It is said happiness and joy are attributes of love. We see two people newly in love and they seem to glow with this joyful energy. Yet how often do we also witness this kind of love shift and change in the face of external conditions that are driven by others. This unstable kind of love is often determined by another's behavior in the form of rejection. This rejection can come from family or friends. It can come from work, church and political differences. It can be racial and country of orgin generated. It results in what I call a "revolving door" kind of love, happiness and joy. If desires and conditions are met, the joy and happiness revolves around those conditions. If conditions/desires are not met, joy and happiness leaves and goes out the other side. And, of course, these conditions are mostly generated from an external world changing our internal world.
Can happiness and joy become sustainable when external conditions are not met to produce these attributes? Can there be a sustainable love that produces attributes of happiness and joy in the face of external conditions that reject us? In the face of any external condition: loss of job, death of a loved one or loss of a great love, can we remain stable in love? This list can go on and on with events in life that cause loss. Do external events need to be the reason we experience what we experience within ourselves. Or the same question can be asked, do we form internal beliefs based on others and environment? Over the last fifteen years of my lilfe I have been challenged with these questions. I have also tried to put this into an integral framework where both interior and exterior perspectives are applied.
Love must be examined closely if we are to believe joy and happiness are dirivitives of this powerful force of energy. Can love be sustainable when external conditions are not directly creating that love? I have come to believe love is the only sustainable force and I will show why by taking you through the fruit of my experience. But first lets look at what I've come to know through my direct experience.
Lets start from the beginning. Of course, I realize we must have some kind of agreement on this beginning for you to believe in my own fruitful experience. By beginning I mean how we all got here. For me there is one force of light which I call love. Out of this love: we can call this love God, Infinite presence, Spirit, Big Bang or Universe as there are many names this love goes by. Can we also agree the name isn't important and say this one source of infinite love begets all.
Out of this infinite love many souls were manifested; that would be all of us. So now we can also agree that as the many unique souls manifested, from infinite love, we are all infinite love too. We are all one with our loving God source. So it is safe now to also say this love is the foundation of "who we are". This force of powerful loving presence is always, already within all of us souls.
Now lets us look at the next step of this process. I realize there may be some differences in how we believe at this step but remember this is my story....my direct experience and what is my knowing.......But in my reading of other direct experiences, my own is very much in alignment with those and this has given me great comfort and confidence in where I am today. It is also my hope it will be of comfort to others living out their direct experience of life. Because it says we are not these separate body vessels with small ego minds. We are so powerful because when we transcend into, what some would say is higher second tier, we unite as these great souls, one with infinite source. But I'm getting a head of myself. But if we can at least agree with the process of step one and two; that there is one infinite source, one love that has manifested into many souls. One whole with many parts, yet every part comprises the whole. So now let me take you through the third step and into my experience.
God, the absolute, has manifested into many souls, the subtle many, and now these subtle souls are ready to have gross experiences. My understanding is to see this invisible essence as energy. What kind of energy still holds too much of a mystery to me. But my understanding is this powerful source of energy can't be created or destroyed. It can be changed, however, into many forms. Water, for me, is a great metaphor to understand this better. Everything on our planet, including us, cannot survive without water. And everthing is mostly comprised of water. Water can be visable and invisable. It can take many forms; ice, running water, steam, humidity, and many more. But it is clear we can't sustain without it.
Like water, we are energy beings formed out of a powerful force of pure energy. This powerful force is so mysterious in its essence, yet has potential and possibility to change in its essence. It also holds within this essence intelligence; just look at all the manifestions that are pre-wired with this intelligence. Lets just use Nature to help all agree upon this.And this intelligence of pure energy sustains Nature with exact precision. And, I believe, all of us.
So now back to this third process. The one has created the many souls, but why? Well, if I am infinite source and I believe I am, and, I have created the many souls then, just maybe, I want to have many unique experiences. And, I believe I do. Well then I am going to transform my energy, so to speak, and become visible.
So, as Infinite power, I now need to create the conditions to have a vessel, a body form, that is pre-wired with the circuitry needed to hold the many souls created to have the many unique expereinces. This pre-wiring is the love (again meaning light, powerful fire like energy that is the source that runs the entire existence.) I realize this has potential to be vey complex but, it can also be kept quite simple.
So these ego/body forms come into existence with all its circuitry of senses in order to experience life in a manifested form. But within every ego/body form is the sameness of invisible light/love, its original SELF. I've come to believe this sameness is 99% and the 1% is the unique expereince it will have while residing in the ego/body personality form.
