We bandy around the word love in everyday life. People say it to each other, we sign-off in letters and greeting cards with it, songs are written about it and it’s a favourite topic in romantic movies.
We use the word ‘love’ in everyday life, but I have questioned whether we have lost the true meaning of the word, or at the very least I have questioned my own understanding of this word.
This word ‘love’ is crucial to each of our lives and to the whole of humanity, but what if the meaning has changed? What happens if the quality that we know to be love is reinterpreted and replaced with something that is not love? And why is love so important in our world – for we all appear to be chasing it.
Growing up, as a teenager I thought love only came from having a boyfriend. I created an image of love based on what I had learned on the movie screen and usually it went something like this: meet a boy, feel a sensation in the body that is labelled love, have sex after the first meeting and there the movie ends with the impression of happily-ever-after for this new couple.
It seems foolish of me to have fallen for the movie scene particularly now as I write it, but I truly believed this was love and this was what I set out to have for myself. I was on a mission to find this feeling called love, and I had seen hundreds of times in movies how it was to be found.
Despite following the script perfectly, overriding any feelings of apprehension or uncertainty, I never did find a relationship that had this happily-ever-after feeling. If one relationship did not work, I tried again using the same formula in an effort to find the ‘right’ man.
In my early 30s I thought I had found Mr. Right. We married shortly after meeting and within weeks I was pregnant. Midway through my pregnancy, I wondered whether Mr. Right was really Mr. Right, but I kept working towards this picture because happily-ever-after was now before me… or was it?
Happily-ever-after was not even in sight, let alone before me.
I had confused love with lust and attention. I had made love to be something that was to be found on the outside of me, something that I would receive from another. In fact, what I was feeling was not love at all, but more the filling of an emptiness and an excitement about the possibility that this emptiness would now dissipate forever because somebody else was here to take it away.
As I look back I can see that there was no foundation of love in myself, let alone in my relationships, so each relationship became a struggle. When I felt something wasn’t right within my own relationship, I turned to other women for support only to find that their own lives were the same as my own. I resorted to thinking that “this is just the way it is,” and would settle down in my uncomfortable dysfunction and continue until the next time the tension of lovelessness was felt once again.
At age 34, I started attending Serge Benhayon’s presentations on the esoteric teachings as well as seeing Universal Medicine esoteric practitioners for healing sessions. What I felt here was something very different: for the first time, I felt the true essence of love.
This love that I was feeling:
- was not imposing and asked nothing from me
- came with no rules as it was just there
- was tenderness, gentleness, understanding and appreciation and yet wasn’t without responsibility or, at times, a firmness
- could be felt on a physical level even with just the touch of a fingertip
- didn’t need words for it to be expressed for it was ever present
- allowed a spaciousness for me to be myself.
Perhaps though, the one thing that I felt the most was that this love I was feeling and observing in another was not about me. It was emanating from inside those who had rediscovered love for themselves. I was simply feeling the loveliness of another and it became very clear that although I had not chosen love for myself, that it was there for me too… and that it had always been there for me too.
This was enough to inspire me to start to change my life in ways I never thought possible.
I always knew that love held the key to something very powerful and my lifelong search for this expression continued. This time however, my search was not a search for anything outside of me – not boyfriends, not money, not a career – it was simply to reignite that which was always there inside of myself, just waiting for me to first realise that the former path I had chosen would never lead me to the essence of love.
Whilst there may have been little true love in my life growing up and into my adulthood, I can’t dispute that I did know what love is.
For the act of knowing what love was not, meant that I was governed by an inner knowing of what love truly is.
I knew that I would know love when I felt it and this proved to be true, despite living a life that had sold me a reinterpreted version of the word.
We all know what is love, but many of us simply resort to something that is less – we resort to ‘attention’ or ‘lust’ or ‘companionship’ or ‘security’ – so that we don’t have to feel alone.
With the amazing support of Universal Medicine and the esoteric practitioners, I faced the task of rediscovering love for myself, starting first with becoming gentle and nurturing to the body in everything that I did. For example, when I dressed, I would consider the weather when I chose my clothes, the colour of the clothes I felt to wear that day, taking a jacket or wrap just in case, applying makeup and styling my hair to confirm my inner beauty, choosing suitable footwear for the day’s activities, taking food to nibble on in the event I felt hungry… and the list goes on.
Of course this level of nurturing always showed up the choices I had made which were not loving, but feeling the sadness of this was simply part of the process that redeveloped my understanding of love.
Nowadays, if I am ever unsure about whether I am caught up in an old belief about what I think love might be, I simply ask the question – “Is it love?” – and feel for the answer in my body.
By asking the question – “Is it love?” – I give myself the opportunity to look at the way I am living and feel whether it has the true quality of love. And what I am feeling more and more, is that when we don’t purposely choose love, we end up choosing by default another way of being which holds an emptiness, a misery, a sadness, and a lovelessness.
I realised that I do know what is love and what is not love and there is no need for a rulebook to make this clear. I was never going to find love from another; it was always my responsibility to bring it to myself through the loving choices I make for myself each and every day. And when any two people come together in friendship or courtship where each has developed love for themselves, there is nothing but pure beauty in the understanding, delicateness and harmony that love brings. And in this, I am finally able to use and understand the true meaning of the word love.
by Maree, New South Wales
Further Reading:
Being Loved to Be Love
The Word Love
Love – What happened to the Word?
The Truth about Universal Medicine 
One of the problems of love is what we associate it with. By and large, we look at the wrong places and look for the wrong signs. Love feels tremendously settling when we connect to it.
We don’t have real conversations about love. Almost every movie and song seems to have love as a central theme but the ‘love’ they show, describe and express is not Love at all. It’s little wonder that so many are confused about what love is.
Yes, that is deeply ironic!
I wonder if the meaning of the word ‘love’ will become clearer when we understand the distinction between an emotion and a feeling as the word ‘love’ is currently used in both contexts.
The cycle of time has rolled around again for our one day to express love openly, Valentines Day!. Should it not be celebrated, appreciated and expressed every day, starting with ourselves!
Yes… learning how to love ourselves ever more deeply actually supports everyone else too, as they get a steadier, more real, more loving and true us, and we get to feel more of those qualities within, and the enjoyment and expansion of expressing them. Not reserving love for special days or occasions but building a steady foundation of knowing and respecting who we are and loving ourselves to the core.
Thank you Marie that was beautiful to read. The fact we search for love and know we want it, confirms we know it is essential to life and well-being. Love is much sung about, written about, and searched for, and it is here all along, in the most simple and obvious place inside of ourselves, waiting to be reconnected to and lived from.
“knowing what love was not, meant that I was governed by an inner knowing of what love truly is.” When we reconnect to the Divine love of our inner-heart we reconnect to who we truly are – love.
The choice to self-love is one of the most powerful choices in life to be honest enough and humble enough to say the love that I thought I knew is not truly love and to start to re-connect again with what is truth from our bodies, there is so much to celebrate.
Most people I know have been hooked by the emotional version of love – myself included. I am forever grateful for meeting Serge Benhayon and experiencing and feeling true love, I may not have been able to live that straight away but it gave me a strong marker that inspired me to develop and connect more deeply with this true love.
It can take a while to accept that we’ve been on an irresponsible dance looking for love in others when in truth it is there within. But if we can let go of the arrogance of denial and feel this for ourselves, the dancing stops as we begin to move with and from the fiery love burning within.
Words are misinterpreted all of the time, and to all of our detriment. We use language in an inconsistent way often hiding behind the knowledge, or as a community misusing big words when something simple and truly felt would be so much better. Communication is the key, and its super important that we are aware of the language we use to express that.
The thing about knowledge and mental intelligence is that we can be considered quite smart, yet be completely fooled by beliefs of what love is – the body, or what is called whole body intelligence, is key to truly feel and discern what the truth is. Knowledge and mental intelligence alone will never find truth without the whole body.
It is interesting that most of what we choose to call love has not an ounce of love in it and yet that we are even willing to go for it as if it were a great treasure.
We do all know what the true meaning of the word love is yet we can become so attached to beliefs and ideals held in our body that when true love is offered we dismiss it. We purposely dismiss it because we don’t want to feel the love, the grandness of who we truly are.
I was at a presentation last night by Serge Benhayon and he was explaining that the way we use the word LOVE depends on where we are at. So one persons “I love you” can actually have the subtext of “Im sorry, please forgive me” or ” I need you to know that I want to love you and I want you to love me, don’t leave me”
Where is another persons LOVE might sound and feel completely different to this.
My point is, the word LOVE is an evolution, as we evolve our understanding of this word changes, our relationship with it completely shifts.
I am just coming to understand this more- breaking down the picture that love is something that we get from another- I thought I understood that this wasn’t the case but can feel that I still have more to go in letting go of the pictures that I have around love and really embodying that it is an emanation that comes from within and the most loving life is when we can let this out with no holding back or investments.
Our picture of love in our head of how we want that love to look like can completely misinterpret the reality of what we are feeling and are experiencing and really land us in places that we would rather not be sometimes.
Herein are awesome words of wisdom, “I had confused love with lust and attention. I had made love to be something that was to be found on the outside of me, something that I would receive from another. In fact, what I was feeling was not love at all, but more the filling of an emptiness and an excitement about the possibility that this emptiness would now dissipate forever because somebody else was here to take it away.”
It has taken me a while to break down the belief that love is something that comes to you. I always thought it was something from outside, what I have learnt is it is first from within. Without this we can not accept true love when it comes our way.
Gorgeous Maree. We are sold and willing buy into a huge lie that love is outside of us, that we need to seek it and in doing so we avoid confirming and living the love we are – we expect another to fulfill us and in fact do not take our responsibility to live in the most loving way possible who are. And when we meet true love we know it and it does not ask us anything other than inspire us to be and live our own love.
It is safe to say that for most of my life I had lost connection with the Fire of my Soul, and it was not until I had my first every esoteric healing session with a lady called Elizabeth Dolan that I reconnected to what Fire felt like. Fire is love. It is an energetic state of being – no more than that. It is all beholding and completely non-imposing. It is truly beautiful, and certainly not transcendent or even uplifting in nature. Rather its pulse calls one to surrender and expand in accordance to its offering.
I’ve been pondering on love lately and what it means to live a life of love and even open myself up to love. I see other people surrounded by huge amounts of love and what I’m realising is that we’re all surrounded by huge amounts of love, it is only a matter of choice as to whether we let it in. So how do I start to let in? I think it starts with me and my own love. Realising I am love and that I have all the love I need within. For now, these are mostly words, I’m working on living them and being the love I already am.
It was not until I met Serge Benhayon did I have a true understanding and appreciation of what love truly means – it was like learning a new language.
The word ‘love’ is contained in the word ‘evolve’. Learning what love truly is is part of our evolution.
Having been able to re-connect to the love within myself through the presentations by Serge Benhayon, Universal Medicine and the amazing loving support of his family I can now say I have a true foundation of understanding love.
There is a social script for love and there is a way to live love based on it.
Through them we learn what is love, how does it feel, how to achieve it and how to live a loving life. Thanks to this, there is a normalised version of love that surrounds us and that informs our judgments of how we are relating to it. It is a bit like a bus that is already moving and our task is to get on it and find our spot in there. Love, hence, is an outward movement to connect to a feeling that comes from the outside. The only problem is that none of this is true. Love is and requires an inward movement of deep connection with ourselves and to live that connection and from that connection.
Seeking love outside is a bit like trying to ignite fire while holding a wet match stick. It has never not been here, it just needs reigniting.
It is true that these days we have many different interpretations of what love is which is crazy really when we can all feel the quality of love and we know it is has a certain energetic quality that we can sense and discern.
Simplicity in truth and divinity; what a wonderful question as our guiding light, “is it love?” – with the answer being felt in our bodies; thank you, Maree;
“Nowadays, if I am ever unsure about whether I am caught up in an old belief about what I think love might be, I simply ask the question – “Is it love?” – and feel for the answer in my body”.
This is so beautifully written Maree that I would have no hesitation in saying you have a clear knowing and experience of Love. Thank you for sharing with us all.
‘I always knew that love held the key to something very powerful and my lifelong search for this expression continued.’ Astonishing that we all search for love outside ourselves, when love is within us all, and we only need to make the choice to connect to it first.
As a society many have strayed from the true meaning of the word ‘love’, settling for a lesser version of love that is just about getting your needs met and protecting your hurts. Your blog is a beautiful reminder of the simplicity and true meaning of the word ‘love’ and how we all know deeply within what ‘love’ is and every choice we make is either a step towards love or a step away from love.
Of all words, love is perhaps the one that is associated with images the most. What image in particular we associate love with, is related to our particular hurts and needs. This is really what are we talking about in the name of love. No wonder why relationships are such a difficult issue for us.
Thank you Maree I loved your blog and this question “Nowadays, if I am ever unsure about whether I am caught up in an old belief about what I think love might be, I simply ask the question – “Is it love?” – and feel for the answer in my body.” when we connect to our bodies and the wisdom it holds and the true love that has always been their just waiting for our connection to it.
Beautiful to re-read your blog Maree. “By asking the question – “Is it love?” – I give myself the opportunity to look at the way I am living and feel whether it has the true quality of love. ” A great question to ask ourselves consistently.
A true reflection of love really does go off like a inspiration bomb and offers much in the way of learning and expansion for others. This is what is so beautiful about showing who we are as this sparkling emanation from within is not ours to hold onto, its there to let free for all to see and feel. The real love lives within and really just wants to come out, holding it back only harms us and denies our true power of connection.
We expend so much time and energy searching for love outside of ourselves when all along it is right there inside each of us just waiting to be re-connected to. I am so grateful for the loving reflections of others that have supported me to choose love on a more consistent basis.
‘I was never going to find love from another; it was always my responsibility to bring it to myself through the loving choices I make for myself each and every day.’ This may take a while to become a living way but oh my is it worth it and, of course, everyone benefits.
Let me be very clear here… It was not until I met Serge Benhayon that I had a glimpse even of the true meaning of the word love… It is not until one truly feels such a depth of love for all of humanity that one can start to experience, and bring into one’s own life, what love actually means.
Beautifully expressed Chris. That too has been my experience of Serge Benhayon.
Any images we hold around what love is or should look like actually blocks us from feeling the truth. The truth being, that we are already love inside and out.
Thank you Maree for this exploration of love. By seeking love through others we deprive ourselves of the very love that we have inside or more so that we are.
Thank you Maree for a beautiful sharing, I can relate to growing up with the movie love and the happily ever after, which of course was never true, never came by looking outside of myself for it “it was always my responsibility to bring it to myself through the loving choices I make for myself each and every day.” The love that I have come to know, accepts me for who I am, embraces me in its warmth, it has no needs for it is all encompassing.
When we have forgotten the feeling of true love we constantly seek to find it in saying we ‘love’ certain foods as we eat them to fill an emptiness or expect another person to fill our emptiness in a relationship. Universal Medicine presents the way to reconnect to the innate love that is ever-present in our inner-heart and when we feel it we know we have refound the true love that we naturally are.
We feel the falseness of what we have been led to believe love is, and we feel hurt by the absence of love – for we in truth do know what love is.
“For the act of knowing what love was not, meant that I was governed by an inner knowing of what love truly is.” Sums it up perfectly Maree as love is a universal expression felt from within us all. Thank you.
There is nothing more loving that being offered a space to just to be yourself. From there it is our choice to embrace and express the love we are… and our responsibility to live it… in doing so we then allow others the space to be themselves knowing the enormity of what is possible when we do.
This is beautifully said and I agree it is most beautiful to being offered a space to just be oneself, and even more precious when we allow ourselves this space.
‘For the act of knowing what love was not, meant that I was governed by an inner knowing of what love truly is.’ There’s no disputing that!
Once it is spelt out then it really does become very obvious, almost simplistic, but nevertheless it is something that needs to be said again and again, we cannot love another person truly until we have a deep and abiding connection with ourselves.
your blog is very wise Maree. We do know what love is because we know exactly what is not love and tit is clear we yearn and miss the fullness of the love that we know. It is our biggest sorrow to have walked away from love. Now we have the opportunity to bring love back into our lives in all its fullness. Moment by moment with all our choices, love is available.
The foundation of true love is purpose in absolutely everything we do – this is the essential ingredient in the true quality of love.
“In fact, what I was feeling was not love at all, but more the filling of an emptiness and an excitement about the possibility that this emptiness would now dissipate forever because somebody else was here to take it away.” Oh yes, I can totally relate to feeling the exact same way and, from what I have observed around me, so did everyone else.
“This was enough to inspire me to start to change my life in ways I never thought possible.” Me too, Maree, I can totally relate to what you have shared here and it is so beautiful to be given this opportunity to take a moment to fully appreciate just how much my life has changed and continues to do so thanks to the teachings of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine.
Maree your list describing the feeling of the true essence of love is spot on:-
“This love that I was feeling:
• was not imposing and asked nothing from me
• came with no rules as it was just there
• was tenderness, gentleness, understanding and appreciation and yet wasn’t without responsibility or, at times, a firmness
• could be felt on a physical level even with just the touch of a fingertip
• didn’t need words for it to be expressed for it was ever present
• allowed a spaciousness for me to be myself.”
Beautiful Blog Maree, I can so relate, we do deep down know what True love is. We wouldn’t feel the tension in our relationships otherwise. I love how freeing and empowering it is to be responsible about our own love through our loving and caring of self.. Thank you for your open and honest sharing Maree. Your transparency is humbling.
Rereading your blog Maree is a further confirmation that living true ageless wisdom love is our purpose for life here on this planet in this form; no doubt about it.
To ask ourselves this simple question, “Is it Love? and feel for the answer in my body”; what a wonderful blueprint for living Maree, thank you. Our bodies certainly are the marker of truth.
Thank you Maree for another great article, I, like most of us, have looked for love outside of myself expecting someone to fill the emptiness, looking for the happy ever after promise. Thank heaven for Serge and Universal Medicine for bringing to light and presence what true love really is and that it has resided within us all along.
I can very much relate to the confusion around trying to fill that empty void and looking to others to do that for me, be it my husband or via friendships and wondering why it wasn’t working. What finally made the difference was coming to Universal Medicine and through the presentations by Serge Benhayon and sessions with esoteric practitioners understanding that the only way to address the emptiness was to deeply nurture, care for and have that deep connection with myself.
