Believe in Love

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace. 

—Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnet 43

I imagine many of us recognize those opening lines to Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s famous poem. That first line is the most important question we can ask ourselves. How do I love…myself, my family, my neighbors, and my friends? How do I love strangers? How do I love the world? 

Love is always a choice. Sometimes it can seem like a difficult one when a person has wounded us—especially when they continue to cause chaos or pain in our lives. (In such cases, loving sometimes means walking away so that we can allow healing to take place in order to restore the true essence of our hearts.)

But love is hardwired into the soul. Love is the very expression of our beings and, therefore, the most natural feeling to experience when we are aligned with the spirit. In every moment of our human experience, the Divine loves us—every one of us—without exception or qualification. The greatest gift we can offer anyone is our love, and, in sharing it, that gift becomes the most precious one we can give ourselves too.

Valentine’s Day for most is a celebration of love. What if we chose to live that love fully and with complete focus and determination every single day of the year?

Many of us find deep meaning in the line from Scrooge near the end of A Christmas Carol when he says, “I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!” 

I’m suggesting the same sort of thing. Can we attempt to let the spirit of Divine Love live in our hearts each day and never miss an opportunity to share it—with the person at the grocery store checkout, with the sad souls we pass on our journey, with our closest loved ones, with every child of light who walks into our lives or crosses our path?

I’m not saying it’s always easy. I have been wounded so many times I can’t count them, and some of those injuries cut so deep it took decades to heal them. Like many of you, I also see quite clearly the ills of the world and the forces of shadow at work. Yet, I refuse to let that dampen my acceptance of the spirit’s truth: Love! 

Many years ago an experiment began for the purposes of peace. I still feel blessed when I think of how much shifting occurred as a result of it. The premise was simple: Whenever we encounter a disturbance in life, something that appears detrimental, we are invited to respond, “Only LOVE prevails.” 

At the end of our lives, after all other considerations have passed into nothing, what remains is love. But we can choose not to wait for all else to pass away. We can decide to live love now, to honor its wisdom and its grace and fill our hearts with it as often as possible. My fondest hope is that we love one another so much that all our differences fade into the background of what was and we spend each moment in love with life and honoring each other.

In this moment, I extend the love of my spirit and my heart to each of you. Whether you know me well or not at all is of no consequence. You are my brothers and my sisters. We are kindred in the Light, and I shall love you all my days and far beyond this life.
Thank you for shining!

Love Affirmation: I Am the Flame of Divine Love flooding my being with luminous liquid light to wash away all wounds and open my heart to love overflowing.

Live in True Light.
Open to Creation’s Flow and be a
Vessel of Eternal Love.
Embrace universal grace.

These are Divine messages I received from the angels:

To know the true Self is to know Love abiding and eternal. To offer that love to every aspect of your being and to all life is to love the Creator. Give love, receive love, BE LOVE!

In Pure Love and Light you were born into existence. Your heart and soul hold the very essence of that everlasting, perfect Light and Love. In this time of awakening, you are asked to expand your heart-soul flames, to remember and to live your Divine origins so that you may share in every moment that perfect gift with all of Life.

You pave the path to love when you see through the vision of the heart. All Divine Creations are masterpieces of complete beauty when viewed through the truth of the soul.

In your deepest heart you know this truth. It echoes through your being. You were created as a perfect soul of Light. You were born of Divine Love. The stream of Love from the Creator flows freely and fully to all. It is available to you in every moment. The mis-creations of fear have built a dam in the personal life stream of humans. Only by removing these boulders, these blocks, from your Channel of Light can you access fully the truth of your soul, the perfection of your being. Now is the time to claim your right to LIVE LOVE!

In the third dimension, one cannot rise without employing flawless forgiveness, for freedom is found in this gracious gift of Light. The capacity to forgive lives in every human heart. When you allow forgiveness to rule your life, you truly begin to rise to the level of Divine Relationship.

Open your heart and mind to the flow of joyful harmony and love, for when you seek in such a state you cannot help but shift toward your goal. 

