Love, Kindness and Gratitude

This post is written as a reminder to myself about my own experience, but it is also shared here with the hope that perhaps it resonates with others.

Love is a difficult thing to simply feel when you don't have a road map to it, or you have never felt truly loved and as a result you have never been able to love yourself. It is not something that can be approached directly. Love happens when we are focusing on other things. There are times when those "other things" happen spontaneously, but more often we must cultivate those other things. Cultivating an experience that is suffused with love starts with kindness and gratitude. 

Kindness is a verb. It is a choice that can be put into practice in every day. Approaching each moment with kindness, each creature with kindness, each situation with kindness is half of the equation when living an experience of love in which you have some degree of "control."

Gratitude is the other half. It is also a choice and it has two key components. First, it requires an appreciation for whatever comes down your path into your field of awareness, whether it is "good" or "bad." Second, it requires that the critical thinking process is kept alive with the question "what lesson does this situation offer me?" as long as that question is followed by an increasing ability to learn from the answer.

Purposely being kind and appreciating the good naturally strengthens your connection to the positive things in your life. It also, delightfully and effortlessly, brings more of what you want. The result is magic. Suddenly, by increments, your world becomes more alive, more loving, more creative. The things that hold you back no longer have power and begin to fall away.

Practice kindness. Practice gratitude. Watch your ability grow through practice. Observe your practice deepen over time. Practice them without conflict within yourself and you will get in return the one thing your heart and soul yearn for over all else: love, the essential building block of a fulfilled life. Begin this way and the rest is your story, free to happen in the moment in harmony with the source of all creation.