But what happens is the form, in its beginning stages, gets too aligned with it's senses and it's external existence. It becomes attached and idenitified with the gross form, forgetting it is a beautiful soul, one with infinite source. So now we have, what I refer to, as energy drama. Energy chaos. We come to believe our very existence; our love, happiness and joy depend on the events and conditions arising out of our external world of form. We take on beliefs and behaviors that give us the illusion this is how we obtain love. Because at our core essence this is what we are and this is what we will do anything to get back too. Remember happiness and joy are attributes of love....this is our necter and what we cannot survive without if we are to be any kind of healthy or harmonious form. So the seeds of mistakes and mis-identification have been planted within the mind and heart; and those seeds grow to say that material manifestion will give us love, joy and happiness. And we begin to grow and develop from these seeds of form instead of soul/spirit. Someone once said the land can be likened to the mind. The land will grow anything you put into it; a vegetable or a weed. It doens't care as long as it gets water. Our minds will grow and develop anything we put into it too. The ego mind doesn't care. If you put love into your mind it will grow and develop from this love. But equally it will grow and develop fear and hate. However, because we are pre-wired with infinite love it is only love that will take us to re-unite with who we are. So we must choose what we want to plant.
Love, joy and happiness can only be sustained when we leave and dis-connect from ego/body identification and re-connect to "who we are." And, my experience, says this can only happen when we have some kind of higher self experience that gives us some kind of realization that something is off....something is just not right. Shadows start to appear in conscious ego mind and the world starts to collaspe. This is how it began for me. I went into therapy and thus started to address all my shadows. I begin meditation along with contemplative prayer which, for me, brought forth my shadows more. I experienced so many dark nights that I came to believe my light was gone. No more love or light. I wanted to die. My early childhood existence was painful with so much suffering and I did anything to try and find something or someone externally that would change, what within, was so dark. But, of course, this didn't work. I went from one energy drama into another. Yet, deep within a loving vibration held true. This deeper love kept pulling me inward while my ego/body kept pulling me outward. A real tug of opposites until one day I just started to surrender......that surrender has been on going.
Now, in my sixties, I find the 99%, "who I am", a beautiful unique soul, one with infinite love, is creating my joy, happiness and unconditional love. For you see, all the external conditions for so long I believed sustained me, have been ripped from me. My job is almost non-existent, there is no significant other, and my family and friends, who are many, love me from this infinite light within. In my external world, where all my security has been taken away, I find I'm happier and more joyful than I've ever been. I reach out to others, with my infinite light, knowing the external world offers uncertainty in anything. Today we can be rich, tomorrow poor. Today we can be healthy, tomorrow sick. Today we can experience the joy of our family and friends and tomorrow they may be taken from us.....The external world can never sustain us with love, joy and happiness, because it is not sustainable. It is always changing. People are drawn to my sustainable love and light because they know I'm living with the most uncertain survival in my life.They are puzzled; how do I do this they ask. This love that sustains me reaches out to help them to sustain. It is like I'm this lighthouse in the middle of my worst storm. I know someday my form will end....we all know this. But I'm not this form. It is only the house that holds the light. I'm the light.
In all my external loss I'm happy, joyful and filled with infinite love. It overflows and reaches out to touch all souls of light within their vessels. This is what sustains me. My senses now give me the potential and possibility to experience life from within as this soulful presence. I can take my blank canvas (when the external conditions you believed supported you are taken away, you're life becomes this blank canvas.) Now I have an opportunity to paint my unique expression from my soul/infinite source. My story's drama, it's manifestations up to this point, has been through my ego body personality.....all based on external conditions......what I falsely believed I desired and wanted, or what others wanted and I couldn't give to them. We've all done this haven't we? But now I can start over. From within to without. I won't say there are times the ego body tries to poke it's fear and sabatoage, but my essence of love, who I am, is stronger and greater than this small self, who is no longer real to me. I am a beautiful soul, one with infinite source of love and so are all of you. My senses now will be my paint brush and my soul supplies the paint to go out and create from love, joy and happiness. How this painting will turn out is part of the co-creative mystery and adventure. But, I believe, my soul, one with God, knows and will navigate me through. In my soul essence, "who I am" my unique finger print, my unique gift to the world of experience, will manifest. And, it will manifest out of sustainable love, expressing sustainable joy and happiness. I'm 99% sure of this certainty for all of us.
Can we all do this? A resounding YES we can. We begin in the UL quadrant. Our first responsibility is to become conscious of being a unique soul with a unique function to perform. We take care of our ego/bodies UR quadrant by letting go the energy dramas of our small minds, releasing the toxins in order to have a clear channel to express through. Next we seek out other like minded awakened souls LL quadrant to help support each other in bringing forth our gifts and unique purpose into the world, so that lastly, we can build new systems, LR quadrant and create new communities and environments from our higher soul/spirit consciousness and oneness.
With love to you all,
Mary Linda