Healing Prosperity Issues

Reiki1-2TemplateCpyRAs a member of a professional Reiki network, I received a question posed by someone else in the group about how we can deal with abundance issues both for ourselves and the world. Below is the response I posted along with a few other thoughts I hope will be helpful to all who seek to move beyond struggle and into harmony regarding the issue of financial security.

As Lightworkers, how can we deal with prosperity issues and the global marketplace?

The answer first and foremost begins within ourselves. We need to work consciously and diligently to clear/heal our own issues regarding prosperity. This takes place on many levels.

1. Clear and balance chakras: All the chakras play a role in this, but the heart chakra seems to be key. Healing issues of unworthiness and releasing feelings of lack from the heart center is vital. Also, working to clear the lower chakras can help tremendously. We can work to heal survival issues that block the base/root chakra and consciously breathe nourishing, supportive energy up from the Earth. We can clear the sacral center for greater ease in manifestation on the material plane and balance the solar plexus to release fears, increase a sense of personal empowerment and align the will with the Higher Will.

2. Heal emotional and mental issues related to prosperity: I recommend the wonderful book called Abundance through Reiki by Paula Horan. It’s great for anyone working to overcome prosperity issues whether or not they have taken Reiki.

Reiki practitioners who have learned the techniques at Level 2 Reiki can make use of the emotional symbol techniques to ingrain prosperity affirmations within the subconscious and the energy centers. Creating your own affirmation based on self-exploration works best, but you also can find a plethora of abundance affirmations on the web by plugging that topic into your search engine. Get ideas from these and then reword the affirmation(s) to align with your specific needs/intentions and your way of thinking/processing.

Once you have your affirmation ready, surround yourself with protective, loving energy, center yourself, align with the light of your spirit through meditation, and impart affirmations using the emotional symbol techniques learned in Reiki 2. Getting into a deep meditative state and centering first enhances this experience. Give yourself Reiki for at least 10 minutes prior to using the emotional symbol in order to fully relax and open to the energy.

If you have never learned Reiki or haven’t moved to Level 2, you can still use the affirmation technique. Say a prayer to anchor your affirmation within your subconscious and in your chakras. Then get into a deep meditative state and center yourself aligned with the Light of Source above and the core of the Earth below. Imagine a beautiful, perfect line of golden white light flowing between the center of the Universe/Source/the Divine and the center of the Earth through your core. Call on the Divine Life Force to gently flow through you to empower your affirmation(s). Repeat this daily as needed until you begin to “own” that sense of abundance as part of your normal way of thinking and living.

In doing this personal work, we are able to hold the energy of prosperity, which can bring great blessings into our own lives AND also touches everyone we meet with that frequency. Think of yourself like a radio tower sending out waves of energy far and wide. What we do personally to enhance our own vibrations and hold a higher frequency can affect the greater whole.

3. We also can honor the concept of energy exchange on a daily basis. We can allow the circle of that exchange to be completed in every experience in our lives to the best of our abilities so that no one is left feeling less than another.

4. We can relinquish fear-based judgments. Getting into the habit of catching ourselves and clearing those judgments as they’re in progress keeps judgments from anchoring detrimental energy in our fields and allows us to move beyond the fear-entrenched habit of judging. While “discernment” aligns us with what is beneficial for each of us, “judgment” simply spreads the energy of fear, which is what we need to clear in order to move to a higher ideal.

One aspect of judgment closely linked to the fear of lack—something even the most conscious among us sometimes might miss—is pitying another person. We may think of pity as a form of compassion, but these are entirely distinct from one another. Compassion says to the person, “I understand and I love you. I will stand with you in strength as you empower yourself to move beyond your current state.” On the contrary, pity says, “Clearly you are weak and have no choice but to remain in this state. I’m sorry this is true, but true it is. Go ahead and stay right where you are. I will enable you to remain stuck in your story.”

All forms of judgment, even pity, place the judger and the judged on unequal footing with the latter beneath the former.

We are one. Any inadequacy we see in another exists within us on some level. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t feel compelled to judge. We might discern that which is out of alignment with our own well-being, of course, for this is simply self-preservation, but the moment we step into judgment, which places someone beneath us, we diminish the other person and ourselves.