A beautiful sharing Maree defining what love is and what love is not and it’s not the lusty “you complete me” nonsense which is what the media and Hollywood would have us believe but rather a deep well of love from within that comes from honouring ourselves in each and every moment.
Our bodies are the marker of truth, and so we have the ability to discern love from what is not love at anytime simply by honouring our connection.
Great point Fransisco and very true, when we honour our connection the body speaks very loud and clear.
Beauty, understanding, delicateness and harmony….who wouldn’t want a relationship where these are the result of coming to another without need and with a strong self love and self regard? What an awesome foundation for any relationship this would be.
I have learnt that the essence of love is a being first and not a doing, but the expression of my love can be in something I am doing for another
Absolutely Brilliant Eduardo, there are many false forms of love and we buy into them because we are hurt and don’t connect with our innate love. Love can not be in a mental form, if that is the case then there is an arrangement or agreement between two people that they won’t push each others buttons, and forever live holding back, measured and cold in their responses to each other. Wheres the love in that?
Love is a universal expression, it is the embodiment of all of who we are and then expressed. Love can be felt emanating from our inner hearts, and it is a wave of purity through the world, it is steady and is always available in our connection to ourselves.
Love what you have expressed here Harry, ‘It is a wave of purity through the world” you can see how by each one of us taking responsibility to be more love in our everyday lives we can change the world.
Beautiful monika2808. I agree, when we surrender to our Love, our Divinity, the completeness known is absolute. We fall from this loving grace when we choose to hold back our expression of the love we are, as we have then surrendered to that which we are not.
Well said Brendan. The idea of love comes from the mind whereas the knowing of love is a state of being from within our inner-heart where one does not need to think. In the heart of our being-ness we are all-knowing.
You raise a great question Maree – ‘And why is love so important in our world – for we all appear to be chasing it.’ It is so true seem to be forever chasing love. We search outside of ourselves high and low, we contort ourselves, give our power away through the many ideas of love, for the sake of finding love, in the desperate pursuit of a feeling a completeness that we are missing. Yet that is the ‘dead giveaway’ as true love never asks us to do anything. It is a quality of being, one that reflects the essence of who we are. An inherently Divine quality that is at the heart of our being-ness, one that all are born with. It is known through the way we live, an extension of that which we already Divinely are. We all know what love is, as we are all of love. We simply need to re-claim and re-connect to the love we are within as we will then all know how to live with our love naturally and rightly so.
You’re right – in the lifelong quest for love we can totally miss the truth that the meaning of the word itself has been reinterpreted, misrepresented and in fact bastardised and so we can easily find ourselves barking up a non-loving, making-do tree. But because we innately know when something isn’t love, that means we do in fact know love, because it’s love we are comparing it against.
Thank you Maree for the reminder of true love, I feel I sometimes quickly resort in that what is not true love, but the need for attention and affection. Seeing this has brought an enormous understanding in what true love is. It is such a great difference that is unbelievable, as love is a quality within that we all can choose and don’t need someone else to give us. And sharing it is the greatest joy we can have.
There is a great difference between true love and all else that is not of love. And it is knowing the greatness that love is, the love we are that empowers us to know without a doubt what is not love.
Thanks Monika208, love being the all and the everything ! The only true way forward… Which is really a surrender to ourselves and our heart 🙂
A powerful blog Maree and such an important conversation to be having about the misuse of the word ‘love’. The word love has been re-interpreted so much and often many conditions put on it, but how many people are truly living the energy of the word ‘love’? We have accepted a much lesser way of love in our lives that even when relationships are abusive one can mutter the words’but I love you’ and this is supposed to change everything even though none of their actions match what love truly is. I can feel the deeper responsibility I have to call out when I am not being love in my own life, as you so wisely share to ask ourselves -‘Is it love’? An awesome reminder to bring to my life and to rock some of the comfort I feel I have settled for.
Maree like you “I had made love to be something that was to be found on the outside of me”. Looking back at my endless pursuit of love and the accompanying sadness and pain at not finding it is a reflection of my living a very diminished life. I am on the way to recovery, each day appreciating myself more with the natural flow on effect of appreciating others for who they are, not what I expect of them.
One of the best discussions around LOVE I have ever read. You rocked it. Thank you. When I read – “I turned to other women for support only to find that their own lives were the same as my own. I resorted to thinking that “this is just the way it is,” and would settle down in my uncomfortable dysfunction” I had such a strong AHA moment when I realised…wow…when we choose to stay in our hurts, we give permission for other people to do so as well….it becomes the ‘way it is’. Ouch-a-rama when I realised that on a deeper level than I have before. It is up to us to show there is another way.
I totally agree sarahflenley, I had a similar experience having read this great blog by Maree. That in us not feeling our hurts, this does give permission for others to do the same, then around the merry-go-round we go!! Which just does not serve anyone. It is about showing there is a different way, which does help to get rid of the self serving that we can and do have very much ingrained in our current way of being.
This blog raises a great point about love and choice, and the fact that even though we may think we are not choosing, we are always choosing something, including the choice not to choose love. And in order not to choose something – in this case love – deep within means we also know the opposite, which in this case ‘is’ love.
“I was never going to find love from another; it was always my responsibility to bring it to myself through the loving choices I make for myself each and every day.” This is a beautiful sentence Maree because it states the absolute truth, and the only way we will ever find true love.
This is such a beautiful blog Maree. I can feel how much love you have in your life just reading this. The idea that someone else can fill the emptiness I feel has been difficult to shake and I can feel how much investing in this belief has held me back. Thankfully my body and my life show me time and time again that the only way to truly have love in my life is to start with myself.
It is so true Eduardo, we want to believe in something that is just not it, and everything around us wants to believe the lie. Thank you Universal Medicine, for presenting what is it.
‘ meet a boy, feel a sensation in the body that is labelled love, have sex after the first meeting and there the movie ends with the impression of happily-ever-after for this new couple.’ I can foolishly say that I feel for this ideal too Maree, and it never worked, no big surprise to me now, but I could never understand it then. Which is a great example of the damage that ideals can cause amongst us, I was often heart broken, emotional and felt very unloved. The greater understanding, love and care that I bring to relationships now ensures that relationships are amazing, they are not the blissful happy ever after that I allowed myself to believe in, they are honest and true, for me a better alternative.
Loved your blog Maree- asking the question what is true love?
I grew up believing you found love in another – like the romantic movies. I kept looking for this, and therefore giving my power away to others. It was not until meeting Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine that I learnt that we come from love- it is present deep within all. For any relationship to be long lasting and true we need to embody our own love first before sharing it with another.
Yes it’s only when we take a good look at our definition(s) of love that we see there’s a choice whether to keep buying it from the existing supplier, or switch to another provider (!). Seeing what is not love and being honest about this clears the space for what love is.
I love it how you describe the essence of love “was not imposing and asked nothing from me, came with no rules as it was just there… “. Love is stillness, confirms the other person in its beingness, in its essence – so different to what I thought as a child / teenager, I thought I have to do something to get love and that doesn’t make sense at all.
The thing is that once we have reconnected to our love, it can just as easily drop away again, moment by moment. We think we are in it when we are not! In my experience, my mind does a great job of thinking I am connected, ‘I’ve got it’, but actually I need to continually stop and check, the way I am moving my body, the way I am breathing, mini gentle breath meditations all day long to re-establish my connection to my love. Otherwise the mind just runs the show and keeps me making choices from the emptiness.
Confusing love with lust and attention is a common experience for women especially when their self worth has not been confirmed in childhood or they have simply been praised for their achievements and not who they are; or in my family, where humor was always at the expense of someone, to put them down and where everyone was caught up in their own trials of life with no capacity for presence.
I would never have imagined that I would act that out in relationship but did, in my early thirties as you describe Maree. Thank God my soul found Universal Medicine not long afterwards so that I could recognize the unloving choices I had made and slowly begin the task of building my capacity to act lovingly to myself and bring this to others. I notice there are still the remnants of this with me now and I now see it as a flag to deepen my self care and feel whether I am holding this quality of love within me all the time, in my everyday moments, especially with myself. I now feel it is a responsibility of being in relationship with another to have this constantly deepening relationship with myself.
It isn’t possible to seek love from another person, love is something that we have to connect to deep within ourselves, by slowly building a gentle and tender connection to our bodies and all that we do, say, think and live.
We all want love but it wasn’t until I met Serge Benhayon that I began to uncover the fact that it can only be found within me and since then I have been peeling back the layers that connect me to that pure essence that is me. I have had a sense of knowing this essence that is me throughout my life but have been distracted by the bright lights and glamour surrounding me that gives the impression of love and what it might be, but it was forever alluring and always unattainable for whatever reason, leaving me feeling empty and lost. Now I know what love is and what it feels like in my body I will never look for it outside ever again.
“For the act of knowing what love was not, meant that I was governed by an inner knowing of what love truly is” – this is a revelation for all, Maree. I often have people tell me that I am Love and my response always is, ‘For you to know that about me means that you are that yourself’.
If we all grew up knowing and being taught that we do know what love is and is not and not rely on rule books, but on the inspiration of others who had strengths in areas where we had weakness, it would start to change the very foundations of how we go about everything in our lives – how do I know this? Because that is what I am experiencing through the livingness of the Universal Medicine presentations.
The majority of the world is living with a made up measured, self protection version of love which in fact is not love at all. What Hollywood movie has ever shown a person finding love within themselves first, then being able to connect with others from this love? I can’t say I’ve ever seen one. How would that go down at the box office?
“This time . . my search was not a search for anything outside of me . . . it was simply to reignite that which was always there inside of myself”. Maree, it is life changing when we reach this level of awareness and embody what is on offer. Most if not all are raised from young to not honour ‘that which is inside of us’, that is, the real ‘ME”. We grow up burying the real ‘ME’ under layer upon layer of false ideals and beliefs, which leads us to search for something outside of us to fill our emptiness. For many, it was not until they attended Serge Benhayon’s presentations based on the Ageless Wisdom, did they realise that there was another way and that the ‘essence of love’ is always there inside each of us, patiently waiting for us to reignite our connection to it.
This is very true Anne, as I commit to returning to love, I re-discover who I am in love. Interestingly there are qualities I hold myself in now (more and more), like appreciation, that were absent in my childhood.
I have had experience of many relationships where I have felt excitement but even in that I didn’t feel that it was love. Although we are sold a package of love in the movies, none of that really resonated and certainly not with how love now feels to me. I now have the understanding that love is a way of being and that it starts with how I am within myself, before that goes out to any outer relationship.
Our bodies know what love is as all,our cells vibrate to it’s tune. It is a connection innate in all of us no matter how many times we look for it in the outside world, from others, things, places all the physical things we like to label that “we love”. It has become a throw away line that has been affective in keeping us distracted by all the things we are not. I am still learning the depth of truth and love my body knows and the tricks I can play to hold true love at bay. It’s not a comfortable place to be but a blessing indeed!
This is awesome Maree “Nowadays, if I am ever unsure about whether I am caught up in an old belief about what I think love might be, I simply ask the question – “Is it love?” – and feel for the answer in my body.” thank you for brining to our attention we do and can know if something is true or not. It is when we override what our hearts and bodies are telling us then we can get ourselves into trouble!
Maree I love your blog, it is so simple yet resonates in me as the truth I particularly like your words ” It was always my responsibility to bring it (love) to myself through the loving choices I make for myself” so true and a great reminder. Thank you.
Love is not just a word, it’s a way of living.
I certainly have done this, chasing love, thinking I could feel it by seeking it outside of myself. It is so empowering to now know that love is within me all along.
Reading this again the second time is like reading it afresh. There is so much depth, delicateness, power and inspiration. I have often wondered why in the past for some things, I didn’t make loving choices. I would then beat myself up because it felt like that those unloving choices were automatic and it had happened too fast for me to stop, to realise and to arrest what I had chosen. What you have shared here, is the key for me to not go into autopilot but to take charge of my choices: ‘when we don’t purposely choose love, we end up choosing by default another way of being which holds an emptiness, a misery, a sadness, and a lovelessness.’ This is so true, thank you for this awesome reminder to always consciously choose LOVE.
It is forever astonishing to me how love knows no limits. Whenever I experience a new dimension of love it exposes the previous limitations I was bound by. To identify and let go of the layers that keep me from the absolute love we are returning to has become an essential part of my everyday life.
When the meaning of the word ‘love’ has been so bastardised that we live under the illusion of something that is in effect, way less, it’s great to read your candid reappraisal. Filling up our own emptiness with the so-called love of another – who’s most likely doing the same through you – is a sure-fire recipe for the relationship dysfunction you describe. Knowing what love is when you see or feel it because of knowing what it is not from having lived it, gives us a platform from which to build a self-loving foundation and from there to take into our relationship with the world. Clean, clear and equal, in our fullness, without need or expectation from others.
From my experience with extended family, it is expected that we will say I love you to each other as a way of greeting and saying goodbye. About 3 or 4 years ago, there was a moment when someone in my extended family said I love you to me, and I could feel very clearly that the words were actually not true at all, that this person did lot love me at all and in fact had a strong dislike for me in that moment. I was expected to say I love you back and could not. I felt then for perhaps the first time (at least in a long time), the harm caused by saying I love you just to ‘conform’ when it wasn’t truly felt in me.
After that moment, the sky did not fall nor did my relationship with this particular family member change all that much as a result of me not replying with I love you. Since then, I’ve stopped using those three words as a way of greeting even when they are said to me first. I’m learning that my actions – how I treat people and talk to them, how open and accepting I allow myself to be towards others or not, and how I show caring for others on a daily basis – that all of this is what means the most. And that, in the absence of true caring for another, saying the words I love you means very little.
Beautifully said Julie, how we are with people speaks volumes and when loving this is felt by all whilst words can simply be empty and meaningless if there is no true love within them.
I can remember the disillusionment of magical love stories as a child not being fulfilled in life, thinking if only they would come true. Finding love that is within ourselves and connecting to it is a true blessing and understanding that does not let us down.
Love is when there is stillness and ease lived and felt independent of any need, attachment or person.
Yes Rachel I too have done that. I now know that when I am “in love’ it has nothing to do with anyone around me, although I feel like I love EVERYBODY. When I am “in love” it all comes from within me and out and not because I have received anything form anyone else, but because I have connected to the love inside me.
Maree, what a brilliant blog sharing what love truly is. I also used to see relationships as giving me the possibility “that this emptiness would now dissipate forever because somebody else was here to take it away.” I searched for every relationship to do this for me whether it was the romantic variety, or sibling ones, or friendships ones and everything in-between. I now know that the love I was seeking was inside me all along; there is nothing finer or stronger than that.
I can so relate to what has been shared here about love. As I was reading I can remember the impact stories – and popular children’s movies – have had on me since a young child . The impression was very clear about the picture of what love was and what it should look like. I now know I can’t even fathom the depth of love on offer inside myself, and so look forward to each day deepening this more.
In the past there has always been a need attached to the word love for me. I’m now learning to let go of that need, there more I do this and bring more focus to feeling the love that is there in my body the more freeing that feels. I’ve only just begun to tap into the love that I feel is me and I get a sense that there is so much more.
To recognise the true love we have in our lives already and to let that be our marker otherwise we can fall for something far less which comes from our sense of need and a belief that true love is something outside of ourselves. i have done this so often. I like the question ” is this truly evolving me? ” for true love surely is there if that is the case.
Such a beautiful sharing Maree, thank you so much.
I Love the list you give Maree about your feeling of what Love is and I agree it does not need words for it to be expressed. Gosh I so got it all wrong in the past and no amount of gifts and valentines day cards changed that empty feeling. My search was far and wide and I literally went around the globe looking for it. I thought religion would give it to me and I tried quite a few but again that empty feeling came back fast and I was left searching. Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine presented what this word is all about and gave me the tools to connect and bingo the search was over – that was 9 years ago.
I do not feel the need today to use the word Love but when I do I always define that it is Divine Love and not the valentines day romantic movie love that most of us associate that word with.
Maree the word Love is one of those words that has become so distanced from its true meaning that I would call something that is not love as love. I remember as a child feeling so content and complete at the time I did not have a word for it, as I grew up the word love was banded about to mean what someone can give you and yet what I’ve come to understand now through Universal Medicine is that Love is a quality of feeling in my body, a way I hold and am in all that I do. In effect it is a reminder of the fact I was naturally living love as a child just was never confirmed and told that the feeling I felt was love.
Understanding the true meaning of the word love is so important to know, and because it is that what we truly are, it is great to reconnect to this quality.
It is quite interesting that even though the word love is being used for so many things that it is not, we instantly know when we feel true love; we might not be able to describe it but we know that it is love.
True that, we know the real deal – yet so much of the other abounds us. It’s only good sense that if we know what is not true love, we know what is.
What a joy it is that we have a true reflection of Love through Serge Benhayon, his whole family and also many students of the Livingness.
What you mention about the default mode when we don’t actively choose true love is so very true. From such a young age it is developed to accept and choose less than what we know love to be and think that this is normal, that having this running our lives is the ‘movie’ life we have created. As you say it is completely down to us to make it an ongoing choice to have true love in our lives, and it is the opposite to the default mode I know so very well, but am shaking off day by day.
Knowing what is love and what is not love is something we can all know, when we connect to it. We can be so easily misled by what we thought was love on the outside, looking for it somewhere else, or from another, when it’s really from within.
I love this line, Maree,
‘ it was always my responsibility to bring it to myself through the loving choices I make for myself each and every day.’
In the movie version of Love, I find there is an image of something impossible which stands in contrast to the relationships I see happening in the real world.
I love this line It was emanating from inside those who had rediscovered love for themselves. This describes so beautifully what I have seen in others who have begun the journey.
