A Journey to Love

You and I are on an incredible journey at this very moment, dancing in an exciting adventure that takes us into a new expansiveness beyond our imagination. It is a journey of love, one that knows no limits, has no fear, is authentically powerful and reaches for all possibilities. Is this your experience right now? Is your heart smiling with loving endless energy that you are radiating throughout the world, or are you lost in your own fearful limiting patterns, stuck in a box of your making, stagnant in movement?

I invite you to walk this journey with me for a while. I have been on a journey most of my life searching for love, wanting to know and understand this love, and only recently found it in the most unexpected place. Through my journey I often asked other people about love. Many responses were given about what it meant according to their perception - companionship, security, someone to come home to, sexual intimacy, procreation, sharing space, good feelings, belonging, feeling of family - but it wasn't enough. I knew there was more to real love than was being revealed. So I kept searching. Perhaps you too are searching. You see, finding love is the innate desire of all beings on this planet.

Most people search for love in the physical realm. You know, that zap of "chemistry," candlelight dinners, warm fuzzy feelings, making love, being together and sharing it all. This is love in the physical realm. Although wonderful and exciting, it does not begin to comprehend the vastness of real love. We all know that physical love can change rather rapidly - our divorce statistics certainly equate this - for physical intimacy provides only short-term gratification with connection that lacks depth. So if physical connections - whether partner/partner, friend/friend or parent/child - do not provide the filled up, satisfying, overflowing love, well then, what does?

The search continued. First was a long marriage, but the love faded away until it was gone. There were five children - they kept me busy and fulfilled and happy for a while it seemed. I was too busy to look further so just accepted this was it, even though I longed to know more. Funny thing though, the kids grew up and moved onto their own path, leaving me behind. I tried one business after another, did well in all of them, but something was always missing. I was empty and my soul cried out for that love. My face told the story of my heart's condition, for what one is on the inside is mirrored to the outside for all to see. I kept looking.

I continued my journey and some revealing insights came to me. I looked at other people walking past me or even beside me, and saw the same emptiness in many of them. I was puzzled, but also relieved that I wasn't the only one searching. Most were doing what I was doing, hurrying here and there thus avoiding time to think about the emptiness, filling their lives with busyness. Sadly, the more I accomplished, the more accolades I received, the busier I became, the emptier I was. What a mystery. It surely wasn't turning out as I had been taught - get married, raise a family, take care of everyone's needs, work a job perhaps, go to church, live by the "Golden Rule," give and give, and you will know love.

Oftentimes I'd look back and try to figure out where I went wrong according to my perception. I must have done something wrong or taken a wrong turn. Of course, I thought, the problem is with the marriage; I must have married the "wrong" person. No wonder I couldn't find love. So perhaps I'll find another partner who is the "right" one. Ever traveled this path?

Years had gone by, illness overtook me, recovery was slow because of the internal pain. It was during that time that I understood another dimension of illness - emotional pain. As I journeyed this path and explored every nook and cranny for answers, I discovered some wondrous insights and was divinely prompted to write my first book - A Woman's Path to Wholeness: the Gift is in the Process. My intention had been to write a different book, but I was led down this path. I realized the core of most physical illness is found in the emotional and spiritual realms and many needed to hear these insights. Then one day I came to a crossroad that offered several possibilities. Which one was the right path? How could I know? God intervened and a cosmic two-by-four, strategically placed, got my attention so that I realized I needed to step out of my comfort zone and grow. My entire life began to transform and new doors opened in miraculous ways. My intuition literally exploded with massive force as realms of enlightenment overtook my beingness. Perhaps you've experienced this process.

One day, as I rounded a bend, there it was, staring me right in the face, the love I had been searching for all my life. How could I have missed it all this time I wondered? For the love I had longed for, cried for, dreamed of, prayed for and searched for was with me all the time. It was inside of me, right there in my soul and heart, and I couldn't see it. It was on the other side of the fears - the anger, hurt, shame, guilt, defectiveness, bitterness, blame, manipulation, control, jealousy, pain, and revenge - completely shadowed by them. And the love inside of me was reflecting the love of God from whence I came. I am a child of God! At that moment I realized how magnificent I am, a woman of worth, the embodiment of divine, unconditional, boundless love.

I had work to do to uncover this love. Release, let go, surrender became words to live by. I quit resisting the love and it spilled out to heal the multidimensional wounds of my life experience and let them go. Learning to retrieve the love from its hidden place and remember from whence one came, is not an instant realization. It involves steps to allow it to be revealed, like peeling away layer upon layer of encrusted negative patterns. I had to unconditionally love myself - not an easy assignment after a lifetime of self-incrimination - and to accept that we are all perfectly created from nothing but love. We've never been anything else but love as part of the universal, perfect love of our Creator; we just forgot.

So there it was - the secret to finding love - be the love you are seeking and it will find you. I replaced the fear and all its derivatives with loving energies - forgiveness, gratitude, compassion, appreciation, kindness - and the love grew and grew. I glided down the path now without the weight of the past. I forgave the people who according to my perception had hurt me, going beyond the dimension of human comprehension, and there I found love, real love, that moves above the externals of the physical realm and sees the divine light in every soul. I claimed my birthright power in this process and felt the most healing expansiveness I had ever experienced, way beyond the realm of my past knowingness.

Knowing this unconditional love shifts everything in your mindfulness. I looked at the world - all these people screaming out for love - feeling such depth of sadness that it was eluding them as it had me for so long. I wanted to shout from the rooftops that they already had it within them, but I knew they wouldn't listen. The world looks with different glasses so love seen by their misguided eyes is simply need. This is why love fades away for many - they are trying so hard to use this interpretation of love to validate themselves, to fill up the empty caverns within them, to feel secure, approved of, connected, complete, desired - all of ego.

Most amazing of all is that love doesn't need to be achieved, it simply is. It's always there for us and in us just as air is always present to allow us to breathe. Such is real love, divine love, our life-force breathing out to all people on this planet. It has no judgment or expectations. It allows for you to be yourself, standing in your own magnificence, complete as you are. Real love doesn't require approval, does not judge, and isn't a manipulative force.

Again my divine guidance came with urgency to put aside the book I was working on and write The Realness of a Woman, A Journey for Seeking, Remembering and Being Who You Are. As the words poured through me I realized the powerful effect of this Divine Consciousness for a world that needs to remember.

The journey to love begins and ends within our hearts and souls. The mirror of life reflects only what it sees. Does your mirror reflect the divine eternal love of your Creator so that your heartspace radiates love to those who walk the path of life with you? Or is your love obscured by the shadows of doubt and fear and hidden from the view of the world as you hide in the "box" you created for your life? Our journey is for our spiritual awakening to the glorious awareness of a life of love. The love you are seeking begins as you!

Written by Rev. Dr. Carolyn Porter, speaker, trainer, energy healer, publisher, minister and author of A Woman's Path to Wholeness, The Realness of a Woman and Put the Dynamo in Your Communication. The following excerpt is taken from her book, The Realness of a Woman, A Journey for Seeking, Remembering & Being Who You Are.

"Real love doesn't need to be achieved, it simply is. Once you have obtained the knowingness
of love as the Universe intended us to feel, nothing in your life will ever be the same again,
and you will see that the love of the world is not really love, it is need. This awareness can
transform your life and create a passion that grows and grows, a passion for life itself as you
realize the greatness already within your being. It is recognizing this greatness that already
lies within you that gives you realness in being the wonderful woman you really are, one who
is genuinely in love with herself!