a fear of loss of love whether losng someone physically through death, rejection or loss.
All feelings are either love or fear, period. So, how is negative energy not love when our true nature is love? Negative energy is still the need for love but it is like two sides of the same coin. Love is the sun and fear is facing away from it and seeing the shadow.
Suppose you are feeling jealousy, anger, frustration and so on, how are these feelings love?
Okay, suppose you are feeling jealous now? Isn’t it because you want to feel loved and instead you feel the loss of that love?
Suppose you feel angry? Isn’t it because you are not getting your own way; you are not feeling in control? Why do we need control? Isn’t it because our heart knows we are sovereign beings, oneness-love itself?
Why do we get easily hurt?
Isn’t it because we want to feel special? Why do we want to feel special? Isn’t it because we know deep inside that we are love and therefore special?
Why do we act defensively and attack as a reaction?
Isn’t it because you take yourself to be the image you have made of yourself? Isn’t your image a personal construction made up from imagination?
Why do you need to protect it? Isn’t it because down deep inside you know it is not real and struggle not to face that fact? If you knew that your image was just an image, why would you want to protect it?
Why do we protect and fear being vulnerable?
Isn’t it because you fear having someone see you as you think you really are?
Here’s the good news – you are NOT how you think you are at all. That’s a fact that once realized is very liberating. You are LOVE itself! So, what if you were to embrace your vulnerability instead of protecting it? Can you imagine the freedom and love that would emerge from such embracment?
“But it takes a lot of courage and I don’t have that courage!!” Such a statement is understandable because ,most people do not feel they deserve the love they already are…isn’t that a kick in the pants?
Here’s a way to picture embracement and carry it out! …
Visualize a sad lost little child feeling unwanted, unloved and carries the pain of feeling rejected. You look at this child and feel compassion and love thinking, “How could anyone not love this child?”
You approach this child filled with so much warmth and love that you kneel down, hold its hands and look straight into its eyes without saying a word. You are so filled with this clear understanding of love that you convey this energy into the child’s heart. The child’s face softens and the sadness becomes replaced with a bright look of trust.
This ‘child’ is your pain and the compassion you have towards it is your embracement of it.
Forgiveness
“A Course in Miracles uses the same approach but uses the label forgivenss. How are they the same?”
The best definition of forgiveness is given by “A Course in Miracles” when it says that true forgiveness happens when there is the realization that there’s nothing to forgive.
Forgiveness is not forgiving anyone for what they have said or done but to see that whatever happened was your perception only. Why is it like this? All acts that we deem ignorant, repellent, cruel or hurtful are simply how we feel what we are looking at. For example, if you see someone beating a dog you might exclaim, “but I can never see myself beating a dog and so how is that in my perception?” It is not the act itself that mirrors you but your reaction to it. Anything that makes you react means it is a sensitive issue in your memory.
Now, how does forgiveness work with embracement? Embracement cannot happen until we forgive what we see. If you ‘see’ your act of anger as justified then you couldn’t embrace it honestly. You would nurse your anger as your right. Therefore, would you rather be right or happy?
At this point embrace your need to justify your anger and your need to continue the anger feeling. This honest acknowledgment will help you to see how you choose your emotions and that, in itself, will give you the strength to take self-responsibility.
It is through self-responsibility that we forgive and embrace into our true nature.
Here are some facts about love. Love is Oneness and therefore
anyone you judge is self-judgment. How you feel about another mirrors that feeling in you. When you love another then that feeling is in you. When love is experienced you are being yourself…your natural Self. The moment you judge by making something wrong, you have that ‘wrong’ inside you. Anything that stays inside you that is other than love places you automatically into misalighnment with the flow of life. When you are out of flow you automatically feel negative. The feeling of negativity is a clear indicator that you are out of sync with the universe. Once you experience something negative you cannot get rid of it or hope it goes away or control it – all you can do is embrace it.
The difference between thinking and feeling!
Unless we love who we are it will be difficult to know the difference between thought and feeling. Why? -- when we are not in-tune with our being we become active mentally thus spent most of our energy thinking-about-it. People who are negative very often find it hard not to think most of the time…
Thinking is always ‘about-it!’