I recently chose to stop saying the word “love” so casually to give myself some space to really feel what my current understanding of love is. It’s so easy to say the word, like it makes what ever’s happening ok, as long as you “love” each other! What I’m learning is that to love another I must first learn to love myself. The way I’ve been beginning to love myself is by listening to how my body feels. So things like feeling what to eat rather than sticking to a pre-determined plan, exercising when I get a feeling to (but actually doing it rather than making excuses and delaying it….!), going to bed when I’m tired and having a rest when my back hurts rather than pushing on, speaking up when something doesn’t feel right… All these things are helping me to be aware of how I feel rather than the typical way of being that I have fostered that is to just simply be on auto-pilot. On the back of that I recently got to feel, just briefly during a Universal Medicine healing course, the love that’s actually already inside me. It was amazing and no words cover it but it’s definitely nothing like the love you grow up believing in, or like the sort you see on the movies. I realised for myself that nobody can give it to me, it’s up to me to re sensitise my body so I can actually feel that it’s there inside. And by my reckoning, the more space I give myself to feel, the stronger my connection to that love will become…. So it’s true, it’s nothing to do with anything outside of my body: I hold all the cards and can do everything about it – the days of relying on other people to deliver this love are over, what a relief!
I know that too Rachael, that I have to allow my body to actually feel the love that it carries within. And by going there I feel a relief, because I do not have to be anything what I am not and do not have to hold this love back from emanating out. Now I can be more of the love that so naturally is available to all of us and share this with the world.
Rachael, I like how you describe how you are re-sensitising your body to feel the love that resides inside you. Our minds will always keep us locked in a pattern of searching and trying to obtain a love that is outside of ourselves, when the answer lies not in our minds but our bodies. I’m learning through coming back to my body that love is not what I thought it was. And yes, what a relief to not have to rely on anything external to bring this to me – it’s all there inside just waiting for me to re-connect.
Great Blog Maree, such a great point you have made is that as you searched for people to support you found they were having the same problems. It’s amazing how so many people in all different relationships can be experiencing something so, so similar.
‘I was never going to find love from another; it was always my responsibility to bring it to myself through the loving choices I make for myself each and every day.’ This wisdom completely exposes the untruth of what is perceived in the world these days as love. It would affect all our relationship choices and inspire truly loving relationships, firstly with ourselves, as this becomes known and understood.
‘It was emanating from inside those who had rediscovered love’ I felt drawn to this line in your blog, as it’s so true, the feeling of love from people who have rediscovered love within themselves is so amazing to feel, they have less judgement, incredible understanding of others and accept where people are at.
We can spend ages in life looking for love: I love how you describe love is from inside out, ‘It was emanating from inside those who had rediscovered love for themselves.’
Maree I have questioned the definition of Love too and if I didn’t, I would never have found that it is not even a word that can be defined without first living, breathing and embodying it. The true definition is far from how we have believed it to be in the temporal world.
Yes my definition of the word love has been loveless. I’ve accepted and tolerated so much abuse in exchange for being told I was loved. I preferred to be abused in the name of ‘love’ rather than be counted for standing up for true love and going against the grain of what is accepted by society as love.
I deeply appreciate Serge Benhayon and others associated with Universal Medicine who’ve stood up and clearly expressed true love (else I’d still be there scratching my head with a little voice saying surely this can’t be it).
Entire industries are created around the idea of ‘love’ as a romantic notion or emotional attachment to another. Advertising uses it very cleverly. They show a couple ‘in love’ using a dishwasher. We feel the lack of that love and in believing we would be fulfilled by that ideal, we pop along and buy the dishwasher or car or house etc. If we are so easily sold an idea of ‘love’ that would secure us a happy life, yet we are still not very fulfilled as a society, because let’s be honest, most of us are not living joyful lives full of vitality, perhaps this is an indicator that the love we have chased after is not actually love. It is possible to take action against companies that advertise falsely. I feel that the mis-use of the word ‘love’ is the greatest and most damaging use of false advertising.
“I simply ask the question – “Is it love?” – and feel for the answer in my body.” – I love this quote Maree. It is the answer to many of life’s quandaries. When we make our lives about living the simplicity of the love we truly are then it becomes very easy to see and feel our way forward. ‘Is it love or not love?’ – this feeling lies always within our body and never in our minds first.
Well said Amelia.. and this is such a great question to ask.. it really makes the situation black or white. I also love how you mentioned this feeling comes from our bodies and not our minds.
I was drawn to this quote too Amelia. The answers are indeed felt in my body first, and I can feel and hear these messages with the most clarity when my body is clear of substances and emotions that numb it, and I’m connected to my inner quality of stillness. This does require a certain commitment and dedication and I am far from perfect, but as Maree points out ‘this word ‘love’ is crucial to each of our lives and to the whole of humanity’, so it is absolutely worth it, and I’m worth it.
Indeed you are Stevie Cole, indeed you are. As indeed we all are.
Beautifully said Amelia. I agree, love to me is a feeling in my body. This blog and many comments I’ve read reminds me to constantly ask myself this question: “Is it love?” in everything I choose.
Both are great questions to keep asking, “Is it love?” And “Is this truly evolving me?” Thank you Maree and Steffi. Love evolves us, and to build a consistency of loving thoughts and ways is my intention today.
To make everything I do about love is a choice that I consciously need to make. When I do the exquisite stillness felt in my body is confirmation of that choice and from there no thinking is necessary – just to feel my body and work from the impulses it offers.
I agree Bernadette, they are two very powerful questions and the support they offer us in the simplest way is Divine.
“Is it love ” I like this question and I am using it as well in my daily life if I struggle with something. Recently I changed it into: “Is this truly evolving me?”…
Steffi, I like that ” is it love” and “is it truly evolving me” great stop points to reflect in the moments, I am inspired to try this too.
I am going to make a point of trying this too, because it is true, we cannot evolve without being the true love that we innately are. We can delay our evolution by thinking that we have found love with another when all along our relationship is based on what is not true. Connecting to the true love within ourselves and then sharing with another serves both in a relationship. Anything less is just a denial of the truth and imposing on another to fulfil our own needs.
What a wonderful way to check-in with yourself: ‘is this truly evolving me?’
Great questions Steffi, they really help me too, especially when I’m having a reaction to someone and feeling a bit annoyed with them, at this point it’s crucial for me to ask if what I choose next is loving… it can be the difference between having an argument and spending the whole day in a bad mood, or looking at why I felt that way, understanding, taking responsibility and letting it go (especially letting go of blaming the other person)… and then I can move on and have an awesome day…
Great comment Laura Hoy! This resonated so much with me. In the past I have done just that and lost relationships. I have reacted and not expressed how I feel and this led to anxiousness, resentment and tension and definitely WAS NOT LOVE! Recently I met someone who I felt comfortable with and I decided that it was time I broke the old patterns and spoke the truth to him, openly and without reservation. What a relief, for us BOTH. He opened up too and now I realise how important it is to base our relationships on openness, honesty, mutual respect and truth, with a little playfulness thrown in, this builds a solid relationship in which we can move forward.
Yeah another great questions to ask ourselves Steffi… I know I want to always be developing personally and professionally so it’s important that my decisions come from a place that does evolve me instead of keep me static in my life.
To be willing to develop personally and professional is something that inspires continual growth.. something that each of us needs to do so we don’t say stuck or just ‘coping’ or just getting by. Continual movement and learning, discovering, being inspired!
Thanks for that supportive reminder steffihenn. If something is love it will be easy and simple, once doubt and complications kick in, we have to ask ourselves is this really love, or are we just pretending that it is?
… and expanding it to: “Is it evolving us?” opens again another dimension.
This statement that we all know love, but have accepted something less to avoid being lonely is very powerful. At the moment I can feel the frustration and sadness of knowing I have accepted less, but thank you for the reminder that this is just part of the process of understanding love again.
I love that Laura the acceptance of the road travelled and knowing that ultimately it leads back to the truth of what love is.
I know I have accepted less too Laura, because it was all that was available ‘out there’. Now as I begin to understand love again i know there is more in me, to share with others, than I ever thought possible.
Yes.. wow great point Laura… there is definitely a fear in a lot of us that we will be lonely so lets take what we can get.. so there is a settling for something less and there isn’t a trust that someone will be with you if that is whats needed. It’s like trying to control our life story and get our happy ever after that isn’t real.
It is deeply sad that we then miss out on the love we really want, a very clever trap.
I have experienced feeling lonely while in a relationship and being single. I have also experienced feeling very full and content with myself living as a single woman and in a relationship – from these experiences I have learned the level of love and care I feel in my life come from me. For if I am blind to experiencing and enjoying qualities in another, then I am not being with myself.
I love your honesty Laura and I too am gently reminding myself that even if I accepted less in the past. I appreciate the choice and unfolding process I have made to return to the love I know that resides within my heart.
Yes Abby, I too have felt lonely while in a relationship, and whilst being single, and from these experiences have come to know that my feeling of being loved can only come from the level of care, love and appreciation I have for myself.
The other day I was asked the question what would I do if I found my true love. In that moment it never occurred to me that I had already found true love within me or others I know and I dismissed my connection to the divine love I know and have felt. It exposed the perceptions and expectations as well as old ideals and beliefs around the word love and true love.
Great point Vicky, true love immediately conjures up the thought of finding one person to make me feel all those things associated with love, the magic one person who is the answer to happiness. I know that is not true love, but it is such a common ideal, it prevents us from feeling that true love is way more powerful and grand than that, for starters how about all encompassing, available at any moment to connect to and appreciate, with out need or judgement, oh and definitely everlasting…
I have personally observed that even when you do find an amazing companion for life, one’s relationship with self and knowing the love within continues all the same, in other words there is no end point to knowing how much love is within us waiting to pour forth.
This is awesome gemmarubina – that even when you are in a relationship (the one we are all chasing), the need to deepen our love for ourselves continues. It doesn’t go away even then. And yet how many of us in the world just sit back once we ‘have’ the relationship and make our demands upon it to be a certain way?
And Maree the demands we make are so exposing of how we are not loving ourselves in full – it’s super ugly but awesome to see.
I can relate to the frustration and sadness of knowing I have accepted less too Laura, and it makes me delve deeper into the question of why have we done this. This enquiry led me to the awareness that through a lack of real care in my livingness I am prompted to think that I am less, and behave so, it is like a cycle that keeps repeating. Time to live the awareness and break the cycle.
It is extremely freeing and supportive to become aware that we naturally know what is love and what is not, no can feel it for us, we don’t need to read about it, all it requires that we honour what we feel “I realised that I do know what is love and what is not love and there is no need for a rulebook to make this clear.” Through making this connection true wisdom is accessible.
Our innate ability to feel is obvious from birth – a child who has no understanding of words and language can feel and know what is love.
Thanks for the audio link Doug, love this presentation.
I concur with so much of your blog Maree – it was not until I came across Universal Medicine that I knew something felt different – entirely natural but also unfamiliar. I was met by a love, a truth that set off no fireworks, no bliss or euphoria but simply a spaciousness that allowed me to look inside myself, free of judgments, motives or conclusions. It was a shock, aged 36, to realise how little self nurturing, self love featured in my life.
Beautifully said Doug. And further to this when we shut out the world we still live in the illusion that we let some in, those close to us or those we deem ‘safe’ when the truth is if we shut out one we shut out all.
Thank you Maree for sharing your insight with us. It has taken until I am in my 60s to understand that what I thought Love was is so very different to the truth as shared and Lived by Serge Benhayon . I agree with so many of the comments above, and to think that we have been looking for someone else to Love us and show that we are worthy is a sad reflection of how far humanity has moved away from the truth of Love. How wonderful if future generations grow up with the knowledge that they have all the Love they ever need within and not waste a lifetime looking outside themselves. Its up to us to lead by example.
In reading your article so many ideals and beliefs are exposed in how I certainly grew up thinking I knew what love was. What is so beautiful about this blog is how much I can relate to already knowing that deep within my being I am the love I have been looking for all of my life. I could not have know this, unless it was already in me first.
I love how you say “For the act of knowing what love was not, meant that I was governed by an inner knowing of what love truly is.” because growing up all my life I thought I had no clue what love was or if it really existed – because everything I saw around me that was supposed to be love looked to me more to do with lust, chemistry, taking advantage, control, comfort, hiding out, scoring and many other arrangements. So you have nailed it – how could I have known this wasn’t IT, if I didn’t have an inner reference that knew what WAS Love. Every day I discover and deepen my understanding of true Love and it only confirms itself ever more as the truth.
Reading your blog Maree, I can feel what hurts us most is not the lack of Love in our lives necessarily, but the acceptance of Love as being something less than what we innately know it to be deep within us.
Absolutely Joshua, accepting Love as being “less that what we innately know it to be deep within us” is a hurt we all carry. Yet we are raised from young to believe in the bastardised version of love and we carry this through life. It was not until meeting Serge Benhayon and attending his presentations that I became aware that there is not one ounce of emotion in ‘true love’.
This is so wise – if everyone was to open up for one day and let people in the world would instantly change.
Maree I love you blog, you highlight two key things for me today, how we are forever on the hunt for a love out there which will somehow make us right, and insulate us from the world and that when we meet true love as you and many have we know it instantly. So deep in us we know this love ideal we’re chasing is false and yet we’ve set up lives to function to facilitate and support that, and we perpetuate the myth, which deep in our bodies we all know is untrue – isn’t that just crazy. I feel though we’re very invested in this idea of outer love and we don’t want to face the fact that we’ve made choices which have denied our own love and so we continue on the merry-go-round until something stops us, (often a ‘disaster’) and then we consider looking in and that’s when we find that the love in us. I love your tip at the end, in the event of being unsure, to ask is this love and feel how the body responds.
‘For the act of knowing what love was not, meant that I was governed by an inner knowing of what love truly is.’ And we can all have this inner knowing and can choose either way love or not love. A simple truth, thank you Maree!
“By asking the question – “Is it love?” – I give myself the opportunity to look at the way I am living and feel whether it has the true quality of love.” This is a great question to ask for me to feel how I am living. Never until I met Serge Benhayon, would I have ever thought to test the truth of things and activities with this simple question – is it Love?
I love this statement – “reignite that which was always there inside of myself, just waiting for me” – such a stark difference to what we are told about love and where to find it.
Great article Maree, thank you for sharing the simplicity and the knowing that we do know what is and what is not loving.. and how it is an unmistakable, unshakable truth in our bodies. I am also learning that when I find my way to be not loving, that I do not have to be hard on myself for this, but this awareness means I have an opportunity to choose another, loving way.
I love reading this blog Maree, each time I get something more from what you share. When I meet Serge Benhayon every cell in my body confirmed that this man lives and breathes true love, what a beautiful discovery to finally have meet someone who lives this truth we all know and feel deep inside. I am continually inspired by Serge Benhayon and his family to deepen my love for myself and others.
“when any two people come together in friendship or courtship where each has developed love for themselves, there is nothing but pure beauty in the understanding, delicateness and harmony that love brings.” Where each person has developed love for themselves……this is the key part in any relationship, it is absolutely key. We can say this till we are blue in the face, that we love someone, but if there is not a love for self, then the words are just empty, the other person can feel this and reactions occur. To truly love is to love thy self.
Beautiful blog Maree. Your blog has really got me to ponder on what is love in my life and the many choices I have made that are not loving. It’s important to feel that I have made unloving choices, but not get caught up in them and judging myself for those choices. This is definitely a work in progress for me as I make new choices in my life that are love.
“What happens if the quality that we know to be love is reinterpreted and replaced with something that is not love?” I feel a short answer to this question is: current life for most of the world. As in, the shenanigans we see all around the world and even in our homes, is mostly caused because of this very fact. It’s wonderfully innate and simple to reconnect to the quality we know to be love though, this is the good news.
Saying I Love You to some one is an awesome experience when you have a foundation of love within you, in saying those words I now feel the Love and Divinity naturally there in all of us, in the past I would said it out of a need or excitement, and now it is a beautiful confirmation and celebration.
The word love can bring up a lot of stuff for people – expressing it and receiving the expression of it. Either it feels true and some people find it hard excepting being loved, or you can feel when a person is not being honest and the words don’t come with true feeling.
I noticed coming back to love is sometimes painful to face and feel all the unloving choices and to take fully responsibiliy for it without judging. But it is always worth it. Thank you to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine.
‘Growing up, as a teenager I thought love only came from having a boyfriend.’ I totally used to think think this too, although I would expand it to say I also expected love from my mum and dad. Queue years of desparately searching for love in other people, before meeting Universal Medicine and realising everything I searched for was already inside me.
Totally with you on that one, Meg. We are shown a version of love that sits outside of ourselves, and get shown pictures of what that “perfect love” looks like (be they movies, stories, etc.), and then we say, “yes that’s for me! I need someone else to love me and then all will be right in the world.”
It is almost unheard of for a child, or adult for that matter, to be shown what it looks like to have that love in themselves, and express it to themselves first. And then go into a relationship with that foundation of self-love.
‘Everything I searched for was already inside me.’ Truer words have never been said, Meg. And yet, how much effort and energy we put into living as if this were not the case!
Thanks for sharing the link Doug, I absolutely love this audio, so so true.
I can relate to searching for love in all the wrong places and thinking that someone else could provide that fairytale love as seen in the movies, which always seemed to be filled with drama, but I now know that it’s not possible for others to give us love and that we have to connect to the love which is inside us first and then we can truly love another.
Thank you Maree for putting words to how we perceived love to be which we created from watching movies. We observed our parents and knew that wasn’t love, but watching a romantic movie showed us a different way of ‘love’ and ‘loving’. I know I acted out this ‘new’ perception of love and was greatly disillusioned when it wasn’t ‘it’. Finally it occurred to me that if I couldn’t love myself then how could I possibly love another? The quest to understand and feel love started me on another journey by choosing to attend Universal Medicine presentations and workshops, reading the ‘purple’ books, the gentle breath meditation, group sessions and most importantly, for me, my relationships firstly with Universal Medicine students then into the broader community. It has taken all of this to ‘get’ that love is me and I am love and it has nothing to do with movies or anything outside of myself.
Beautiful thank you Maree,I too have found that love is simply a choice and I love it.
A great audio Doug, so helps us understand even more deeply why we don’t allow love in. This one needs to be shared widely, have just done my little bit.
I agree, Doug, “most of us settle for living without love and instead choose to live in an arrangement with others to seemingly protect ourselves from getting hurt.” This is how most of us have settled into relationships, thinking we are ‘in love’, but as we are not connecting to our own love within, we have known no better. Actually, rather than being ‘in love’, we are really ‘in need’ – needing not to be hurt.
“Nowadays, if I am ever unsure about whether I am caught up in an old belief about what I think love might be, I simply ask the question – “Is it love?” – and feel for the answer in my body.” Love it, Maree, this is the key when we are unsure of something – to feel in the body and ask the body “is this love?”. This is where we receive the true answer.
