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Loving kindness – can it really transform you?

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Loving kindness is a state of mind where we actually cherish the existence, happiness and well-being of others. If we take the trouble to cultivate that, no matter what our personal circumstances are, our lives will be rich and full. Wannabe superstars, internet sensations and get-rich-quick merchants, please take note.

The natural motivation arising from loving kindness is to make the world a better place for everyone. It may be
that what we do directly affects only one life, no matter. Rather than seeing what we can get out of the world forloving kindness world ourselves, we see what we can put into it. This is not what our traditional education and upbringing always
prepares us for, and certainly not what the modern media culture often presents as successful living.

The extraordinary effect of loving kindness and how to live it

A person who is filled with loving kindness radiates a very special quality. Think of a person who has affected you at some time by their kindness towards you. Wasn’t there something special emanating from them? Perhaps at the time, or maybe later on, that evoked in you some warmth, appreciation or even love towards them.

Imagine someone who felt that loving kindness towards everyone they came across. Think of the effect they would be having on everything and everyone around them. There would be a tremendous aura about them, wouldn’t there? It would touch and disarm almost everyone and they would have a warmth and smile that would melt hearts. If you have had the good fortune to be in the presence of such a person, you will know how utterly remarkable an effect there is.

If you can imagine it, it’s possible

Take a moment to imagine yourself to be someone similar to that. What does it feel like? It might feel perfectly natural or it could feel a little strange at first. If you can imagine it, it means that such a state of being is possible to achieve. If it is too far a stretch for the imagination now, just try to think friendliness and kindness towards all those you come into contact with during your daily life.

By thinking in this way, life starts to change. Little by little, the natural kindness that is inherent in all of us will surface in you more and more. Okay, there will be occasions or even periods when it won’t be there because challenges and painful memories will cause it to run for cover at times. That’s normal, but persist and enjoy being in that state of kindness as often as possible and the benefits will start to accumulate.

So be genuinely kind and allow that beautiful flower of your heart centre to blossom.

Based on an extract from The Great Little Book of Happiness available here.

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Love everybody – is that possible?

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It is a rare human being who can love everybody. We all want to be happy, but even though loving others brings greater happiness, we don’t love everybody equally.

In energy terms when we feel love, the vital heart centre opens. It is like a flower opening to the sun. It can give us an amazingly deep experience of joy. But sometimes the heart centre is open only a little and can even be shut tight. To love everybody is an ideal but right now we will probably find that although at times we feel loving, at others we don’t feel love at all. If we are honest with ourselves, there is just neutrality or indifference towards the majority of other people.

Why it is difficult to love everybody

There is in essence one reason for our difficulty – we see others as separate from us and as being different in nature. When we love, it is love everybody choicebecause we recognise in the object of our love something akin to our own nature. When we don’t love, that recognition isn’t there. There is something alien about the other person.

Beneath the veneer of our personality, we all share the same spiritual nature and the purpose of life is to find that nature within us. At times we may see it and we recognise everyone else as exactly the same as us at the very root of their being. Then a resonance occurs that can cause ripples of energy that trigger a sensation of deep joy in the heart.

So often, though, that recognition isn’t there and that lack is the cause of all conflict. Disputes, jealousy, anger and dishonesty all arise from this. All negativity and all indifference stem from this wrong view. Yet the truth is that if I give to you, I give to myself; if I take from you, I take from myself. If I love, I enrich myself; if I feel anger or hostility, I deprive myself.

How this selectiveness affects our happiness and well-being

By failing to see that everyone is of the same nature as us, the heart centre oscillates. It opens and it closes.

The effect of this is that our happiness fluctuates. When love is present, our vitality increases – we radiate energy and our aura expands; if we don’t love, they recede. This happens because love connects us to the universe; when we love, recognise and connect with others, we “plug in” to universal energy, so to speak. At other times, we run on our own batteries, which have limited life and power.

We have choice

By choosing not to love – and whatever we may think, there is a certain amount of conscious choice in it – we restrict ourselves. We decline to engage fully with life. Okay, painful experiences in the past may be the reason for some of that non-engagement; but much of it arises from apathy and selfishness. Love is passionate, fiery and outgoing and its radiance nourishes, increasing our happiness and well-being. By not loving at times, we cut ourselves off from that.

Some might argue that it’s human nature to be selective because we have been conditioned in this way. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything about it. Indeed, we should do something about it because surely our spiritual duty in this life is to improve ourselves as human beings and so help to improve the world.

Based on an extract from The Great Little Book of Happiness available here.

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Detox the mind instead of the body – with love

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detox appleDetox is big business. For years, there has been well-marketed  enthusiasm about detoxifying the body. “So-and-so’s (insert name of famous person) marvellous 7, 14 or 28 day detox plan will make you feel so much younger, vital, radiant etc. etc.” Bookshops abound with titles on the subject and, inevitably, celebrity-endorsed products are available in shops and pharmacies for us all to spend our cash on.

Perhaps we have moved on a little from one-food fasts and the fashion of colonic irrigation. Instead, now we can buy gadgets that liquidise vegetable matter that no-one would normally eat so that we can pour various green or brown concoctions down our throats without having to chew or taste anything. Who knew paradise would be like this? Call me old-fashioned, but what some people swallow as super-food looks too much to me like the slurry farmers spread on the fields around here.

No doubt some of these plans, diets and so forth work well. Whether it is due to laziness or denial I’m not sure, but this form of self-torture doesn’t appeal to me. I still have my own teeth and I’d like to keep on using them for as long as possible. And if I choose to eat kale now and again, it will be cooked and chewed before I swallow it.

