Pt. 2 The Recipe of Love!

My painting - Chez Colette

Thought is creative energy, a burst of pure energy that triggers expansion. We were always created to be eternally expansive, to grow, to be fruitful and multiply…not just in childbirth, but in all that we set our minds and hands to! This is our ultimate purpose. Fashioned by the heart of God Himself! 

What we spend our time thinking about produces manifestation within our everyday lives. We call this reality. Based upon what we see all around us, and the type of experiences we have along the way, we develop our “beliefs” and then call it truth. These beliefs become so deeply rooted and it is easy to think that everything we “see” is real. The truth is that no matter how much we don’t like something and regardless of how badly we want others to change, we can only change ourselves through the things that we think, and then choose. 

How are we supposed to change and become something different?  By purposing to look only at ourselves and what we do.  I used to think that my problems were because of all of the other people in my life who had hurt me, failed me, and abandoned me.

I had no idea how to change and to be honest it seemed like the harder I tried and the more focus I gave to all of the things I didn't want to do or wasn't "supposed" to do, the deeper their grip was in my life. Nothing changed me, and the things that seemed to make a difference ultimately never stuck. Then a few years ago I discovered something truly magnificent in quantum physics. I discovered that it was my resistance of pushing the thoughts out of my mind and giving everything I had with all the will power I could muster (and ego) that was actually causing things to show up more than they ever had before! 

I learned that resistance is like a gate that opens to flood you with more of what you don't want! I was like you can't be serious! So how in the world was I ever going to change? That is when I realized that all of the temptations and bombarding opportunities to do the very thing I had been working so hard to "not do" wasn't such a personal attack at all. It was more about physics than it was about being the target of the enemy! Don't get me wrong, I know that there are things that the enemy throws at us attempting to derail us, but I never imagined something like physics and the laws that govern life to be something that I could actually use to sculpt my life. 

I found that there are governing laws that never change (just like God says He doesn't change!). No matter what I do or don't do, these laws are a constant. I can either understand their dynamic(s) and benefit from them, or I could continue to go against the nature of these laws and end up living a life of self created life of chaos and hell, and then blame it on the devil. Whether you believe in God or not, these laws truly don't discriminate. Maybe this is why the Bible talks about how God causes the rain to fall upon the just and the unjust. As long as the principles of the laws He established are not violated, they work 100% of the time in your favor and to your advantage.

I was 38 years old before I truly discovered "cause and effect" and that has changed my entire life. It is amazing to me still that even if there were nothing like religion to "teach" all of the Godly principles that are supposed to lead us to Jesus, that a universal formula designed by God Himself was set into order when He created everything. I can't tell you how amazing this is and how ecstatic I am because I spent most of my life thinking so little of myself and never even imagining that inside of my heart is immeasurable power. It is up to me to be conscious of how I am choosing and what I am believing because I hold the creative power that worlds are born out of as well as the power that destroys them. So do you! 

We all do...it's just most of our lives we have been told how hard we have to work and how long it takes to achieve anything that I think we've bought into the thinking that God is slow and stingy. Nothing could be further from the truth! But I know I personally got tired of waiting and so I decided to play being my own god without ever realizing it until it was too late, and too late again and again. When I was finally too exhausted to think and everything and everyone I love was gone from my life, only then did I finally come to the place where I was willing to see that my way wasn't working. I was finally willing to do something I had never done before and that was one of the most terrifying places of my life. It was also my beginning, and my life has never been the same!

I think that for most of my life I thought that God and the angels were standing over me every moment looking at me through His microscope making notes of every single thing I was doing wrong. That terrified me and I can tell you that having that fear only paralyzed me and kept me from opening my heart to Him at all. Fear filled "obedience" isn't obedience at all. That's nothing different than what dictators do. They demand. God doesn't do that because if He did He would be violating the very laws that He established before time ever began. 

He created the game we call life, and set the stage. He created every prop, material and ingredient we could ever possibly need to create and invent. Then He gave us the ability to choose. 

Fearing the consequences and trying to live doing and being everything that a "saved" and "born again" person is supposed to be only imprisoned me throughout my life. Even though I love Jesus with every fiber of my being, most everything I did in my life was because I was afraid of losing Him and going to hell if I wasn't a "perfect Christian."  