Maree, I love what you have written here about how you now are more loving and nurturing with your body. I have been reflecting recently on the more loving choices I have been making for myself, as a result of being more connected and aware of how my body is feeling every day. For example you mentioned taking an extra layer of clothing with you, or choosing the right footwear. Both of these things might sound quite basic, but I know for myself for most of my life I have not made truly nurturing decisions with my clothing choices. I can now see how that was a reflection of how I had disconnected from being loving with myself. I now love getting dressed everyday – from the point of being truly nurturing of myself in every way – whether that is through the colours, textures or layers I choose to wear. I thank the gorgeous people and Universal Medicine student body/practitioners around me for reflecting these choices, and therefore self-love, so that I too have been able to reconnect on a deeper level with that in myself.
I love your example Amelia and I am reminded on how I currently dress to go to work and how much I love that I support myself in this way. I wear a uniform, so it’s the same everyday, but I add a skivy, singlet, jacket, scarf and gloves when I leave in the morning. I love how warm I am and appreciate the level of care that I have taken. This then travels with me through the day in all of my interactions.
It took a long time for me to accept the teaching as presented by Serge Benhayon that we are love and to seek love from another is an investment we make from a poverty of not feeling the love we are. It turns the world as we know it right-side-up and explains why so many relationships fail. It is a great freedom that I have achieved by renouncing the need for this emotional attachment that is made out to be the holy grail of a so-called successful life.
Love is something so essential and it is devastating that we have lost its true meaning. We need to restore this in order to come back to true health, so thank you Maree for sharing your way of return to its truth.
To be unravelling myself from the trappings of what I thought was love has transformed myself and my relationships, and yet from the foundation I have built, I know that there is so much more Love to embrace. I am forever grateful to Serge Benhayon.
Beautiful words Jenny James. Thank You.
This is gorgeous Maree. Thank you for sharing. I can relate so well to your story of seeking the picture of love that is sold from movies, books, etc. growing up as a teenager and into adulthood, I sought love in the romantic sense and defined my self worth by how much ‘love’ I felt from others towards me. Lately I’ve been re-connecting with myself simply by taking the time to care for me and appreciate my beauty in ways I never had before, without self-judgment. There are times when I look in the mirror and feel enormous love for myself. And without trying, my heart is opening to others.
The feeling of love that you so clearly dot point is so far from the popular love that is searched for. The first does not need to be found as it is always there for humanity, whereas the latter is elusive and easily lost.
Very true Maree, the word Love is often perverted in something we need from another person, and when we do not get it we invent stories to get it, or we go against the person, or shut down.
This behavior is shown to us in films but also in our daily lives from parents to kids, amongst so called friends, amongst couples etc.
I started to understand how much I am caught in this wrongly interpreted version of love when I learned to know Serge Benhayon, and step by step relearned what true love means through his living impulse.
Thanks for sharing the audio Doug. So true what Serge Benhayon presents that you can’t love another, you can only be love and allow another to feel that love within you.
Thank you Maree, this blog explains in real terms the meaning of love, which has so obviously been bastardised. So many words that hold us in the true light as a Son of God, like ‘love’ have lost their true meaning. These reinterpretations and manipulations of words, comes from the force that wants to delude humanity about who we truly are. What better way to keep the truth from humanity than to alter the meanings of words like ‘love’ and ‘stillness’! When words are felt and lived from a true essence, they hold that lived truth as a simplicity that unfolds equally for all or a one unifying truth!
One of the most profound and on-going experiences of my life is how Serge Benhayon has redefined for me what the word love means, from basically a muddied mess of emotions to a clear and tangible presence of the Divine.
Like that cjames2012! A muddied mess of emotions, that’s where I have been living in until I learnt the difference from what Serge Benhayon presents and lives.
Isn’t it just great to know that love is not all the words and ideals and beliefs we have been sold about it ,that it is real and tangible and felt in our bodies when we allow ourselves to feel and connect to it.
It has taken nearly 50 years for me to change my old pattern of searching for love, and to not keep expecting another to express it to me with words or, actually asking ‘do you love me’. That for sure shows how empty/lost I was feeling. So much has changed since attending the many presentations/courses by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine. I like many chose to completely change so many old set patterns of behaviour/ideals and beliefs to live in a very different way. (and still making changes) Bringing self love,self nurturing and gentleness into my life has revealed to me that I too can feel the ‘true essence of love’ that was there all the time. Just hidden so deeply under all those layers I’d covered it up with. Such a beautiful sharing Maree thank you.
Thank you Maree, this is beautiful to read and feel, the true knowing of love and that we all know it and we also know what is not love. We have settled for a false interpretation of the word and now it is time to truly connect to ourselves and be and live the love we innately are with no hangups and hurts to get in the way.
Attending courses and workshops held by Universal Medicine has definitely given me the tools required to live with more care and understanding for myself and others. But the Love that has come as a result is definitely due to the integrity of the work and dedication that I have put in to my everyday living life. Universal Medicine offers potential, but it is us who have the choice to make it happen.
Like yourself Maree I spent much of my life looking for others to fill my emptiness, I so wanted to feel loved. Also like yourself it wasn’t until I met Serge Benhayon and attended Universal Medicine that I felt the true essence of love, this also inspired me to look deep within and to change my life considerably. This sentence from your blog expresses my sentiments perfectly. ” The one thing that I felt the most was that this love I was feeling and observing in another was not about me. It was emanating from inside those who had rediscovered love for themselves.”
‘Is it love?’ 3 words that in any moment can show us the quality of our current choice/ decision/situation. Does my body feel free and open or does it feel constricted and hard when I ask this question? This is a really accessible and practical way to develop myself back to me so that I can live a full life with others – thank you, Maree.
Great point Matilda. Those three great words are our compasses that will always point us to the real truth. We but need to just choose what is presented.
I agree Matilda, its a simply but powerful way to check in with your body and your decisions.
Thank you for sharing your blog Maree. It’s cool how you said- when your unsure about whether your caught up in old belief about what you think love might be. You simply ask the question – “Is it love?” – and feel for the answer in your body…..making it simple. It doesn’t have to be complicated…but for some reason us humans seem to often choose complicated. I wonder why???
The day I first felt true love was at one of Serge Benhayon’ s workshops. Heart Chakra 1 and Wow …their is no need no imposing…it just is. I was in awe. The thoughts on the troubles I had when I first walked into the room were no longer there….they were all gone. I even tried to think the way I was before and I couldn’t…the love was amazing and it is there for us all. That day changed my life.
Beautifully written and you beautifully capture the essence of love.. True love that is as opposed to the emotional love that surrounds us on a daily basis. It can and has been very confusing to tell the difference between the two but the more self love I have the more I am able to see and feel what is not truly loving in my life and this has been the emotional attention seeking kind of love. Bring of more self love I say as the emotional love does not satisfy like you share so beautifully in your post.
To understand the true meaning and feeling of love continues to free me from the roller coaster ride of trying to navigate need, dependence and the expectation of someone else rescuing me from my own hurts and self-destructive thoughts…things that for a long time have debilitated and exhausted me. Since working with Universal Medicine I have come to trust and enjoy myself, beginning to know and live the fact that love is a quality that is simply residing inside us all. Thank you, Maree and Natasha
It is amazing to feel the power of living this message, to recognize that Love was within me all along and to know that it is there for me to constantly connect to and emanate.
Beautiful Maree, I can feel the love in all you share. Love has nothing to do with the big screen glossy fairytale romances attempting to allure viewers, its felt from the the depths of all we know to be true from inside us.
This is so true Giselle, but even today knowing what I know about love, I can feel the strength of the emotional pull in me with these movies. It requires me to be fully present with myself and my surroundings rather than just slump into a checked-out mode (some may call this ‘relaxing’) where I fall into the drama and emotions on screen.
I have in the past purposefully noted how I felt about myself and my life pre-movie and then observed how I felt post-movie. I was surprised to realise that my whole perspective can change where I start to feel less and sometimes I can feel the ‘longing’ that many have described in their comments AND YET this wasn’t how I was feeling prior to the movie. Very interesting experiment to say the least. Just shows that we can’t believe all the terrible things we think about ourselves because maybe they have come from somewhere else and they just aren’t true!
There is no shortage of ‘back up’ in the world around us to support any ‘less than’ feeling I’ve held for so long towards my self, movies have been often the perfect alibi I’ve called upon to nestle down, or hide away into. To be reminded again by expressions such as yours Maree, to bring presence to each moment, I feel more and more equipped to be aware of what I’m feeling in any giving moment, thank you.
I love your discussion Maree and Giselle, it’s to true, the world reinforces the outer, and that feeling of less then you refer to Giselle. It’s a clever trick to keep us busy out there searching while neglecting the one thing that truly is there in us, love, and it starts with us, we set the tone or standard for ourselves based on our acceptance and building of love in us and our bodies.
Great observation Maree along with your excellent blog. I can find that even watching the shorts for upcoming movies while waiting for the feature has had quite an influence on how I feel in my body and my way of thinking. Some movies can get my nervous system racing just by the type of beat and the loudness, a jangling set up in my body as a very obvious example. However it is interesting to stop and feel what happens with even the more subtle movies.
Thank you for sharing your experience of what true love is Maree. It is true that we all know what love is yet we often settle for something less. I am endeavoring to choose love for myself at every opportunity.
Definitely Lee, we accept a lesser form of Love and eventually call that our normality.
True love is not imposing, it just allows you to be, does not expect anything of you. This is how Serge makes us feel, he allows us to be love, his love is so welcoming never imposing.
Love is when there is a deep joy and stillness felt inside that is independent of anything.
It is amazing how every person in the world desires to be loved – wants love in their life in some form. It is a universal yearning, and that is why love is considered so powerful and is so prominent. And yet, if the love we had was true, why do we have the kind of lives and relationships that are all to common, filled with sadness, loneliness and an element of giving up. My best friend is only 17 and has already decided love doesn’t have a place in relationships because she believes love has hurt her in the past. And yet how can true love hurt? I see love as the warmth and care a baby feels from its mother, that it recognise well before it is able to mentally understand words and the meaning of love, it feels it and knows it in its heart. I believe, like you have shared Maree, that we all have a knowing of what love is, however it cannot be searched for in others, but within ourselves.
This is such an awesome walk from not knowing love and looking for it everywhere around us, expecting it from others and being disappointed and depressed if it did not show up on the path, to the exquisite way in which you have captured that love truly is who we are Maree. I am moved by your writing. Thank you.
‘Nowadays, if I am ever unsure about whether I am caught up in an old belief about what I think love might be, I simply ask the question – “Is it love?” – and feel for the answer in my body’ – gorgeous, Maree, the body never lies.
Yes Alison, a great reminder that it is that simple, to bring it back to the body and let the body decide what is love. We either get a yes or a no in the body.
It is very empowering to have a deep connection with our body so we know how things truly feel for us, instead of trying to be guided by thoughts in our head – which have not been discerned from our body first.
Definitely putting this ‘technique’ into my tool belt. Not sure? Simply ask the question ‘Is it love?’ and then listen with all my might to what my body has got to say.
Yes, Matildaclark, it is so amazingly simple isn’t it? Main thing is to listen intently.
So simple Alison, love or not love. For me I am still working on choosing love each time.
“I knew that I would know love when I felt it and this proved to be true” – so gorgeous Maree. I am glad you did not settle for any substitute but honoured the love, that you knew. Reading you describe what love feels like, allowed me to feel this delicateness too.
Love is always there, love is firm, love keeps me on track, love is normal, love has no boundaries and it knows where to be found. For me to make the choices to accept and live the love I already am.
In developing a connection to my love inside, I feel more full than I have ever felt in any relationship – where ultimately I was seeking to be filled by the love of another. Those relationships ended, usually fraught with emotion. Feeling who I am now, if I go into a relationship, it would be because I choose to be close to someone in that way. There’s no need pushing me to find it. To find myself feeling this at age 39 when many people around me are getting married or telling me to get married, gives me a deep sense of freedom from the prison built of the ideals of romantic love.
So many people now so naturally and openly live with Love in their lives. Universal Medicine courses presented by Serge Benhayon have nurtured the true Love out from within and now shine with it on the outside. The livingness of Love is transformational for the human being as it re-introduces this forgotten relationship we can have with ourselves, loving who we are, and appreciating others with the same amount of love.
Maree, that phrase ‘just the way it is’ puts the brakes on evolution in any relationship. It forces us to accept a lesser version of who we are, give our power away and erode our self worth. There is no place for this in any relationship.
It is beautiful what you share Maree. I recognise a lot of similarities. Meeting Serge Benhayon also changed the belief of what I had about what Love is. That it is not something that you have to earn or have to be lucky to find it. It is there always, within us.
Beautifully put; what a amazing moment it is when we stop looking for love from outside of ourselves, and start to slowly learn to find the love inside of us, which is naturally who we are.
“it was always my responsibility to bring it to myself through the loving choices I make for myself each and every day” Maree, you have hit the nail on the head here! Thank you it is so true love can never be found out there if we have not already acknowledged the love that we already have inside.
The points you make here about what love now means to you are true for me too. I also feel a profound sense of space to be myself now – which I have allowed and others respect. That love is a holding, not emotional, all about truth and responsibility – things I didn’t want to face in the past – because of my indulgence in ’emotional needy love’.
So beautifully expressed Maree.
Once there is true love for ourselves inside, there will be no need or longing for love anymore just a deep stillness from that love will grow, reflect and invite love in the most magical and beautiful ways.
There is love (that is not love) and love (that is love). The same word is used but they are not the same thing.
This article illustrates that either we don’t really know the difference between the two, or, more likely, we do know the difference but we settle for much less.
This is such a powerful sentence “We all know what is love, but many of us simply resort to something that is less – we resort to ‘attention’ or ‘lust’ or ‘companionship’ or ‘security’ – so that we don’t have to feel alone.” I feel that deep down we know we are resorting to something less, either because we have not found how to connect to true love and have given up looking, or because we are avoiding seeing the choices we have made in the past that have not been love. At the end of the day we will all find our way back to love, and we are the only one’s responsible for when this will happen. From my experience, it’s well worth being humble, honest, open and willing to truly go there, to expose and let out what is not love, to make room for the love that is actually already inside us and waiting to come out.
That’s beautiful Shirley-Ann, the more we can make it about the real deal the more people get to experience it.
It is such a wonderful experience to feel true love in my body, in me and emanating through me. I will never be able to thank Serge Benhayon enough for bringing this to us through his dedication to himself and God.
Your blog is so spot on about how misunderstood and misinterpreted love has been amongst humanity.
Love to me had always seemed to come with certain conditions or ways of being that you had to be or do but really it’s not something that can be framed or contained, it always grows.
I too craved for a love I thought only others could give me, I have now discovered that love is inside of me and all I need to do is live and bring it out into everything I am and do and will then experience this love I once longed for all the time.
It’s amazing the amount of effort we put into our whole lives to find love, all that searching and we never needed to search further than our own hearts.
The moment that shone out for me in this blog was to realise that the fact that we know what is not love means that we know from our inner most, what is love. Well claimed.
Maree I really enjoyed how you explored love in your blog and feel I too will begin to apply the question “is it love?”. It feels as though this question and approach shines a light on our choices and offers us an opportunity to feel for ourselves the truth of the decisions and choices we make. Thank you for sharing your awareness of love it has helped me to feel love in a much deeper way.
Yes! great link, great comment, great blog. Give thanks.
This is a great exposure of the ideals about the word love, and all the meanings that are not true Maree. It shows all the myths that surround love and the needs of the emotional love that is very different from the feeling of true love inside us all.
Maree I ‘love’ how you ask “Is it love?” – and feel for the answer in your body.” When feel I am going into reaction in a situation or with a person if I stop for a moment and ask myself ‘what would love say / do?’ I am instantly inspired to respond to the situation in quite a different way than my old patterns do, a more supportive way for all concerned. It really has been a game changer for me to start to question what is love and explore how love expresses as opposed to how I express from my hurts and protective defence mechanisms. Like you, it has been through the reflection of the love that Serge Benhayon is and presents through Universal Medicine that has inspired this shift in a. my understanding of what love is and b. the way I express myself and support others.
I like your own questions … what would love do/say? I can ask this sometimes but not with consistency. It depends on how big my reaction is to the hurt that i am feeling. This is a work in progress but it is definately worth exploring.
Beautifully expressed Jeannette. To truly stop and connect with the essence of love is indeed a game changer – and one that offers us the opportunity to move beyond all that has kept us, as a humanity, in such continued conflict since time immemorial it seems…
The true work indeed starts with each one of us, and the work of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine has inspired and shown how real love can be lived, every day, if we are but willing to connect to the essence of it. So many lives have already been transformed tremendously.
It was a great day when I first discovered that love doesn’t come from another, that it comes from the choice I make to be love. When two people meet who are love there is understanding, delicateness and harmony.
And I feel deep inside me that I knew that already.
Thank you Maree for the inspiration.
Only someone who loves everyone unconditionally can describe love so well as you have done here Maree. I, like many others driven by fear of being alone settled for security and companionship thinking we could make it happily ever after as we go. So I really know what you mean by “when we don’t purposely choose love, we end up choosing by default another way of being which holds an emptiness, a misery, a sadness, and a lovelessness.”
I have felt the real love from Universal Medicine Esoteric practitioners, like you say tender gentle unimposing, and firm when necessary. The most valuable lesson I could learn in life is to connect the love in my own heart and live from there.
The proof that we are love comes through in the words that we know when something isn’t love. This is something we all know and something we all know the majority do not have in society, otherwise we wouldn’t endlessly be trying to reconnect with it.
I have returned to re-read this beautiful blog on ‘Love’ and looking through all the responses it is clear that you have touched on and connected with many. Very powerful. Thank you Maree.
The seeking of love outside of oneself… Haven’t we all fallen for this? It’s so great to open this conversation with your powerfully honest blog, Maree. For it seems so much of the world runs on seeking such fulfilment – when the true nature of love is something we do know, within.
Only through attending Universal Medicine events, and with the support of courses and Universal Medicine trained practitioners, have I found I can actually allow myself to reconnect to this knowing of love – the real thing – within, and let go that which I’ve pursued in order to fill the void of where it was seemingly missing in my life.