For some folk this strange way of ingesting food as liquid is the bees knees. In the meantime, the makers of the various high-speed blenders, bullets and whatever else are no doubt very grateful. .And in all fairness, it has been proved beyond any doubt that filling the body with toxins and junk food can make us feel pretty awful, so there must be benefits. Please don’t get me wrong – a detox may well do a lot of good.

Detox the mind as well as the body

But life isn’t ruled by the body and we are not just a body, so if we are going to detoxify ourselves, wouldn’t it be good to find something that detoxifies the mind and emotions as well? After all, it is the mind and emotions that govern our thinking, our speech and our behaviour – which includes the act of putting food into our bodies.

If we can look after the mind and emotions, the body will follow suit. It never ceases to amaze me that we humans are quite happy to spend time in the bathroom in the morning so that we look presentable and our bodies don’t get whiffy but very few people are prepared to spend a few minutes preparing the mind for the day ahead.

Some spiritual teachers with considerable insight have said that if we could see the polluting effects of our minds and emotions on the world, we would be shocked to see how devastating they are – far worse than what we normally term pollution.

Love is the greatest detox

Love purifies because it uplifts our mind. The “rate of vibration” of the mind is raised when we express or feel detox treelove. In old spiritual parlance, the mind is quickened.

As the mind becomes lighter, so do the emotions and our vitality – we are happier and have more energy. We know this from our own experience. As these aspects of our being become lighter, dross or impurities are thrown off.

Imagine a plate or a turntable that is spinning slowly. Objects on it stay where they are purely from their inertia; their own weight keeps them where they are. Now imagine the spinning action speeding up. The objects start to move towards the edge through centrifugal force. The faster the rate of spin, the closer to the edge they go and eventually they are thrown off.

Something similar happens to our system. Negative thinking and negative emotions start to get thrown off by the lighter, positive energy that starts to flow through us as we love more and become happier. This effect on mental, emotional and vital levels of our being also carries through to the physical level. Those who have a deep love for all around them build up fewer toxins from the environment because the body throws them off far more readily.

So love is a great purifier. No, it’s the greatest purifier we can have. We don’t go around trying to love in order to have a “grand detox”, of course, but it is helpful to understand that love is hugely transforming and has only positive benefits. And it’s free.

Based on an extract from The Great Little Book of Happiness available here.

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Love is a real power so why not zap someone?

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Love is real power. Yes, real power. It is energy, not just a feeling. Could we zap someone with it?

Everything in the universe is energy and love is part of it. If love weren’t energy, it wouldn’t affect anything but we know from our experience that it does; it changes things. We know if we love, we feel different, our body feels different, our vitality changes and life is better. It may help us to be healthier and live longer. It certainly improves the quality of life. So love does something.

Cosmic glue

Some ancient wisdom teachings speak of love as being the unifying energy of the universe. It holds things love healingtogether and provides cohesiveness. It is like cosmic glue. We can see in families and other groups that where there is selfless caring those groups hold together very strongly. Those who have the gift of being able to see energies and auras describe the beautiful colours that emanate from people when they express love. Simply, we radiate energy of a very special kind when we love.

If we think, then, of love in terms of energy rather than simply as a feeling, we can begin to understand that it is a hugely transforming agent. It transforms us and, on an energy level, it can affect others. One of those effects is to heal.

Love as healing power

When we love, we send forth a great wave of positive energy and, because of its tendency to bring about cohesiveness, it heals. Love will heal rifts in relationships of all kinds, we know that; but it can also help to bring about healing of the body and emotions. A person who loves will tend to heal more quickly than someone who is very negative; they will also tend to fall ill less often because the immune system is stronger. This is partly because the happier we are, the more endorphins (“happy biochemicals”) the body produces.

There is also another aspect: the person who loves has less tension and restriction in the body with the result that both blood and chi (the vital energy of the body) flow more easily. So, quite unwittingly, the lover automatically nourishes his or her own body. This provides conditions in which the body will heal more easily. Negative emotions, those feelings that rise up and cause us pain, will arise less often because the positive energy of love will tend to neutralise or at least lessen the impact of them and so, over a period of time, the emotional body becomes healthier too.

Love power: the affect on others

By loving, we don’t just heal ourselves, though. We create a positive energy field around us that affects other people. Unless the other person blocks us off by putting up mental barriers, our positive energy will bring about some effect in their energy field. It may only be a very small effect and perhaps just a fleeting one but some change there will be. If the other person is very negative, the effect will probably be negligible but even so, there are many who recount instances where an apparently negative person has been less so when loving or healing thoughts have been directed towards them. Imagine, then, the effect if the other person is receptive: they will receive a good boost of energy and healing processes will be enhanced by that.

Really successful healers are not those who just “lay on hands”, although that can be an effective method in certain circumstances; no, the really successful healers are those who express genuine loving-kindness, irrespective of who the other person is. Those in the medical and healing professions who truly love their work and care for their patients achieve far more than those who don’t. But we don’t have to be a healer in the traditional sense or in one of the caring professions in order to heal. If we are human and love, we heal because that is one of the amazing effects of this very real power.

So can we zap?

Most certainly! And try this – when you are out and about and see other people (and animals, for that matter) send a wave of good feeling from your heart out to them. Don’t say anything and don’t stare, just silently but consciously project goodness and kindness towards them. You’ll be amazed at the results.

Adapted from an extract in The Great Little Book of Happiness which is available here.

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Related posts:

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  2. Detox the mind instead of the body – with love
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