I don't even know what a "perfect Christian" looks like if there were such a thing, but I know that the God I serve, who is the love of my entire existence, my daddy and everything in-between, never asked us to be "perfect." He asked us to do one thing which is has 2 parts. He asked us (not demanded) to love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind and body and then to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. 

He above all knows our heart and he knows exactly how difficult this world is. This is also why He gave us the greatest gifts we know as feelings and emotions. I can tell you that these 2 are the very part of our hearts that have been desensitized and "overcome" to death. Literally!

Feelings are a physiological response to give us information about our environment around us as well as the (in)sight into the things that we can't see with our natural eyes. We call this intuition. However, when I was growing up and all throughout every church I have been to across the board they taught that we are supposed to overcome our feelings and do things no matter how we feel because if something feels off it's nothing more than "the enemy" or the one called the devil. 

It wasn't until 2009 that I began actually listening to what my feelings were telling me. When I first started to do that everything within me that had been so ingrained by dogma reared up to give me one of the greatest spiritual guilt trips I had ever been on. Sometimes when you have been led to believe that something is right even if it's not, trying to do what you know is right for you can feel so wrong! 

Everything was screaming at me inside that if anyone at church knew that I was doing xyz or not doing xyz, that everyone would know that I was nothing more than a phony and not even a Christian at all.  

For nearly all of my life I had been told what to do, what to believe, how to behave, what was Godly, what was sinning and never once did I ever question any of it. Why would I? Daring to do something like that was "sinful." 

But along this journey I have found so many things that I witness with my own eyeballs that rock my world because it shows me that so much of what I was taught to believe about God is not really who He is at all. He is my best friend and my greatest cheerleader! He holds me at night when I am going to sleep and He is excited for me and He continues to show me that the things that often look like delays are what end up leading me in a different direction to get me to the places where He knew my dreams were waiting for me!

He has shown me the intimacy of relationship with Him and how we are still together in every moment of every day no matter if I go to church every time the doors are open or not. He continues showing me how to be true to myself and not overlook or dismiss my feelings because within me, within the things I feel is the map that shows me whether I am moving further from or closer to the places that I was created to be. Other emotions that tried to torment me were riddled with the fear(s) that came with learning to trust myself rather than looking out and just doing something because I was "supposed to."

I never in a million years would have imagined that there truly is an infinitely deep creative, innovative, and revolutionary well within my heart that is filled with ideas and hopes and solutions and overflowing with passion and vision into things that exist and have yet to be created! I was never willing to step out of my religious comfort zone to see for myself because I was taught that was tempting God. Nothing is further from the truth! I started discovering just how incredibly powerful and accurate listening to my feelings can be. Especially when it comes to navigating through the uncharted territories in my life. 

It seems that society teaches that feelings and emotions are synonymous. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth! What we don't know and what we think we know is killing us and sapping the very life that God breathed into us when we were created. Yet, we are so sold out to everything we have been taught without really seeing those things happen in our own lives, and we have been told that is called faith. As if we have to prove to God that we are worth it or special enough before He will do the things we ask for in our lives. 

We were made worthy by the blood of His son Jesus before time ever began, and it is a lie that we have found hope in that when we all get to Heaven what a glorious day that will be. He never intended for us to wait to experience the awe and ecstasy that was prepared for us right here. It's just that we don't believe that we can have it in the here and now because of the mass programming that tells us that everything we do here is to get "there." 

While I believe that this realm is the training ground where we discover who we are through the guidance of the one who created us, we impose limitations on ourselves and others because of what we see, what we're told, and our experiences along the way. I spent my life trying to change my behaviors and become the person I believe I am created to be. What I didn't understand is doing that only creates rigidity and legalism because it is impossible to change yourself and become free from all of the glittery dangling carrots that hang in front of our faces every moment of every day. God takes us just as we are, and then He is the one who begins the "thawing" process which defrosts our frozen heart, rock like heart. He is the one who made us, and He certainly knows just how to take all we are and lead us into all of the very best of His idea of what life is. But He leads us through our feelings and connects with us intimately within our emotions. It is the most amazing and indescribable love affair! It is the breathtaking dance of Love!

I will continue with Pt. 3 of The Recipe of Love and I hope that you will continue the journey with me! God Bless you in all you do and know that you are loved!