Today the ways in which I may pursue it outside of me are vastly diminished, but there is, yet more ‘refined’ learning – and with it, the beauty of growing in the knowing of the love that I am. I have to say also, that with this knowing and inner-reconnection, that the relationships in my life have only blossomed, and I am blessed with such a profundity of love both within and without – such as I never could have imagined in all those years I spent looking for someone or something to fill the void…
I can affirm that Victoria. Love looks and feels very different now, after attending Universal Medicine events, than it did before. I now come to realise that what I thought was love actually stopped me loving my husband and my family, it was so emotional and totally self centred. Now any relationship I have is deepening, and so much more honest and true, and is inclusive of everyone, not just for me.
Absolutely Joanchristincalder. This is profound – that our close and personal relationships have been transformed so deeply. I used to think I ‘loved’ in the way I carried others’ problems (including those of partners’, family…), and all I was doing was saturating them and myself with an emotive, attached form of ‘love’ – that I now know wasn’t love at all… and holding all of us back from a deeper, and true way of connecting.
Hello Victoria Carter, I could read this comment over and over again. This for me is nearly the same as I would write it. This middle part stood out as well and I totally agree, “Only through attending Universal Medicine events, and with the support of courses and Universal Medicine trained practitioners, have I found I can actually allow myself to reconnect to this knowing of love – the real thing – within, and let go that which I’ve pursued in order to fill the void of where it was seemingly missing in my life.” So perfectly said Victoria Carter, a real loving gem thank you.
That is deeply beautiful Ray… and clearly reflective of the shared experiences of so many people here – people from all ‘walks of life’, ages and backgrounds, who have found, or we could say re-discovered, the real nature of what love is.
Without this rediscovery, I would certainly still be walking around quite depleted, lacking vitality and drained by others’ issues and my need to resolve them/take them on. And in this, I would effectively be disempowering those who I do truly love (and there are so many) deeply, from connecting to the love that is within themselves.
So many lives changed, and deeper, richer relationships as a result… The work of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine is absolutely stunning and amazing beyond measure, that this experience of real love lived can be so profound, and for so many…
I agree Victoria; it’s great to start a conversation with such raw honesty. Rarely talked about like a taboo subject, many will claim that they love defensively like it is not to be questioned. A gentle suggestion that a particular behavior is not so loving can be hard to hear, but if a change in my behavior would be a more loving thing to do……well now I have a choice.
It’s honesty that can bring us towards rediscovering what is really true about love, isn’t it Bernard… As Maree has shared, we ‘do know’ what love really is.
We may not like it when someone else offers that what we’ve been doing/giving isn’t really love, and equally others may not like it when we offer the same, and yet, in honesty, we have the opportunity to deeply respect each other and look at what is/isn’t truly working in our lives and relationships.
The learning is ongoing, but undoubtedly worth it – both personally, and in the far bigger picture, for all. For with so much conflict still abounding on our planet, it doesn’t seem that we’ve got what love, and truly loving relationships are all about, does it…
Spot on Shirley-Ann. That’s the thing – as our emotional need for ‘love’ (which I propose isn’t the ‘real deal’ of what love is at all) diminishes, so too do we become more true and close to the people in our lives, that being if they are open to such love (as I’ve found most certainly are). The walls between us diminish, and we realise all the more, how intimately connected we truly are.
The sharings here stand testament to this fact, and the truly miraculous transformations in so many lives here, as the true nature of love is being rediscovered – inspired, I must add, by Serge Benhayon and the work of Universal Medicine, to a degree that continues to blow me away… Now, THAT – the work of Universal Medicine – is Love, unequivocally so!
“it was always my responsibility to bring it to myself through the loving choices I make for myself each and every day.” It is my responsibility to bring love to myself, I can compare to others, sit back and be jealous of others too, but it is actually my choices in each and every moment to be that love.
Beautifully clear sharing – gorgeously summed up in these lines:
“In fact, what I was feeling was not love at all, but more the filling of an emptiness and an excitement about the possibility that this emptiness would now dissipate forever because somebody else was here to take it away.”
“I was never going to find love from another; it was always my responsibility to bring it to myself through the loving choices I make for myself each and every day.”
Maree, I agree it is a beautiful moment when, as you say “I felt the true essence of love”. To be met by this love rings true, it calls without any imposition or need from us or for us to do anything, and in this sense it is also a most unfamiliar feeling. But one we know deep from within, resonates as true.
Maree there is perhaps no greater mis-use of any other word, more than that of the word ‘love’ and the crime deepens because of the amount that we use the word and because of the importance that we put on it. I have never actually considered the enormity of the problem before but we have a world that is searching for something that they have been misguided into believing is actually something other than it is. It’s no wonder hardly anyone can find it !
It is so lovely that you have found the true meaning of the word love Maree. I am just starting to accept how much outside of myself I have been using as a substitute for love and not attaining the feeling I am seeking. I am now focusing on the love I have for myself. It’s inside of me just wanting to come out and it’s not just for me, it’s for everyone.
Maree you have so simply expressed what is truly love and what is not love but called love.
I too have fallen for what was not love and disappointed myself because I knew it wasn’t love but I didn’t want to put in the dedication to myself to be love and wanted another to give me my self love – an impossible thing.
I love reading this as I can so clearly feel the difference between true love and what was labeled love but was actually neediness on my part. Having admitted to my self and felt what is true love I cannot fall again for a love that is not true.
Imagine if we were all supported when young to stay connected to what love truly is, to know that we are love (which we did) and feel that reflected in another. The movies and books would tell a very different tale. Thanks for sharing your return to love Maree, your return to yourself.
“As I look back I can see that there was no foundation of love in myself, let alone in my relationships, so each relationship became a struggle.” We are not taught that self-love is a foundation for all relationships – our parents didn’t know it either. Yet this is a rock on which to build all relationships, otherwise they dissolve because they have no true base or platform on which to rest.
‘I was on a mission to find this feeling called love’ – this was so much how I approached my teenage years, I felt a sense of urgency and need. The relationship I ended up with was based on this need of two empty people searching outside of themselves. Through Universal Medicine I am now understanding love as an honouring of myself and of all others in a way that is respectful, allowing and accepting. This love feels like a rock and not something that is fleeting and ephemeral – it is based on integrity.
Love the audio link Doug, thanks for digging this up.
Thank you, Maree. I too believed that love was only possible through having the right boyfriend and meeting ‘the one’. It has taken me most of my adult life to accept that I am ‘the one’, and that no-one in the whole world can bring me back to the truth of my divinity and fill me head to toe with love apart from myself.
Absolutely Janet, so much truth about love is the flavor that is felt in this blog!
I too used to believe love was something outside of me that could only be experienced through having someone love you. Now I know love to be a state of being, something that is consistently there if I choose it to be so no matter what is around me or not. And now when I find myself in a neediness or looking for love outside of me it is a clear marker that I need to look at the relationship I am having with myself in that moment.
Yes Carolien that’s so true! Many people believe ‘love’ can only be experienced when someone else loves you… When actually as you say it’s a quality; a state of being, that we can live with ourselves and others all of the time!
That is the truth in a nutshell Carolien. A great reminder that we are the love we are looking for.
“I felt the true essence of love”. Words have a habit of being reinterpreted, and I was struck by this simple short sentence. As your blog says the word love has been made cheap, and expresses for me quite an external almost flippant love commonly found in films. When you introduce the word essence it goes deep, it becomes alive and reflects something divine and eternal.
I love your comment simonwilliams8.To feel the true essence of love is divine.
Like you Maree, The question you pose to yourself,’ Is it true love?’ is very revealing and supportive. I am in train to discover more and more what true love is in my body. One big barometer are my thoughts and the quality of them. If I m lost too much in my thoughts I know I am not in the energy of true love. True love is a warmth in my body which emanates and is open to everybody.
I have many memories of going along to a romantic hollywood style movie and coming away feeling really dissatisfied with my own life because the ‘boy meets girl and they live happily ever after’ story just wasn’t my reality, nor was it the reality of most people I knew. But for so long, I thought one day I’d find it, I just hadn’t met the right man yet! Then one day I did meet the right man, Serge Benhayon, who showed me that the love I was searching for was right under my nose…right inside me…and showed me how to connect to that love, and then to live it. That’s better than any Hollywood movie!!
What a simple yet profound question to ask yourself, ‘Is it love’, and then to feel your bodys response? Our bodies never lie in my experience.
Thank you Maree, I can relate to how you have been inspired feeling the truth of love as an emanation… and not as a ‘doing’ in the often-misguided name of love. After also seeking love outside of me, in many forms, I now feel Love as a fullness in myself that does not have any need attached to it, it just is. We all equally have this love in us.
I can so relate to that Victoria. I recently attended an awareness day at the local hospice and we were instructed as part of a role play to be a ‘the worst carer we could’ doing all the things that demonstrated ‘don’t care’. It was awful, my body was so distressed I could hardly function.To even to pretend to not be love is so painful.
That is so true catherine bower, ‘to even pretend to not be love is so painful’…painful for us and painful for others… as Love is our nature.
‘For the act of knowing what love was not meant that I was governed by an inner knowing of what love truly is.’ Even though I knew what was loving and what wasn’t loving growing up through disregard of myself as I got older I continually would choose what was not loving for me. That was until I met Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine, through their teachings, presentations and workshops I have cleared old behaviours, patterns, ideals and ill beliefs along with the disregard I had for myself and now choose love in my life, including making loving choices and connecting to and starting to claim the innate love within myself. So I can really relate what you have shared about no longer searching for love outside.
Yes Vicky this line stood out for me as well. It changes the perspective somewhat to think that it is no accident that we did not experience true love much when growing up because we were deliberately avoiding it! I suddenly thought if I actually know love inside out then I would have known the perfect way to not live it! We really are the masters of our own lives.
It is profound andrewmooney26, to think we are the masters of our our lives in every single respect.
It is true we are andrewmooney26 and this subject is a great topic and one that I feel could be discussed further. ‘Deliberately avoiding true love when we are growing up’ and so what about now as adults? Where are we at with our level of true love with ourselves first and then of course with others…. are we bringing true love to all our relationships? A question to deeply ponder and then re-ponder.
This is beautiful to read Maree, and an absolute game changer from old beliefs around love. To know love is equally available to us all through the loving choices we make – is a great reminder for us all -thank you.
‘I had made love to be something that was to be found on the outside of me, something that I would receive from another’ Maree we all fell for this one.
The moment I met Serge Benhayon I knew what love was. It was incredible because it didn’t come from outside me… It sparked within.
I WAS the love that I had been seeking.
Like Dorothy with the Red Shoes…. I had it all along…. Now I just had to claim it and develop it and emanate this quality called love everyday, consistently. 😊
Beautifully said kathrynfortuna, claim it, develop it and emanate it, wear the shoes on the outside for all to see.
I love what you say here Kathrynfortuna.” Like Dorothy with the Red Shoes…I had it all along…Now I just had to claim it and develop it and emanate this quality called love everyday,…Consistently.” This is so true…it is there for everyone …equally.
It is time to re-write all those awful movie scripts about love and Maree you’ve started that, bringing truth to one of the biggest illusions we live with and accept. We seem to have easily accepted that love is something we have to seek from outside ourselves. As you described your experiences of finding a boyfriend I felt you could have been writing about mine as well, and I’m sure many others experiences were the same. And I’ve played this pattern out time and time again, always looking for someone else to fill the emptiness, eventually having a child to remedy this – it didn’t work. Then I came across esoteric healing and Serge Benhayon and rediscovered that what I’d been looking for is within – love – and it’s always been there, just not chosen. I no longer feel empty or needy and this means that all my relationships are now based on love and have a fullness to them I’ve not experienced before. You captured the essence of this in your closing words so I’m going to close with them as well –
“And when any two people come together in friendship or courtship where each has developed love for themselves, there is nothing but pure beauty in the understanding, delicateness and harmony that love brings.”
Great point about how Maree has begun re-writing the typical unrealistic and illusionary movie scripts of emotional love. I have for a long time been questioning the usual ‘happy ending’ love story type of movies where everyone lives ‘happily ever after.’ It always felt so fake and unreal in some way, even as a kid watching them, and only proves to lead people astray in an attempt to find love outside themselves. Also, I love how Maree simply asks herself during the day “Is it love”, during various times. This is such a great way to check in with ourselves and sometimes realise how we have been settling for much less than love in our relationships and otherwise. I can say for myself that it helped me realise very clearly something I had been tolerating at work for too long and helped me address it today with strength!
Simple and so powerful: we are love and we won’t find it outside of ourselves. And yes the way to it is gentleness and self-loving choices. What does it mean to be love? I found this question quite challenging in the beginning and I am still discovering every day what it means to be all of me.
A fantastic description of your experience of coming back to love and your understanding the word. I know I did this, “I had made love to be something that was to be found on the outside of me, something that I would receive from another.” I remember distinctly having this moment once when I felt that love was infinite and it was inside and that I did not need to seek it from others, this was a moment of great learning…I still did seek from others, but I began to learn how to trust the love that is inside and this altered my relationships dramatically and I began not to seek it from others. This awareness has also shared a sense of belonging in me, that I did not feel possible.
“Love It”. Describing Love I feel in my body .. It’s a forever expanding commitment to feeling more by expressing all that I feel. It is firm. It does not hold back! It holds ALL equal. It lets every-body in. It’s transparent, you can see all of me. No guard or protection just understanding.
Like you said Maree “it is there for everyone” and “it was simply to reignite that which was always there inside of myself”. Well said.
The old pattern of seeking love from outside ourselves is one that takes some time to beak free of. I still find myself falling for this from time to time as so much of what I have done throughout my life has been seeking love in this way, but slowly this is changing and I feel the love and joy that reside within me when I just accept where I am, no matter what I am doing. Your blog is another lovely reminder, thanks Maree.
Thank you Maree for the simple revelation, that by not choosing love in all that we do, by default we are allowing lovelessness to be in everything, and then we blame life for the lack of love, but the truth is it was all of our choosing to not be love.
Great clarity here Andrew. Yes if we do not take care in every moment to make it loving we are indeed choosing lovelessness through lack of care.
Well said Andrew, if we do not say yes to love and choose love then effectively as you said we are choosing and saying yes lovelessness.
I agree Andrew, this was also a part that stood out for me; if it is not love what we choose then is lovelessness. And that is the energy we bring to the next thing that we do or express. But it is also important to feel how easily we can make the choice to be love again.
A great reminder for everyone Andrew…thank you….it all comes back to our own choices.
This is a great audio you’ve recommended here Doug, I’ve just listened to it, about the truth of the word Love. Thanks.
“Perhaps though, the one thing that I felt the most was that this love I was feeling and observing in another was not about me. It was emanating from inside those who had rediscovered love for themselves.” Isn’t it amazing, divine actually, how true love is absolutely equal, available to us all, living within each of us, awaiting our loving choices to allow it to express. Others can offer us the reflection of true love, but it is for each person to choose that for themselves. Amazing.
Absolutely agree coleen24. It offers a huge trust, that we are never ever to search for love outside of us again. And that after all those time searching we can still, each person, choose true love for themselves. Thank you Maree for your amazing article and such beautiful writing. Keep on writing!
We know and feel love first before we even know it is a word. Much can get lost in interpretation but never is a drop of love lost in essence. Know love and you will know its imposter a mile off.
Wow, Maree – thanks for a terrific blog! I appreciate the simplicity of just asking ourselves ‘is it love?’ and then listening to the answer with our body and not our mind, when we are unsure if we are on track or not. Very powerful, even if we don’t always like the response!
I love how Maree poses that simple, yet revealing question, too, Helen: “Is it Love?”
I love the simplicity and hugeness of what you share about the fact that, when we are not choosing love to be the essence of our decisions and choices, we are by default choosing something else. That is when I find all the old patterns and dysfunction can re-raise their heads. Thank you, Maree.
Very true matildaclark, I love this too. It makes everything very simple. Every choice we make, and every action or word, is either loving….or not. Simple!
When I read your blog Maree I felt a sadness that so much of my life has not been about love and how much this had affected my life. Knowing what true love is has brought so many changes to my life, my relationship with everyone, especially my family, and how we are with each other. There is an understanding between us that was not there before and all the past hurts have just naturally fallen away.
As you say, Maree, the whole world is searching for it, singing about it, and saying they want it, but how many are willing to ‘go there’ and uncover the patterns and behaviours that keep us choosing less than love for ourselves. Your blog needs to get out there.
Un-happily-ever-after is the end result of looking for love as something that is outside of your self. Can be felt on a physical level even with just the touch of a fingertip, and the rest of your list leaves no stone unturned for what real love is.
Sounds like you have the script for the next Disney film between you sjmatsonuk and kevmchardy! Not sure how popular it would be though as instead of love being this massive trumpet call, only available to the frog or the princess, it is here for us all, waiting patiently.
How many of us settle for not love, when like you Maree we all know what it is to be love and from love. Hollywood ought to try making a film that actually depicts what is and what is not love. Wonder how the box office would react to that.
You have to love yourself before you can love another …. I remember hearing these words and thinking, ‘of course I love myself’, but the truth showed otherwize. I was actually very self critical, not at all accepting or appreciative of who I am and what I can bring. Now that I DO have love for myself and feel it deeply within my body, my life feels so different, as do all my relationships with others.
Alison I am so pleased that you raised this as I had done exactly the same thing. I remember one day a friend asked if I had love for myself and I said yes, but the choices I was making and the way I abused the body told a very different story indeed.
I have done this too – determined to claim that I loved myself …. indulged in everything but love, would have been far more accurate!
Great point Alison. I feel that was pretty much normal for most of us before we understood that love was inside us
The excitement of ‘falling in love’ is such a sort after experience that humanity is addicted to living this process vicariously through the movies and television shows – the majority of story lines run this as the main theme if not the secondary subplot. Think of those long running television shows like Friends and Sex in the City.
So Maree when you explained this as ‘the filling of an emptiness and an excitement about the possibility that this emptiness would now dissipate forever because somebody else was here to take it away’ you reveal the false foundation that we build relationships and love upon and just how consistently this is being reinforced. Thank you for bringing forward how you have built your true and loving way free of this as at the moment most people are imprisoned in a vicious and damaging cycle of looking for the love they want to come from another.
Awesome blog Maree. I followed the story line of your blog like it was my own, in many ways. Thank you.
