True Infinite Love
A gift arose with the early morning sun on my stroll today.
I had been contemplating the massive changes in my life and my experience of life since last April (when I discovered the joy we all are), when a big picture understanding struck me.
In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) it is known that we hold values that drive our attention, intention, behaviour, and beliefs. Beliefs cluster around values, and while we can loosen, erode, and replace beliefs one by one, it is a tedious and slow process because there can be many of them, and also perhaps because they are important to supporting the more important, larger value they are linked to, and so we cling to them. A faster, highly effective method is to shift the order and priority of our values.
Contemplating this and what happened to me, I noted that all of my conscious beliefs had tumbled at once, and so there must have been a major shift in a major value. And then it clearly became obvious! I knew my topmost, utmost, driving value at the time was love. But it had not shifted priority–what had happened was that top value had shifted from “love”, to “love itself“.
Let me elaborate… when we do what is called a “values elicitation”, not only do we discover the true (sometimes unconscious) values which drive your life, we discover their order of priority, and we have techniques to shift these priorities. When you shift your priorities inside, major changes happen on the outside. For example, what if your most important, driving value was love, and then it became money? You can just imagine all the major changes that would follow.
It hit me that we have not (until this moment) looked at the object of the value, i.e. if love was your highest priority–love of what?
If it is the love “of someone else,” as in a relationship, then are are attachments and needs involved. You will require a certain kind of person, and for them to be (or not be) a certain way at all times, in order for you to experience love. And of course no person will always at all times fulfill your fantasy. With this kind of love, let’s call it “attachment love”, you are actually trading needs, not being in a loving relationship. You hold hope for fulfillment of those needs. You are always on the look-out for those needs being fulfilled, or being violated. You will give and be loving so long as these needs are met, and the moment they are not, you are unhappy. You are attached to something outside of you, believing it to be your source of happiness, and you are needy, and unstable.
What you fear (like this person not fulfilling your needs), appears in mind, even if not in truth. You will believe and perceive what you don’t want to have.
Having had the object of my love ripped from me because of false appearances and this type of needy fear, I could have become jaded, and dropped love lower on my values scale. Perhaps this is what temporarily happens when someone is dumped, they move away from relationships for a while, however the innate desire to experience love remains and so eventually they venture out again.
Instead of dropping love as a priority, when I realized we are the source of love and joy, and that I could feel the love I wanted without the person–that this is actually and truly an inside fact, I shifted the object of my love to love itself.
That intention was seeded already, as there was a growing desire to give and be only love, to have a mutual dropping of the false faces and the mask of ego, to be open, and genuine, and safe in vulnerability, to have and experience unshakable, infinite love. While you cannot be assured the other will drop their defenses, the chances are better if you do first. Knowing you are the source of your happiness enables you to do this. Even if they do not open to the possibilities of true, infinite love, you can be it and thereby have it yourself.
As Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see…” To me this is a very clear, direct, instruction to be the change (inside) that you want to see (outside). The Alchemy of Love and Joy™ is the how.
The love object ripped from me (and after promises of true love and permanency), yet the desire for, and the presence of, love still remaining, I shifted my highest value onto love itself. I discovered that we don’t need an object to have the feeling or experience, and that in fact they have nothing to do with each other. I experienced and knew the full feeling and sensations of love without an object of love. Objects and people are not permanent. The love and joy of being is.
The power of the highest value is that it is a driver, it says “this is the most important, no matter what!” That combined with the fact that causing, being, and feeling love and joy is possible, no matter what, uncovers the fact that who we really are is freedom.
When the experience, or feeling itself, without object, becomes the actual value, you no longer need the object, you are not needy, you have more love to give than take, and, ironically, in the case of love, everything and everyone becomes an unattached object of appreciation, love, and enjoyment. You get far more on the “outside” than you could have ever gotten with attachment love, which limits you, puts all that impossible pressure on one person, and makes you unable to truly love them with infinite love.
The practice of The Alchemy of Love and Joy™ helps people break the belief that the outside holds their happiness, and to become self-fulfilling, to become non-attached–situation by situation. With a powerful enough experience, or repeated experiences, these old limiting beliefs can be dissolved. With a minor modification of the values elicitation process, it can be used to assist people to shift the object of their value from the outside to the inside, resulting in simultaneous mass dropping of beliefs–all at once–and this will now be incorporated into the Alchemy Retreats.
Love is still high on my values, but it is no longer the highest, because our highest value tends to be that which we do not have, and want. Now I have it. Inside. Eternally. What has become of utmost importance is concretely, experientially, beyond doubt knowing who I really am and what life and death is all about (not as a concept or thought), and that is now being revealed, and ironically, with it comes all the love, joy, gratitude, abundance, and bliss that exists within it.
Set your values high, and non-attached, and all you have ever desired will be yours. True, infinite love is a wonderful, attainable starting point.