Feeling is always immediate and direct.
Here’s an example, let’s say you write a book about love and know all there is to know about it as far as songs and poetry and stories go. You are fascinated with love. But here’s the kicker – you can’t know love until you FEEL IT in your heart pulsing and alive. Love is not a thought but a feeling, a knowing of joy, it’s feeling alive.
You cannot love another until you love you. But here’s the good news! – you already love you but you just don’t know it. And, it is this lack of knowing that eats away at you believing there’s something wrong or you are missing something when in truth it is all a conception created by the thinking part of you based on memory.
“You say that all feeling is immediate and direct, how about negative feeling then?”
Negative feeling is immediate and direct whether it is a reaction or self-absorption. The reason it is termed ‘negative’ because it negates the love we are in truth. In this feeling we suffer until we are able to become conscious of who it is that is suffering! Who is suffering is our past – the self-image we created based on memory from past experiences. However, if we embrace the moment as it is without the story (which is past) then we remain present, immediate and direct with the sensations in the body. We embrace the sensation as that lost child within us and show it compassion (forgivenss is automatic). Then healing takes place.
How do you start feeling the love you are?
By embracing every negative part of you; to become intimate with every human weakness until you can start feeling the yearning within it for freedom and goodness. You can only find the goodness through that which is not good. Why? -- because that which is ‘not good’ is not our natural state and is therefore a conditioned programmed concept.
Here’s an illustration – one day you get hurt by feeling that your lover rejected you. You ‘listen’ to this feeling as the sensation in your body, you get in touch with that ache. You feel the heaviness within your heart area. You touch or tape that area and say, “Even though this body feels the ache of rejection yet I fully and deeply accept myself.” (the more feeling you put into it, the more power goes into your healing process. After doing it for a few times you will start to feel greater energy. This energy becomes your connection to your love that RETURNS TO YOU.
You are a human being
When yu embrace the human part of you, the seeking and never-satisfied part of you, it will become bonded with the Being and the two integrate.
Why do most people find it hard to love? Isn’t it because they do not love who they think they are?
When you embrace a fear completely, where’s the fear? All negative emotions have one thing in common. Do you know what that is? It is called resistance! This resistance is found in all negative emotions. When we embrace a negative, it stops being a negative because of one simple rule – the negative resistance has been accepted, loved, embraced and therefore it is seen as the illusion it always was. The reason most ‘negative’ people hang on to their feelings is because they want validation, justification for their feelings and so there are other factors that are now in control such as pride, self-image and the need to control. Now here’s the beauty – the moment we embrace it all as being okay and truly meant it then all resistance is gone and our innocent nature surfaces an a sweetness emerges. This is how fear is turned and transformed into love.
Here are more facts about love – all healing is done through love – doctors, nurses, therapists and helpers can give us a hand in encouraging us to relax and feel okay but love is the only true healer. This is why Jesus performed such miracles of healing. Jesus was the personification of love.
Remember always – there’s only LOVE and nothing else is real but only relative to it. Anything else you think you are is just imagination.
Now we come to the million dollar question? What is love? A billion people will give a billion different definitions because love is the mystery and Beingness of Life. It is the force that rotates the earth around the sun. It is the gravity that makes us walk upright in a fast moving planet. It is the force that turns a fetus into a living human being. It is the energy that blooms a flower. It is what keeps your heart beating, blood circulating and everything doing its proper thing. It is the highest intelligence. Nothing works but love. The best laid plans in the world cannot come close to love. There is no success without love. When you finally embrace a negative, it gives you the clarity to see its illusion and makes apparent your inner richness, gratitude and glory.
Tomorrow when you get up in the morning to greet the day just say thank you for another day. Feel the blessing of your body, of being a unique ‘you’ and yet part of it all. Say “I AM” and know beyond a doubt that this “I AM” is the holiest, grandest being there is.
NOTE: Send your questions to burtharding@shaw.ca
Website -- www.burtharding.com
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