This is beautiful what you have written here ‘I realised that I do know what is love and what is not love and there is no need for a rulebook to make this clear. I was never going to find love from another; it was always my responsibility to bring it to myself through the loving choices I make for myself each and every day. And when any two people come together in friendship or courtship where each has developed love for themselves, there is nothing but pure beauty in the understanding, delicateness and harmony that love brings. And in this, I am finally able to use and understand the true meaning of the word love.’
This blog is a great reminder for me to appreciate all the wisdom I have been offered through the presentations of Universal Medicine, not least is knowing who I am and all the burdens I have released from my life in knowing this truth.
We have to rediscover and connect to the love within ourself, before we can share that way of being with anyone or anything else. For if love is not coming from within, then where is it coming from? We can never retain love if we keep seeking it from another. Love is in the air – most definitely, when we emanate love for all to feel.
Thank you, Maree, this is a very touching ode to love. I can feel the depths of your joy in having re-connected to love and the deliciousness of living from the tenderness you feel inside.
Always great to read about the true meaning of love. As much as it’s something I have re-learnt about, the fact is, my ‘old’ understanding of what love is, is still very much in our faces through such mediums as TV, Movies, and of course the way the majority are choosing to live. I still get caught up in what love ‘looks like’, and get sucked into the fantasy of what it can give me. But the flashes of light that I have occasionally about the fact that love just is and that I can’t take or give it away, are becoming more frequent and I feel grateful for that.
Great blog, Maree, exposing the emptiness of our concepts of love. It wasn’t until I stopped looking for love outside myself and started to build a foundation of love in myself that I stopped needing love. I saw that any need for love will not bring true love – only a false version of it. If ever I chose to doubt myself and look for some confirmation of my worth I drew to me a poor substitute for love which provided comfort and relief but I felt stifled and paralysed by it.
That search for a seemingly elusive ‘love’ is very familiar to me – looking for something to be delivered, as a gift & like it was a missing piece that had gone astray to be returned through another.
In my relationship with Universal Medicine, The Way of The Livingness and the student body I have found that the elusive gift was right there inside me waiting to be unwrapped, and as you say Maree re-claimed as its true meaning in my loving way with me and everyone.
Love: from elusive and external, to always there, waiting patiently to be acknowledged and expressed – thank you, Helen.
Beautiful Matilda, Love is always within us, waiting for us to come home to it.
The enormous beauty in what love truly is, is felt very strongly through your blog, the love for ourself is so much more important than only caring about others to love us.
What a beautiful expression and pondering – what is true love. From a young age I deeply knew there was true love and felt a presence of God and his expression of true love in everything. However, I never allowed myself permission or accepted that I too was that true love so have spent also 40+ years chasing it from the outside as you expressed Maree. Now I know to live with the true love I feel exists all around me, I have to first self-love – how can I possibly experience true love unless I accept that I am also made up of that same level of love? This is where the steadiness and love of Serge Benhayon, Natalie Benhayon and practitioners have supported me to love myself. We can never truly experience true love until love for self has been accepted, embraced and truly lived.
Thank you Maree for sharing your blog, to see a newly born is to know love is our natural state of being, not something we try to be, look for, as it never left, we have just allowed stuff to get in the way of our awareness of what we are ,an all encompassing warmth of being, that holds and allows us to be — love.
Such a beautiful and clear written blog, Maree! A lot i have experienced myself looking for romantic kind of love and only finding it in movies but not in real life. But always having a feeling that the way i live relationships is not really love but accepting but because it was not challenging. But hoping one day i will experiencing true love. Until i understood that i had a wrong concept of love. That my partner can’t bring me love and that it is about being loving and caring with myself.
How lovely Maree that you have shared with us so many insights and much wisdom about a word that has had us in its thrall for what seems like forever; a word that appears to mean different things to different people, but overall has been tarnished with many different emotions, and in many cases, pain and suffering when it appears that love has gone. When we let go of the multitude of ideals and beliefs that we have had around love, and peel back the layers of emotions that we have surrounded it with, we are left with what love undeniably is: a sense of stillness within us that asks nothing of us but to simply be all that we are and to honour that in every moment; a warmth that starts from within that expands outward to every part of us and onward to everyone we meet; an absence of judgement of self and others, and with that an acceptance and appreciation of how amazing we all are. When we take the time to stop and connect to all that we are, in that moment we are love.
The mass of what is not love (that’s all the false ideals of love) clouds, or could I say pollutes and dilutes, the love that is around. It is only when you start to discover, feel and live the real love, the rest literally becomes insignificant.
It is amazing the lengths we go to we seek outside of ourselves what we already have within.
I agree Kathleenbaldwin, we set ourselves an outward search only to eventually realise that which we search for is within. Awesome to arrive here and re-discover the building of a loving relationship with ourselves.
I concur! Seems a crazy concept and behaviour when you put it as simply as that.
Great comment kathleenbaldwin. We have been educated by the pranic forces to be unaware of what is inside us to make us unsatisfied so we look for fulfilment on the outside.
Scrumptious! Maree, you just exposed the whole romantic emotional love we all got brought up on and that most of us brought into. Living in relationships in an attempt to fill our emptiness up with another. Yet the temporary thrill, excitement, lust, attention is not sustainable when your love of self has not be tendered to. Ahhh yes, I know this old worn path well. Fortunately through the presentations of Serge Benhayon I have re-connected to the truth of the word love which you sum up beautifully here: “And when any two people come together in friendship or courtship where each has developed love for themselves, there is nothing but pure beauty in the understanding, delicateness and harmony that love brings”. I know this to be true and embrace it in the friendships I have and the potential partnership to come.
It feels so important for us all to connect to the true meaning of love, for it feels as though we are all searching for love without stopping to feel that it is within. When I connect to my body it feels like I open up to new possibilities and choices that my body will offer to either support myself – or not.
Yes Susan, I feel we take on our culture’s meaning of love to readily and live in the habit of it as that feels easier and more comfortable, and brings us what we think we want or desire. Whereas, as children we do know the true meaning of love from inside us, and it is very simple for us then. We have made love with its false meaning so complicated and full of emotion, whereas love is wide and deep, gentle and strong, a continuous flow of energy, and not always comfortable or easy to express.
As you so wisely say Joan ‘love is wide and deep, gentle and strong’ and with this understanding of love we can expand and be assured that with this support we can embrace any situation without anxiety, as we know we are enough just as we are.
When I pose the question to myself “Is it love?”, thoughts versus feeling and listening compete for my attention…
Your blog is so encouraging Maree, thank you.
I’m sure many of us have settled for ‘attention, lust or companionship’ believing it to be love. But from experience this only leads to more emptiness and loneliness. I’m finding I am not searching for these things anymore since starting to love and care for myself.
Maree, thank you. As I read your blog I felt my thoughts travel back to the ‘love’ of my younger days. And no it was definately not what I now know love to be. I felt protected, supported and had my basic needs met but it was not love. I have now rediscovered true love for myself, which is actually within my own heart, who would have thought! Thank you Universal Medicine for showing me the way back to the love I was always seeking for outside myself but of course never found.
Beautiful Maree. It’s fascinating how everyone has different experiences and perceptions of what the word ‘love’ means. Due to how commonly it’s used, you would think people would have an agreed general consensus of its true definition.. But we are bombarded with images of what love should be, from the media, our family, friends, TV, and others, and over time ‘love’ is a phrase made to describe hundreds of different things.
An awesome blog Maree, as the word love has totally been mis-interpreted and bastardised. I had totally fallen for this ‘romantic’ view of love myself and it did not work, as it can never work. It’s so freeing to understand that we are not depending on others to bring love to us, but it is up to us to bring it to ourselves, to connect to it within ourselves. Once we choose to love ourselves, others will reflect that love to us too. When we come from the emptiness and expect another to fill us, we are disempowering ourselves and putting our needs on another, asking them to fill the emptiness for us.
Maree, this is a very powerful yet simple blog. What stood out for me is that it is our responsibility to give love to ourselves. I have often looked for it in another and when I haven’t received the loving reflection that I wanted, I have felt devastated and taken it personally and even blamed the other person for hurting me. But bringing it back to my own responsibility to foster my connection to the love ALREADY inside me is key and to know that love is not imposing but just allows another to be.
We know Love is what we all seek, we forget that we know it and have it inside us first.
After all the searching we do for love how ironic that it was within us all along.
‘We forget that we know’ this is so true gillrandall and as Maree said so well, we know what love is not so we keep searching but this in itself shows that:
we do know what love is
we have just been looking in all the wrong places for it.
This is awesome, Maree. A fantastic expose of what love truly is vs. what we have settled for in life. As you so beautifully say, though, love is not something that we need to search for or create. It lives within each and every one of us, just waiting for us to open the door and let it out for ourselves and everyone else.
I did the same Maree, I fell for the movie image of what love was meant to be, ‘ I was on a mission to find this feeling called love, and I had seen hundreds of times in movies how it was to be found.’ And like you it never worked for me, I was always left feeling disappointed because these men had not swept me off my feet and there was no happy ever after, the movie stories are so untrue and have a huge influence on young people growing up, creating a lot of ideals and pictures of how love should be and leaving a lot of people feeling disappointed and disillusioned, the movies never mention that we can love ourselves and do not need a knight in shinning armour to make us happy.
The line ‘many of us simply resort to something that is less’ may be a gross understatement in the numbers. I have also because of Universal Medicine, rediscovered what I had hidden away in the cupboard all those years ago… love. All of the years I had spent looking for love being something outside of me; it had always been with me the whole time, patiently waiting for me to come back.
Very true sjmatson; love is always patiently waiting for us, but although we think it is ‘hidden away in the cupboard’ it’s actually in plain site! Always with us, and has been the whole time.
‘hidden away in the cupboard’…. its a useful metaphor, because I keep finding myself looking in other cupboards like ‘work’, ‘relationships’, ‘family’, all the time missing the most obvious cupboard that is always within easy reach.
Maree I loved reading your blog, especially the part that we all know what love is but we often settle for less than love. My idea of love as a child was very simple as I grew up likewise the emotional dramas on TV and in the movies fuelled an outward search. A real wake up for me was feeling my connection to myself and my love when I attended a workshop with Serge Benhayon. It felt like I had returned home and in an instant was reminded of what love felt like – even though I didn’t have a word for it at the time.
Thank you for writing on love, Maree, to come back to our knowing that we are this love at our core is so healing, and all the simple ways we can be loving towards ourselves are really so powerful. The body loves us back when we are tender and precise with the way we care for it.
Maree thank you for this beautiful blog. I too modelled my idea of love on the movies and was left desolate when the relationship built on this false foundation went array. I too have now realised that the love I was seeking was already inside me but I had made a habit of not loving myself and was waiting, like sleeping beauty, for the handsome prince to awaken the loveliness within. With Esoteric Healing I was able to feel this innate love within, and yes, realised I had always known this love was there, just disconnected from it.
It certainly is crazy how we have been led to believe that love is something outside our selves that we go to out to or for. With so much misunderstanding of love and many held ideals and beliefs that keep us forever searching .It is awesome to learn to built a solid platform of self love that demands nothing and in presence and stillness ,connect and meet with another equally so, this feels to me like love . Thanks Maree
for a great piece of expression and thanks to Serge Behayon and universal medicine for presenting the true meaning of love for humanity .
The movie scenes and the magazine articles, and books about love (that I fell for) were really just feeding my longing for love. Love from somewhere out there, rather than ‘knowing it’ inside me first. Not love itself. I was addicted to the longing.
To know, as you write Maree, that it is, and begins, within each one of us first is such a delicious freedom to continue on with. A love affair with self and with life and with all others continually unfolding and deepening. Enduringly richer and more nourishing than the measly crumbs of longing I scrabbled amongst in the past.
Yes Jeanette I think that’s the word ‘longing’…it’s the energy that enters when we look outside ourselves for love. It creeps in and embeds itself, surrounds itself with blankets of ideals that we fell for, feeding us a diet of more longing when it was unfulfilled and leaving a feeling of having ‘missed out’ in some way in it’s wake. Which then in turn starts the next cycle of ‘longing’…while the true love that we are never changes.
Thanks for expanding this brbrhrn9. So great to be able to see it now for what it is. Not love.
Well said brbrhrn9 and this is the fuel for so many things we have created in society, such as the music industry, movies, tv series, books, magazines. They all cash in on this feeling of longing, building it and offering short term ‘fillers’ that leave us wanting more and in the endless cycle of looking outside of ourselves.
It’s true, this longing – we mistake the longing for love (which is longing for who we naturally are) with the longing for a gratification of some kind (which we call love) that is designed to give us everything BUT who we naturally are, perpetuating the search!
Hello Maree, there are many golden moments in this blog and one of my favourites is “it became very clear that although I had not chosen love for myself, that it was there for me too… and that it had always been there for me too.” We have created a belief that love is something we need to get or find and from your experience you can clearly see that love is and was there all along but we had chosen to not see it. Thanks to Universal Medicine the love that is inside everyone naturally is being reignited once more.
Beautifully said Maree and Ray. Love is inside us and we are love, just need to choose that reigniting.
This comment is golden, summed up and written beautifully.
Well said Raymond – the ‘need’ for love only comes from a feeling of emptiness inside us. The true love is always there waiting to be connected to.
Thank you simonwilliams8, I agree whole heartedly, “The true love is always there waiting to be connected to.”
Maree that was beautiful to read. We do all know what love is. I reckon that’s why people get antsy in relationships cause they can feel the tension of ‘not love’… That’s what it was like for me anyway. I had the same thought around love that you did Maree and was waiting for a hero to come wisk me away to care for me and make everything okay (bleh).. Having my own love for me has made a hugely massive difference. Great point you made that if we are not purposely choosing love, then we are choosing ‘not love’ – emptyness, misery, sadness and lovelessness.
So very true Emily, the tension and dissatisfaction I have felt in relationships has been from my lack of building a relationship with myself. Without that no relationship can flourish, as love is not there, and unease will always be in its place. Love your writing Maree.
The idea that we need to search and ‘find’ love outside of ourselves is a big one in society today, there are many romantic movies as you say Maree that espouse this way of being and living. What Universal Medicine presents about reconnecting to the love that is naturally and essentially within us all rather than trying to fill ourselves up from others makes so much sense to me too. It’s helped me be much more loving and closer to people coming from a foundation of knowing the love within me first and then letting that out.
This needs to be shared Maree … “I was never going to find love from another; it was always my responsibility to bring it to myself through the loving choices I make for myself each and every day.” – understanding this is a game changer and transforms relationships, families, friendships.
Yes such a simple truth that needs to be shared widely and let it be like a wild fire catching on swiftly and illuminating everyone’s life.
I am with you Maree, on that we all do know what love is and what it is not. The question is have we lived love consistently to have this momentum embodied?
How I feel is in my life too, this has been a knowing, which is not consistently lived, but the commitment to doing so is very inspiring. There is so much observation, acceptance, understanding and expression in the process.
Well said 1heart1love1earth. Yes the connection to love is vital but it is the consistency that holds our expression of this love, each and every day. ✨
Beautiful Maree, your journey of searching for love and ending up accepting lust and companionship is such a common journey for so many, myself included. How easily duped we have been in our quest for love, which we know innately, but somehow seemed to have fallen for a tin pot version of the real thing, sold to us by movies and romantic novels. It’s true, we all know what love is, and when we meet it every cell in our bodies jump up and down in recognition of it (well mine did!) because it is who we are. I love this sentence; “And when any two people come together in friendship or courtship where each has developed love for themselves, there is nothing but pure beauty in the understanding, delicateness and harmony that love brings.” When we fill ourselves with our own love, creating a friendship or courtship doubles the amount of love present, as opposed to making love about something we receive from another to fill our emptiness. It makes sense then that love drains away in the latter recipe, as true loves arises from within and once connected to, will always seek to nurture, appreciate and celebrate the same essence within us all.
Beautiful sharing Maree. True love is who we are not something we have to look for or achieve!
Spot on Rachel. Once we have felt the true love inside us we actually don’t need ‘love’ on the outside, we feel enough as we are and everyone else feels that too. I have found I have become naturally more loving to everyone because I am more of the whole and true me. There is always more to explore and re-connect to, what a wonder-full way to live life.
So simply and beautifully said.
I too had fallen for this false meaning of love when I was growing up, particularly in my teens and early twenties. Since I have been introduced to Universal Medicine, I began to truly understand what true love is. Your blog Maree has expressed this so beautifully. The thought of finding ‘Mr Right’ to fulfil this perfect picture I had created was such an illusion. What you have shared is very true and powerful. I love this entire blog but I’d like to highlight this part: ‘I was never going to find love from another; it was always my responsibility to bring it to myself through the loving choices I make for myself each and every day.’ Putting responsibility on others to bring love into my life was never going to work. The emptiness I felt at the time always came back. But now, I am taking responsibility to find love within me, learning to express and be love consistently. I feel more spaciousness, trust, love and honesty in my relationships. We have love within each of us from the day we were born, it sometimes gets lost and we lose our way, but when we choose to connect to love again it is powerful and amazing. This fullness of love just keeps expanding and expanding, reaching out to others and beyond.
This is exactly what love is, ” not imposing and asked nothing from me” I can even feel this when I read an email, just that space, and holding allow you to just be. It feels amazing to be met in this way, as you are left feeling yourself. I really appreciate this.
Dear Maree, I love this blog thank you, such a joy to read and a confirmation of what love truly is.
Hi Maree, I very much enjoyed reading your blog. I’m so pleased that you also spoke about that ‘sensation in the body that is called love’ and lust and attention. I’d always believed that the excitement felt at a new relationship or the prospect of a new relationship was confirmation of Love. Having that feeling of excitement would have been my proof, in my view, that it MUST be love because “I felt it”. Now through developing love for me having also attended Universal Medicine events and having esoteric healing sessions lust and attention are very pale comparisons to Love.
The title just makes me smile – why? because I feel love – true, living, pulsating love within myself – it is very simple and is the most amazing way to live and feel. I now know the truth of love, and what love really is. This might sound crazy to some, but it is the most natural and beautiful feeling in the world, maybe one that every single one of us want and are searching for in our life.
Awesome blog Maree, it is absolutely our responsibility to bring love to ourselves, in how we are with ourselves in every moment of every day – thanks for the reminder!
