Aspasia,

Here goes with some free-wheeling, meandering exploration!

When I'm out and about connecting with those who are on a spiritual path in my community, I frequently hear, "God is Love. The One is Love. I am Love." A few years back in this Openhand forum, I was struggling to grasp how I could possibly connect and become the One when I'm so imperfect and flawed in body/mind/spirit. Specifically, I asked, "If I freed myself from all distortions, would I manifest a whole body?" In this incarnation, I have chosen a disabled body, so I was feeling unworthy of experiencing the Oneness of Presence. Open and Trinity engaged with me at that time and their insights were such a welcomed illumination. A flash of expanded consciousness. What stood out was this: The One is in all things but is not those things. The One doesn't judge me because I'm disabled. It may be my karma to continue experiencing a disabled body in this lifetime. What is being invited is to expand my consciousness so it simply doesn't matter. To go beyond defining myself as a person with a disability. True enlightenment is to be enlightened in all things and all experiences. Another Openhand gem that resonates more and more deeply as I journey on.

Since that initial exchange with Open and Trinity, I've come to better grasp that the divine is in love and in hate but is not those things. The divine is beyond all judgment, beyond all definitions and identities.

I'm feeling the belief that God is Love and that we are Love leads to separation from Source since it's a belief based on rejecting, denying, and judging all those experiences and feelings where love is not present. The temptation is then to escape in a false Love/Light bubble based on suppressing any emotion that doesn't feel like love. I've been there. When Mr. T. came into power, I was seeing many social media posts extolling the virtue of sending love bombs his way. Meanwhile I was recoiling from the distorted, hateful energy he was expressing big time. Sending love bombs (i.e. all we need is love) felt like non-judgmental discernment gone mad, devolving into a wishy-washy, anything goes mode. As Open has said: It's important not to lose the discerning part of non-judgmental discernment. A rose is still a rose and a thorn is still a thorn. At the Absolute level, love is unconditional but while we're here having experiences in 3D, it's important to honour and accept how we feel about the social injustice going down and then move into action from that deep sense of aligned rightness within, in the flow of benevolence. We don't have to love oppression and exploitation.

Of course it's one thing to grasp an abstract concept of the One on an intellectual level and a whole other thing to fully feel, experience, and embody Absolute Presence while we're having experiences of both duality and non-duality as unique sparks of the divine. Every experience of the pain of existence, every experience of separation from the One is an opportunity to ride the wave of the soul back to Source, to self-realize as the One Absolute Presence. This I know! What's helping me hugely these days to transcend my limited, small, identified self to the limitless One is Open's breakthrough meditation, which I do several times a day. I can only imagine how it feels to feel the way I do during my meditations on a full-time basis! In the meantime, I keep on practicing and am getting better at accepting my quirky quirks and unique imperfections that makes me. Me.

x Cathy