The difference between discerning and judging can be difficult to define. Perhaps this example will help: If I discern that it is appropriate not to engage a business partner or associate whose values place money at the top of their priorities, I’m simply aligning with my values based on the knowledge at hand. If I judge someone as greedy and shun or criticize that person, I energize greed within that individual and myself.

5. Think beneficial thoughts: In addition to avoiding judgments, we can be more focused on positive thinking and retraining thought patterns that no longer serve us. Of course, the Reiki 2 technique for emotional healing also assists with this. Again, getting into the habit of catching ourselves and clearing detrimental thoughts in the moment, consuming them with violet flame and replacing them instantly with beneficial affirmations, can assist greatly in retraining the mind and creating an environment energized to receive blessings. (Note: If help is needed in this process, energetic cleansing sessions and Sacred Heart Soul Healing may be of assistance.)

6. Use conscious languaging: It’s vital to pay attention to the words we choose in our everyday conversations. An important aspect of retraining the mind toward greater benefit involves creating an established framework for conscious language. We can begin by repeating affirmations each day. If we hone and alter the language in these often to reflect the shifts happening in our lives, they won’t become stale. We need to “up the ante” on our affirmations to create greater impact over time.

Beyond affirmations, choosing our words carefully will go a long way toward enhancing our lives. Thoughts given voice are more powerful than those that simply pass fleetingly through the mind. If we constantly vocalize dissatisfaction, discomfort, etc., we energize the condition we rue and create more congestion in our energy bodies.

Therefore, we need to work on improving our vocabularies, having in our minds all manner of joyful words and expressions, keeping them ever at the ready for use in our daily discussions. At the same time, it’s most helpful to stop empowering phrases like “economic crisis” by repeating them over and over. This country and the world were experiencing this mindset when I first wrote this article, and that phrase was repeated often in the news of the time (2009). In order to shift beyond this energy, I altered the title of the article when I originally posted it. The second half of the title had been “Alleviating Economic Turmoil,” but I decided that phrase energized the very conditions I wished to “alleviate.”

Another aspect of beneficial languaging, speaking truth can be very empowering. If we present our truths consciously, shaping our words with an awareness of their energy and effect on ourselves and on listeners, honoring all parties involved, we can create a field of empowerment that takes nothing from another and energizes relationships toward greater harmony. This requires diligent attention to the way we speak the truth. Our emotions, word choices, body language and inflection need to align with our highest intentions when speaking truth.

7. We need to bring spirit into business. Certainly in the Western world, for some time business has seemed to be immersed in greed. This wasn’t always so. When I was a child, the business community seemed to have much more heart.

Many Reiki Masters and healing arts practitioners have “day jobs” and work in the business arena. Let us shine our lights and do our utmost to bring spirit back into the corporate realm so that over time the attitudes can change there.  I believe the business community already has begun to shift. Certainly on the level of small business, many people are aligning with the Law of Attraction and practicing a more heart-centered philosophy. That seems to be infiltrating the consciousness so that big business will follow suit and in some cases already has begun to shift.

8. Forgive and love: While we’re working on uplifting the realm of business, when we discern an instance of greed, we can practice forgiveness and love. We can recognize that greed is simply a form of fear, and, although we may not want to admit it, most of us have experienced a twinge of greed on those occasions where we aligned with the energy of fear of lack.

Forgiving actions that we see as harmful to us erases the detrimental energy of the experience from our energy bodies and opens the way to blessings. Offering love without condition or limitation to those who “wrong” us enables us to move forward unfettered by the attachments to fear-based experiences/exchanges and opens the space for gifts from the Universe.

Will it help to forgive and love the executives who took billions in a bailout from the government some years ago and then rewarded their people for poor performance, to forgive and love the Wall Street broker who stole billions in a huge fraud scheme, etc.? Absolutely! Forgiveness clears the path to greater wholeness. We can forgive and love every instance of greed in those we encounter—and in ourselves! Doing so will alleviate the congestion of fear in the collective and most assuredly within our own beings, and this can help bring recovery.