Thank you for sharing this Maree. For me, the biggest realisation I have had about love is that it comes from me first. That before I can love another or experience love from another I must first be loving towards myself – as you have shared, this happens in all the little things in life, it is the way that I am with myself that determines the quality that I am with another.
Beautiful blog Maree, it is clear that we all know true love, of course as it’s where we are from. But when you feel empty and there is no one to reflect self love and self care, you can get lost. Deep thanks to Serge Benhayon who was the first to show the full and true version of love to us all.
The fact that we all know what love is simply reminds us that we are all deeply connected. How much we allow that is then left completely up to us.
This is very true, Vicky.
it is wonderful to witness people coming together having built this foundation of love within themselves, it is incredibly inspiring and something worth building for ourselves. Its not the stuff of fairytales, it’s the stuff of choices!
Looking for love outside ourselves does not work, true love is lived within ourselves first and then with another as it then comes with the fullness of who we are. Thank you for a lovely sharing.
This is beautiful Maree, to share the true whole body meaning of the word love. I can remember misinterpreting love from watching movies and the happily ever after… but the teenage soapie-like shows brought in another aspect of ‘love’ which was that it was full of drama! And the more drama, the more you just knew you were loved – of course this is the exact opposite to what we all know and have felt from inside – the simplicity and honouring of self and another. Thank you
Maree what an amazing and important reflection you are sharing with us here – it completely debases the ideals that most people have around Love. It is gorgeous to feel how you are finding the way back to your own love that was always there within you. Until we re-connect and develop our own love we are at the mercy of the void and emptiness that we feel inside and forever searching for love and recognition from the outside. Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine offers a true understanding and support to re-connect with everything that we are.
Well said Eva, Universal Medicine offers us all such a simple and real way to reconnect to the everything we are. In doing so we discover that there is a very solid way to deal with the void inside and begin loving ourselves for all our worth. Once we take that step the ability to know what is truly love, and what is not, becomes clearer and clearer and our ability to see through the mistruths about romantic love becomes stronger every day. Returning to our true love within is a gorgeous journey, one that comes well recommended, and one that Maree is clearly establishing in her life to great effect.
Thank you Maree for your words on love.
”We all know what is love, but many of us simply resort to something that is less – we resort to ‘attention’ or ‘lust’ or ‘companionship’ or ‘security’ – so that we don’t have to feel alone”. This is absolutely true. Thank you Maree for sharing.
It’s crazy that so many of us fall for the movie scene. I certainly did until I reached a point when I knew that nothing outside of myself was ever going to make me truly happy. I am rediscovering every day how I can be more loving and tender with me and it is beautiful.
“We all know what is love, but many of us simply resort to something that is less – we resort to ‘attention’ or ‘lust’ or ‘companionship’ or ‘security’ – so that we don’t have to feel alone.” – Yes we do all know Love and this is a beautiful reminder of that fact. Its all there living deep inside.
Hello Joshua, I agree and Maree nails this here, “For the act of knowing what love was not meant that I was governed by an inner knowing of what love truly is.” This is a huge line in a great blog.
Thank you Maree, I especially enjoyed reading the part about expecting love from another to fill an empty feeling inside – I can completely relate this and have experienced the consequences of this way of life as well, which for me was discovering that the expectations I was placing on those around me to fill my emptiness only pushed them all away, and in fact as I develop love for myself and learn to live without that empty feeling, my relationships are far more intimate, delicate, and sharing.
Beautiful blog Maree. Isn’t it funny how we can get sucked into a vicious cycle of searching for ” true love,” from another when it is right there waiting patiently for us within. The heart knows what it wants and that’s us. True love resides within.
I really relate to this blog. I was searching and convinced that the answer was in finding Mr Right my entire life, never stopping to check if I was indeed Mrs Right i.e.: Did I do all these amazing things for myself that I was expecting to be done for me by others….
Forever disappointed in how I was treated but seldom taking responsibility or making any real changes to give myself true self love. Thank you, as this blog continues to unlock more for me on this subject. Its got me questioning how deep my love is and how much further I can take it and thats always a good thing. Great read!!
I remember feeling on my honeymoon that I had made the wrong choice, and chose to override it and live twenty years in a loveless marriage. Looking for love outside myself because I wanted attention and to feel special brought years of pain and unhappiness. Thank God for Serge Benhayon who showed me where love truly dwells, in the inner heart of myself, always there, always available. When I do connect with it I know Love, and life becomes joyful and I can love others equally. What a gift this is.
Thank you Maree. Your sharing is beautifully inspiring. I can resonate with the many false interpretations of love that you have named in your blog, version I too once thought were part of love but knew deep down that something didn’t feel right.
Maree thank you for sharing your beautiful experience of what Love is and what it isn’t . I know that I haven’t experienced true Love but knowing that I need to connect to the Love within myself first and only then can I share Love with others.
It certainly is an eye opener to re-ignite the true meaning of love within our bodies and realise that we have been sold a lie about love being something that we can somehow obtain. It’s so true what you wrote about two people who have reclaimed their own self love and are connecting with each other, the feeling of love is actually palpable, and incredibly joyful to observe. And the really truly amazing thing about the whole love thing? We all have this love innately within us – just waiting to be re-connected to and nurtured throughout our whole being. Gorgeous.
Such a profound awareness of what love truly is, thank you Maree.
As you say it is our choice to purposefully choose love, or choose a way of being that is loveless.
Ben. Beautifully written about loving ourselves first, and them passing it on to all others.
Maree,
Such an honest exposing sharing of what love really is and what so many of us believe it to be. To feel just how much we have been hoodwinked by looking to others for love truly deeply hurts. To be in my own love in the presence of another who is also choosing their own love is truly exquisite, and if felt more in the world I feel sure more people would endeavor to remember how to live this way.
“By asking the question – “Is it love?” – I give myself the opportunity to look at the way I am living and feel whether it has the true quality of love.” Once we have learnt to honour our bodies and feel the energy behind everything, the ‘what is not’ stands out like a sore thumb, and from that we give way to true love.
This is just beautiful Maree. We all know what love is. We don’t have to chase it. It is there within us waiting to be connected to. All we need to do is nurture ourselves for this love to grow.
Love is something we bring to ourselves, like we self parent and then from there we bring that foundation of love to others. This was and is a quantum leap for me of what love is, it is great to know that I will never be satisfied by searching for love outside myself and have to become content and settled with who I am. Thank you Maree for deepening my appreciation and understanding of the real meaning of love.
We can tell everyone how much we love them but what is the quality of that love if it we are not connected to and live with a deep love for ourselves in the first place? We all know this but conveniently forget it to fit in with the mores of society. Great blog asking us to ask ourselves “Is this love?” and a chance to feel what our body has to say.
Thanks for a beautiful blog Maree and for reminding us that love is not about searching for something outside of ourselves, but reconnecting to our essence and expressing that in all that we do. “..it was always my responsibility to bring it to myself through the loving choices I make for myself each and every day.”
Your writing is profoundly beautiful Maree. I found myself so intrigued with the concept that “….this love I was feeling and observing in another was not about me. It was emanating from inside those who had rediscovered love for themselves…..that it was there for me too… and that it had always been there for me too.” On reflection I can feel that this amazing point is absolutely true and it amazes me.
Beautiful Maree. The truth is like you say we all now the true meaning of love, it is within us, it is coming to that understanding and connecting to that knowing. We can then truly live that love and inspire others to do the same.
As you say Maree, the word love has been so bastardised. I can imagine if you asked a million people what it meant to them you would get a million different answers. That is because love is seen as something we do rather than something we are. Knowing we are love means we can focus on simply connecting to ourselves and allow the love out.
And the movies about true love are yet to be produced. We’re paving the way.
Indeed felixschumacher8 – the true love story is yet to be filmed.
I too had not chosen love for myself – I was constantly searching outside of myself and seeking it from others. To give to me something that had not left me but had been hidden (behind all the old hurts, ideals and beliefs) ‘thinking’ that love was a something exchanged between two people in a relationship. Attending presentations by Serge Benhayon, Universal Medicine and experiencing the amazing healing sessions with the esoteric practitioners, the illusion I was living under has started to melt away and reveal a gentleness within me that I never would of thought possible. (yes I still have times when I slip up and go into an old well trodden patterns)but, feeling the Love that I am it can so clearly be felt and be met with another – no words required. It does emanate from within.
Thank you Maree – a beautiful, inspiring blog.
I enjoyed reading this. Thank you for sharing that love actually does have a quality much grander and steady than the fleeting moments of lust, attention and excitement. This quality can be felt in the body when we come back to the understanding and pay attention to the quality of the body rather than just living in our heads as life would have us believe is the only way to be. With this in mind I am curious to give that question of ‘is it love?’ a try.
What a beautiful reflection you give us all: Love is an emanation from inside, and it’s my responsibility to bring it to myself with loving choices. And that feels absolutely Love-ly.
And I LOVE your blog- because I can feel the true love in it! Thank you*
Hi Maree, I love your questioning of yourself and your body “is it love” and also exposing how much we compromise and know at heart what true love is. I also wrote about the love word a few years ago in this blog http://truthaboutsergebenhayon.com/2012/11/14/true-love-so-very-much-more-than-a-word/ with similar experiences in particular how I mistook attention for love and how “I must have always known what love was, or I wouldn’t have known what it was not”. Since then my understanding and experience of love has continued to grow in the most gorgeous way. For anyone interested in gaining a true understanding of the energetic meaning of words I recommend visiting Unimedpedia which is a growing resource and provides some great free audio and quotes on the true meaning of love here: http://www.unimedliving.com/unimedpedia/word-index/unimedpedia-love.html
I never cease to be amazed at how connected we, as students of the Ageless Wisdom, are to each other. I happened to spend extra time in bed this cold Melbourne morning tenderly hugging my body and BEING In LOVE with myself as I waited for the house to warm up. Got up with a wonderful feeling of Joy.
A dear fellow student called in to see me. Her first words as I opened the door were “Wow! Don’t you look well !. How are you feeling? ” “Fabulous” was my answer.
Then, what do I find when I checked my e-mail but Maree’s beautiful article on Love.
Co-incidence? I wonder ?
Love is such a short word that encompasses so much and has been so misinterpreted. Thank you Maree for sharing your journey of understanding that it comes from within and that at the point we start looking outside of ourselves for it we are already lost. I love how you share that feeling the true essence of love ‘allowed a spaciousness for me to be myself’.
Wow Maree I can totally relate to this I was totally mistaken and now I am on my way to return back to true love…learning to listen to my body and rediscovering trust in me and my feelings. Your blog is pure inspiration and confirmation..expressing what love truly is. Thank You for that. With love Nadine
Well said Nadine, me too am finally learning what love truly means, and that it all starts with me bringing love to myself, and re-connecting to the love that lives inside of me.
It is interesting how we have been sold this image of what love should be, and I can confess I fell for the Hollywood version of what it is to love someone, and in a way act out a script of success according to this picture I had built up in my head.
I am finding out love is none of these things and we don’t need to search outside of ourselves for someone else to give it to us.
When we look outside ourselves for fulfilment we disempower ourselves, dependent upon another or upon something. However with, “it was always my responsibility to bring it [love] to myself through the loving choices I make for myself each and every day” this is set-empowerment.
Wow Maree – I was just like you – in that I knew love to be what happened in movies – the heroic, dramatic, love where one cannot live without the other. Where life could not go on unless the love of my life was found. My soulmate.
I would pine over this theory for years, in and out of relationships that did not live up to the role in my movie.
Yet all the while I hadn’t even put myself through that audition. I’d been absolutely dependent on someone completing me. And that as I now see it – was my weakness. My giving away of power. What I now understand love to be thanks to Universal Medicine and my family – is that it is something already within me – and the stronger that love is, the more love is built by others around me. I’ve learn the importance of self love and that it is not selfish. I’ve learnt that love is equal with everyone and is not saved just for ‘the one’ – that there does not have to be any dramatic up and down moments, it can be a constant beautiful expression. A holding. And now I am in a relationship with a beautiful man who also feels the same. Now I understand what love truly is.
Maree, wow, I will have to read this again a few more times to continue my learning of what you have shared. For me the quote “…when we don’t purposely choose love, we end up choosing by default another way of being which holds an emptiness, a misery, a sadness, and a lovelessness.” is very true, and the default states we are vulnerable to, by not choosing love, are many and varied but all lead to the same thing, some form of suffering and misery. It’s so simple – the answer is inside us. Thank you for your powerful blog.
I love how you write: ‘ it was always my responsibility to bring it to myself.’ We grow up being taught that love is something that is given to us from a source outside of us, rather than being taught it’s already inside us – it’s very empowering to realise we never needed anyone or anything else to have this love.
Thank you Maree. I too searched for love for years caught up in the romantic ideals from films it came with and of course never finding it. Universal Medicine gave me the understanding of what love really is and the tools to build this … caring for myself like the ways you have described. It is an ongoing process to bring more care and love to myself, it is down to me.
Absolutely, ruthketnor, nobody can do it for us, ‘falling in love’ with ourselves and then radiating that love out for others to feel is the only way to go. It turns the word ‘love’ on its head, as we then go within to feel and not look out to grasp at something that is not true. And as you say, it is ongoing and something we can work on every day.
Love-ly blog Maree! It would be easy wouldn’t it to blame the movies or our upbringing etc on distorting our understanding of what love is but as you beautifully said we all do know what is love and what is not, we are simply choosing to be ignorant to the real meaning of love and the fact that love starts with us first and our relationship with ourselves.
This is a huge topic Andrew, and one I feel would support us if we discussed this regularly. Being responsible for ourselves in this way is very important if we are to truly work together as we where made to.
I agree Andrew that it is us, humanity, that want the movies and entertainment to perpetuate the myth. It certainly speaks for the tenacity we hold to remain ignorant and irresponsible and I am with Amina- it is a huge topic to deconstruct and discuss regularly. Even though I know love does not come from another there are still plenty of occasions when I react if something other than love is felt. While I continue to hold these hurts and expectations over others to be the love I want to feel, I will still blame others to avoid being fully responsible for myself. So while I get the picture and message in this blog, as a lived truth I know my false ideas about love still lurk around in all of my relationships and bringing these to light in discussion like these blogs do, is a great avenue for that.
I love what you’ve said here Deanne and agree that the more we can expose the untruths about what love is, looks like, feels like, etc in all our relationships, we get the opportunity to say ‘that’s not love’ and let it go.
Hi Maree, thank you for sharing with us the true meaning of the word love. I spent most of my life looking outside of myself for love until I met Serge Benhayon and began to understand that love comes from my inner heart and re-connecting to that love is the most beautiful feeling in the world. Meeting another in that love, which we all come from, brings true joy and is not based on need or desire.
We have been sold a lie, that love comes from another. Seeking love from another keeps us feeling empty, as though we are not already whole and always searching outside of ourselves. True love can only start with our relationship with ourselves and then when we have that it be shared with another. So many relationships are based on need, rather than love. I know I have fallen for this time and time again. What I like to remind myself of is if I am seeking something from another, why haven’t I already given that to myself. This helps me to build my self-love and stop the outward search.
‘what I was feeling was not love at all, but more the filling of an emptiness and an excitement about the possibility that this emptiness would now dissipate forever because somebody else was here to take it away.’ Yes, I can remember meeting my first ‘love’ and the feeling of happiness that at last here was someone paying me attention in a way my parents never did. Eventually the bluebirds flew away, the emptiness was still there, and misery set in, coupled with a pretence that all was well. Now in my 60s, and with thanks to Universal Medicine, I am learning to feel the true love that is inside me, that has been there all along.
Carmel, you and I and many others have searched for love, sold a story that our knight will save us, when the truth is that we save ourselves, or rather, that the love we seek rests inside of ourselves. The fact that you have in this life realised that love is to be found within you, is certainly a miracle in itself … whether you are 60 or 16, I say, well done.
Great sharing and points to bring up Maree. I know for me I reinterpreted what love was when I was growing up into a form of affection, an act someone does for another, or a phrase rather than a beholding energy that we are born with and all know deep within. The more love I am with myself the more love I can be and am with others.
This is really helpful: ‘Of course this level of nurturing always showed up the choices I had made which were not loving, but feeling the sadness of this was simply part of the process that redeveloped my understanding of love.’
I can often get a little over whelmed at realising what I’ve excepted in my life that is far from love, so thanks for the reminder that it is just a part of the process and to be appreciated.
A beautiful blog Maree, ‘We all know what is love, but many of us simply resort to something that is less – we resort to ‘attention’ or ‘lust’ or ‘companionship’ or ‘security’ – so that we don’t have to feel alone.’ I certainly did this growing up, I was always on the look out for true love and thought that I would find this in a boyfriend, but on entering these relationships there was always a feeling that this was not it and after a while I would end the relationship because it wasn’t love. It has been very lovely to start loving me, this feels like true love, it feels wonderful to not be reliant on someone else to bring me love.
How awesome Maree, that love is just the simple choices we make with ourselves, then expressed in what we do with others. There is never a more complete feeling in life (:
I agree Ben- there is not a more complete feeling in life than LOVE in one’s own body and it in expression with others.
This is so true Ben and expressed so beautifully. If I am not making loving choices for myself how can I truly express love for another.
Pretty crazy isn’t it how love is misconstrued to be something you can find in another. The longing and the pressure we put on ourselves and the other in the relationship because we expect them to bring us the love we so hugely seek. But it never satiates, it always leaves us wanting for more because love is never something that can be found outside of ourselves. It can only be connected to from within, from our inner warmth where we feel the warmest hug we could ever imagine, and then that love emanates through us. We have been so fooled to have forgotten this universal truth.
This is all so relatable Maree – the acceptance of the worldly reinterpretation of Love, seeking it in others, the moments of realisation that ‘this isn’t it’. As you make so abundantly clear, we will never find Love until we look within ourselves into the depths of our innermost hearts and learn to reconnect with the Source of Love that is there. Love is not something to be hunted down in this world but rather something we can all reconnect to within us and ‘BE’ in this life. Thank you for your truly loving blog.
We have tarnished the word love with all our different expectations of what it can bring to us. Until Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon I had my own version of love that was needy and self fulfilling. Knowing that I am love until the moment when I choose not to be love is an ongoing daily learning and it has totally turned my life around. “Is this love?” A great question to ask Maree, I will bring this into my day.
Maree anyone that has lost the true meaning of love, a staggering amount of people just need to read your blog. Upon reading your blog there cannot be any confusion of what true love is. As you have said we have always known what love was not… its just finding the way back to ourselves.
An amazing sharing Maree and one that sounds oh so familiar. To look outside ourselves for love is a non-starter but one that we so easily invest in. To arrive at the realisation that all the love we ever require is right there inside of us and ever supporting us if we but choose it so is a life changing point and beautiful to feel what this truth offers as we live it so. Thank you for sharing your experience and return to true love.
“Nowadays, if I am ever unsure about whether I am caught up in an old belief about what I think love might be, I simply ask the question – “Is it love?” – and feel for the answer in my body.”
Thank you Maree this is a huge , to feel the answer in my body. Reding this as I look back, I can see that there was no foundation of love in my body, years of checking out from it.
And Mariette I am learning everyday, deepening in what is and what is not, in everything I do, in every way I share.
Going in search of love is like looking for your sunglasses that are already on your head: there is the beauty of remembering, shortly followed by the cringe of having forgot.
Liane, I so love your adage here, it made me smile😊, because it is so true.
Classic metaphor!!I Love this comment simple but so true, sums it up well.
Ha ha I love it Liane, so true, what a great analogy “Going in search of love is like looking for your sunglasses that are already on your head”.
I love this Liane…so simple and so true (cringe ;).
Spot on Liane, what a great analogy… love has been there all along.
Awesome comment Liane- love it!
Thanks Maree from New South Wales, the false depiction of love we are sold by Hollywood, and the likes, is only a thin disguise when we build a foundation and feel what is true. I love the way you say you must have always known what love was by knowing what it wasn’t, I can definitely relate to that.
Love was always very elusive until I felt it within me and then I knew I had found what I had always been searching for – both consciously and unconsciously. I so agree with you Maree that in knowing what is not love, and that we have not found it, then we do have a deep knowing of what is true love.
Only if we hold, cherish and appreciate ourselves and develop true self-love, only then will we be able to experience true love – this for me is the essence.
“Is it love?” – so simple! – once we re-connect to the truth of love within us as that innate, nurturing quality that is our essence.
I agree Fumiyo, so simple, so practical and so revealing of the truth. As long as we are willing and open to be utterly honest and truthful with ourselves.
‘I knew that I would know love when I felt it and this proved to be true, despite living a life that had sold me a reinterpreted version of the word.’ We all know, our bodies know the real meaning of love, thats why the world is in despair living so far from true love. Thank you Maree for sharing your experience with the true version of the word love.
Thank you Maree – great blog. I can feel from my body how love has a quality of stillness, a grounded connection that allows me to feel solid and very natural not like the airy fairy, sappy or excited feeling so often depicted in the movies.
What I have been noticing is that sympathy is also often portrayed as a necessary quality of love but whenever I go into sympathy everything gets messy and I can’t feel the quality of love that I have come to know in my body. I am learning that true love is about observation and detachment and accepting the circumstances people are experiencing knowing that they are well equipped to met these challenges.
I was always on a search to find love from another, until Universal Medicine came into my life. The search stopped and I was invited to start to take care of myself and from there, to love myself. I am learning every day, especially what is not love and from that, what IS.
I second that Mariette, I am learning every day what is love and what is not. Although it speaks to us very loudly, we have been fooled by a lesser version of love for so long and the world and our lives are created around it. It is time we reflect the true version of love and people will feel it and know.
I’m right there with you Mariette. I too searched and thought I’d found love again and again only to see each time that it wasn’t love but lust, infatuation, attraction, etc and based on my expectations of another, only then to feel let down or disappointed. And then one day I said ‘enough, this isn’t it, there has to be another way’ and bingo, shortly after I came across the Ageless Wisdom teachings through Universal Medicine and now know with absoluteness that love starts with me and I take that out into the world and to all my relationships.
Such a wisdom: “I was never going to find love from another; it was always my responsibility to bring it to myself through the loving choices I make for myself each and every day.” I am finding this for myself too, loving myself is so nourishing and lovely and beyond any love I have felt from another. Though I have been inspired many times by seeing and feeling this love lived by others, it reminded me how to do this for myself too.
Maree, how many of us have ever allowed ourselves to fall for that false definition of ‘love,’ : “…the filling of an emptiness and an excitement about the possibility that this emptiness would now dissipate forever because somebody else was here to take it away.” I know I settled for it for a long time.
Like yourself, I have now re opened to my true understanding and feeling for what love is- a quality from within that emanates out from us, that has always been there, waiting for us to re commence making loving choices. It is joyous to connect with others who make similar loving choices and confirm each other in Love, as Love. It’s beautiful.
Thank you reminding me that I, my body knows what love is Maree. “Is this love?” is the question to ask myself every time I will feel unsure.
I agree it is a great reminder and I will be asking myself this question more often too in future.
Maree, Deborah and Nvanhasstrecht, yes, “Is this Love?”. The simplest question brings forth true responsibility.
Thank you Maree, I will be forevermore asking “is it love” and knowing that love must come from myself for myself first.
A great question !
And one that will always be answered with either a yes or no – no grey area.
Your contribution is very inspiring and so very tender and loving in its expression; it is true that looking for love on the outside does not work, it ends up in disappointment and all sorts of hideous complications, more hurts and trauma. Love, as taught by Universal Medicine and the Ageless Wisdom, is within first and foremost and only from there can it unfold and blossom.
Said like a true philosopher Gabriele, powerful words.
True love is something that is very special however doesn’t require any fireworks.
It is something so natural and is in every single one of us.
Thank you for this sharing Marika, as there are so many different interpretation of love out but in my experience there has only been one (which is the same as you have written in your blog) 🙂
This is a beautifully written love story Maree, especially where you begin to fall in love…with yourself.
I particularly like the line “when we don’t purposely choose love, we end up choosing by default another way of being which holds an emptiness, a misery, a sadness, and a lovelessness.”
Not having to rely on someone else for love is truly liberating.
I love this line too rodharvey and Maree, well said. We are always saying yes to something even if it sounds like a ‘no’. So what is it we are saying yes to – to what is love or to what is not?
Hear hear. It can be daunting concept that you are always saying YES but it is true. We trick ourselves into thinking that we are making one isolated decision. My advice is read the fine print before you say NO which in turn means YES to something.
I agree Robharvey letting go of looking for love outside of us and connecting to our own love within is truly liberating.
The quote below seems to sum up the essence of this blog in full:-
“Love is love and the livingness of that must be known before any word can be used to describe it, for the true emanation of love is word-less.”
Serge Benhayon Esoteric & Exoteric Philosophy, p 388 (http://www.unimedliving.com/unimedpedia/word-index/unimedpedia-love.html)
I love this quote Maree. Looking for ‘love’ on the outside is futile – crazy when you think that we are in fact made of love and its centre is inside of us, and once we open up and begin to re-connect to this love then everyone around us recognises that it is in them too, and no more searching on the outside to fill ourselves up, or fulfill our needs is necessary.
Beautiful thank you and loved the audio on the link.
Very true, amazing quote and I love it.
Great article Maree…the true ‘essence’ of us is love. We are it, have always been it, even while we searched for a pale outer reflection of it…to find again…it is us.
Thank you maree
Such clarity in your words that bring the true meaning of love.
I agree that love is not what we are being constantly be shown/told in films, media and society expectations
For me, it has always been confusing the meaning of true love as it is made out to be something that it is not.
“I was never going to find love from another; it was always my responsibility to bring it to myself through the loving choices I make for myself each and every day.”
This is key what you have written here. Thanks for sharing your understanding of the true meaning of “Love”.
I ‘love’ what you have shared Maree – and so true that when it comes to relationships we bring far more richness to share when we come together as two whole beings there to inspire one another than when two people come together out of needs and only bring half of themselves to the relationship with the expectation of the other half completing them. Not that there is anything wrong with the latter, but you (and everyone else) simply miss out on the bigger picture when you deny your own wholeness and don’t bring that to the relationship.
I love your wisdom here Maree ~ ‘For the act of knowing what love was not meant that I was governed by an inner knowing of what love truly is’. Hence the suffering, the emptiness and the anguish we all feel or have felt…simply because we do innately know love…and it hurts when we think we can’t find it or have it…when in truth it has been there all along.
Very true Sara, we all do know what love is and what pains us the most is walking away from it and forgetting… But reigniting our love is a very simple and natural process, just waiting to happen whenever we say yes to it.
Thank you Sara for highlighting this line from Maree’s blog. It’s very true that if we know what is not Love then we must equally know what is Love. No wonder there is so much tension in humanity.
I love your comment Sara, this is so true. I feel the truth about love has been revealed. Searching for love from outside of ourselves is what I’ve been exposed to and fallen for, a big illusion. The emptiness and anguish you described I can relate to. But now, knowing that my search is over and all I have to do is to reconnect to love within me. Very simple, empowering and a beautiful journey.
We are sold and fall for so many false versions of love as we grow up. Yet when I started listening to presentations about love by Universal Medicine, I was amazed how I already knew what love really was about- and how deeply I cared about it. Whilst all we see around us is false we can tend to settle for the lesser version. But the more we have people like Serge Benhayon presenting the truth, we have the opportunity to reclaim what we always knew.
Thanks Maree, I too was lost in what Love actually was or meant – actually I had no idea at all. Luckily I ended a relationship before we got married and found out what we thought was love was just a neediness for company. Now having also discovered through Universal Medicine what Love really is I know I wasn’t even close before. Now I’m in a very solid relationship where we both have that developed love of ourselves (first and foremost) and the ease and harmony we enjoy is like nothing I’ve experienced before.
Great question to ask ‘This word ‘love’ is crucial to each of our lives and to the whole of humanity, but what if the meaning has changed? What happens if the quality that we know to be love is reinterpreted and replaced with something that is not love?’ I would definitely say the word love is used everywhere without the true quality of what it actually is to be known or used. Like you I had the ulimate image of love in my life as being with a man and living happily ever after; now though through knowing Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine I can say I have remembered and felt the true meaning and quality of the word love and that it is within us all equally so. Also my ‘ulimate image’ of having a partner has changed to a far grander picture knowing the vastness of love and that it is there for all of humanity.
Maree.. The pattern of looking for love on the outside is something that many can relate to and this can lead to a dishonouring of the body in the ways you have described. To ask the question .. “Is it Love?” and feel into this before making choices is simple, yet powerful. I can feel the Love you hold yourself in and this is a beautiful reflection for all who read your blog. Thank you.
” it was always my responsibility to bring it to myself through the loving choices I make for myself each and every day.” And when I choose this there is never any emptyness, never looking outside of myself. There is this feeling of fullness within me. Thankyou Maree
Maree, Looking on outside to fill our emptiness temporarily, in the end does bring us back to the same void we felt before, you have expressed this so beautifully in your sharing. It is also so much burden on someone else to fill your emptiness and no one can meet our expectations as what we each feel love from outside is different & some live in this so called normal cycle of being let down by others, but have we taken any responsibility here or are we playing a blame game? As you share”..it was always my responsibility to bring it to myself through the loving choices I make for myself each and every day.” This I know does make sense as the choice now comes back to us making the loving choice &;not someone else!
So true Pinkylight. The responsibility is ours to make the loving choices. The blame game is just an excuse for irresponsibility. And also a very dis empowering way to live, as we are living arrogantly thinking what we are doing is perfect, and everyone else has it wrong, so in blame we never take responsibility for how we are being with ourselves and others. Realising the truth of this game, has been a game changer for me.
Loved reading your blog, Maree, thank you. I had absolutely the same ‘idea’ about love as you growing up, all soaked up from watching movies. It’s so true what you share about wanting to fill the emptiness inside us and then choosing to settle for something which in fact isn’t love. However, our first step as you say, is; ‘it was always my responsibility to bring it to myself through the loving choices I make for myself each and every day’. When we bring love to ourselves first, we are then in a place where we can love another, and we will be attracting another from a place of love, not a place of emptiness, which will have a very different end result.
“it was always my responsibility to bring it to myself through the loving choices I make for myself each and every day.”- So true Maree. Growing up I used to think love was something you find outside of yourself – a” doing” for others, emotion felt found in another person= romantic love; a neediness, to fill my emptiness. But since attending Universal Medicine and listening to Serge Benhayon I have found that love is in fact a “beingness” first. It is deep within us all in the inner heart. Through the gentle breathe meditation, esoteric yoga, selfcare and self nurturing I reconnect to the divine essence that is me- Love.
So true Maree, we do all know love in every cell of our body. Looking for love is something that feels like a constant in all of us even if we have accepted less or have surrendered ourselves to what the outside world says love is. There are slight flashes of light but never something as consistent as what Serge Benhayon has presented since 1999 and now also a growing Universal Medicine student body.
“Is this love?” feels like a great question to ask oneself whenever they hear a song or watch a movie … And then feel the bodies response. It would be interesting to see the stats on how many songs and movies stack up to being able to deliver the quality we know is reflecting back to us the love we know in our bodies to be true.
…and by looking for love we are living in the assumption that it is somehow missing or hidden which itself creates a separation from it. Is it possible that the idea of needing to seek love is a trap we fall into – when in truth there is no real separation from it – it has been within us all along!?
Maree I really love how you ask yourself “is this love” in relation to how you are living your life. Such a simple statement that has the power to change everything. I am going to take these inspiring words into my day. Thank you.
Yes, me too Sharon Gavioli, I am going to be more aware of love in my every interaction during the day.
Yes Sharon it is a great question to be carrying in your pocket – and one based on the true meaning of love and not the ‘hallmark’ version we have taken on.
Yes Sharon, me too, it’s a great reminder to bring love to every choice.
Love your blog Maree. “We all know what is love, but many of us simply resort to something that is less – we resort to ‘attention’ or ‘lust’ or ‘companionship’ or ‘security’ – so that we don’t have to feel alone”. I would feel that most of us have chosen our partners for one of these reasons, unless we have come to feel what true love really is. The way that society views ‘love’ means that most of us know no better. It is only when we really begin to feel the love that we are innately, that we come to know what it is to truly love another.
At some point it seems we come to the realisation that ‘attention, lust, companionship an security’ do not resolve the issue of feeling alone. My experience is that it is only reconnecting to the Love that I am within that heals the loneliness.
Yes, I agree Richard. All the emotions plus emotional love itself are just short-term stop gaps that don’t truly address the emptiness left when we don’t first connect deeply within and live and share our life from there.
Mine to richardmills363.
I love the point you make, that even thought we buy into the bastardised version of the word, ‘love’, we do know the true meaning (but choose the opposite).
I agree Carmin. I knew for a long time that love was a state, not an emotion but I didn’t realise that love is in the body and we just connect to it in a place that is called the inner heart through the gentle breath meditation and later on directly. That was quite a revelation, simple and practical.
I agree Carmin, this is both insightful and a bit of an ouch….we know, can tell the difference between real love and the made up versions, yet work hard to ignore this knowing.
Coming to the understanding that true love always comes from within, and that this starts with the very basics of self care (which deepens and develops over time), has been life changing for me also. And what has been especially revealing for me to discover, is that having a relationship with another who is choosing the same, is not limited in any way to a partner (or potential partner) … This true love in relationship can be experienced in all of my relationships, including children, family, friends etc. I am learning that the way I express within these relationships might be different, but that the ‘quality’ of the varying expressions does not change for relationships established on true love.
Thank you Maree, I was moved once more by the powerful yet simple truth that all we look for outside ourselves has never escaped us, it is waiting for us to find and to feel it right where we are! This brings a simple and powerful joy that cannot be truly described.
Bernadetteglass, yes the simple powerful joy once felt is simply known. And yes it cannot be truly described, but it can be felt, claimed and lived. I personally am at the point of claiming this joy as I know without a doubt that it is how I want to live.
Maree, this is truly heaven sent. We underestimate the amazing ‘Beings’ we are. I loved your comment – ‘For the act of knowing what love was not meant that I was governed by an inner knowing of what love truly is’. This knowing is what keeps people searching. Sadly the searching takes place outside of ourselves. The moment the searching goes inward and we look to loving within and of ourselves – the search stops and who we truly are starts to unfold. This is Love. As you said in your blog – ‘And when any two people come together in friendship or courtship where each has developed love for themselves, there is nothing but pure beauty in the understanding, delicateness and harmony that love brings’. Thank you for sharing.
Maree, your blog shows so clearly the difference between the searching outside oneself to be loved, and the searching inside oneself to be love. Thank you.
This is so true what you are saying; ‘Sadly the searching takes place outside of ourselves. The moment the searching goes inward and we look to loving within and of ourselves – the search stops and who we truly are starts to unfold. This is Love.’ And it sounds so simple; so my question is why are we not doing this? What wisdom and truth have we forgotten, that love resides within all equally and will never truly be found looking on the outside.
I agree Maree…we do innately know what love is and what is not. To look for love from another is an endless roller coaster where you are at the mercy of another…it is dis-empowering, empty, needy and an absolute setup for being miserable when the outside supply is not there. Coming to the understanding that true love can only come from within first has been life changing, and then it is so wonderful meeting with another who is choosing the same…such a joy and celebration when true love meets.
Marika, I love that you used an analogy of roller coaster, this describes the search perfectly.
Well said Marika
Maree with your words here you nail it on ‘love in relationship’ and why the seeming (and accepted) constant struggle of typical expectation is very present within so many courtships/partnerships/marriages even: “As I look back I can see that there was no foundation of love in myself, let alone in my relationships, so each relationship became a struggle”. An absence of love, creates tension. The presence of love, harmony.
A great discussion here Zofia as this has indeed been my background of relationships and undoing and letting go of this behaviour takes a strong commitment to being very honest about what is taking place and then to feel without criticism but just observation on how to move forward.
This is perfect as my daily reflection has been about getting real with how truly connected my relationships are and what are they really based on? I can feel a deepening being called for, one that is certainly based on true love.
Zofia thank you so much for your line ‘An absence of love, creates tension.’ I know this is going to be so helpful: when I feel tension I feel I can be more conscious about the lack of love in a situation and look after myself by staying connected.
Zofia, ‘the absence of love, creates tension. The presence of love, harmony. Absolutely. The key its to be present and in my body so I can feel with absolute truth when I am coming from and with love, and when I am not. Then to have the wisdom and humbleness to bring what is creating tension out and let love be.