9. Breathe gratitude: Finally, we can cultivate profound gratitude for what we have. If every out breath sent the energy of gratitude for the blessings in our lives, with each inhale more blessings would come. Breathing gratitude is something I’ve enjoyed for a long time, and I’ve seen visible results in my life.

For a profound technique to manifest and embrace gifts from the Divine, I love the book, The Moses Code, by James Twyman, which gives you a concrete method for breathing your blessings into reality. Another book I love that helped me move into this state of gratitude more fully many years ago is Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach.

Beyond working on ourselves as individuals, we can also band together in groups small and large to do this same kind of work. Bringing together people—as many as possible—to hold the energy of calm related to the economy, the financial system, as well as our personal finances can help ease the fear congestion surrounding this issue.

Each month I offer a free guided meditation phone call for healing and abundance. It’s held on the fourth Monday either at lunchtime, 12:33 PM, or in the evening at 7 PM (Eastern Time). One month will be evening and the next lunchtime and so on. The call lasts just over half an hour and allows participants to clear detritus, align energies and embrace greater wholeness and abundance according to each one’s readiness. If you want to participate in this event, please contact me by clicking here.

© copyright 2009 L. Diana Henderson, Reiki Master Teacher & Healing Arts Practitioner

Clear Away the Old, Welcome the New

Reiki2-3TemplateCpyRThe new year is a perfect time to clear the remnants of the previous year both literally and figuratively. After the holidays both our homes and our energy fields may need a good cleaning. So while we’re throwing away the torn wrapping paper, hauling out the Christmas tree and putting away those ornaments and decorations, let’s set aside some time to release the other baggage from our past….

First, think back over the year and go through the act of conscious forgiveness. Did a friend hurt you? Did your father or your mother-in-law (or any other loved one) make a critical comment while visiting at the holidays? Did your spouse disappoint you? Did your co-worker or boss belittle you?

Consider for a moment the emotional wounds you experienced. Don’t dwell on them—just bring them momentarily to mind—and as you do, ask the Divine (according to your beliefs) to cleanse your heart and mind of any discord you feel for these events. Invite the light of the Violet Flame, the ray of forgiveness, into your heart and hold its energy there.

Then, visualize the person, holding them in love as much as possible, and internally say (and mean!), “I forgive you and I forgive me.” Self-forgiveness is as vital as mercy toward others, for many times we may hold residual self-blame no matter the circumstance.

After you have forgiven as much as you can recall of the previous year’s indescretions and difficulties, ask the Violet Flame to live in your heart for a while to continue to release any additional blockages caused by old wounds. If you wish you may repeat the following three times: “I forgive every hurtful act and experience and welcome love and mercy toward all including myself.”

The human energy field actually shifts when a person truly forgives. Therefore, the very act of forgiveness will help to clear blocks in all aspects of life and open your being to greater blessings on many levels.

Follow this process of forgiveness by expanding the Three-Fold Flame within the Heart (blue, yellow, pink), the flames of Divine power, wisdom and love, and also the Violet Flame, to encompass your body and energy field with the intention of clearing/cleansing and instilling love. Meditate at length on the expanded Three-Fold Flame and Violet Flame. When you feel the process is complete, draw the flames back into the heart where they always reside. Repeat the meditation as needed.

On the physical level, it’s a great idea to clean and Feng Shui your home for greater abundance and health in the new year. As you do so, say a prayer of cleansing and blessing in each room to improve the flow of energy. If you know Reiki, Sacred Heart Soul Healing, or any other energy healing modality, you can send these energies into the walls, ceiling, floor and atmosphere of your space.

You may add some pink rose petals to the corners of each room to absorb negative energy (remove when they begin to dry out) and place crystals in the corners to enhance flow (you’ll need to cleanse the crystals first and repeat periodically). Amethyst or clear quartz would be suited to this task.

With these simple steps, it’s possible to begin the new year with greater clarity and joy.

© copyright 2010 L. Diana Henderson