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Living a Love-Based Life (Part II)

Posted by Roberta Grimes • January 16, 2021 • 36 Comments
Human Nature, Jesus, The Teachings of Jesus

I believe the children are our future.
Teach them well and let them lead the way!
Show them all the beauty they possess inside.
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier.
Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be.
– Michael Masser (1941-2015) & Linda Creed (1948-1986), from “The Greatest Love of All” (1977)

 I had planned today to really get down to the brass tacks of how best to live God’s love. But as I was posting last week’s offering, Whitney Houston began to sing in my mind. When I said something like, “What now?” Thomas said that we never can live God’s Oneness unless we include ourselves among our most beloved. So he wanted us to talk today about how to achieve the self-love that is essential to our spiritual growth.

But this is not my area of expertise! I was what was called a seven-month baby, and perhaps it was to assuage their own shame that my parents reared me to believe I was the most important person on the face of the earth. I figured out when I was college-age that I wasn’t fundamentally different, but by then my sense of my own preciousness was sealed. Would that all children could grow up that way! I tell you this only so you will understand that what I will say here is what I have learned in a decade of helping other people. I am confident about it, but thanks to the love of two dear angels my own growth into healthy self-love was easy.

Learning to love yourself is mostly a matter of removing obstacles to your own understanding of who and what you already are. You always have lived, and you always will live in eternal divine perfection! When you come to earth, you accept amnesia about nearly everything you ever have known, and you also accept a very limited active use of your own mind. You carry a selfish ego whose purpose is to make you desperate to protect yourself so you can stay alive, and you start your life in a material body feeling much-diminished from the life you just left. Unless this infant tendency to see yourself as weak and small is counteracted in childhood with a lot of love, you may well grow up feeling defensive, resentful, inadequate, and riddled with fears. None of these feelings is useful now, but fortunately beneath it all you are already a powerful eternal being. Your task is simply to peel away what is not-you so you can resume being who you already are. Here are your necessary steps, in no special order:

Vanquish Your Ego

We have talked here about the ego, which is a separate gremlin you believe is you but in reality it is what amounts to a parasite. The ego is useful in childhood, when it gives you an instinct for survival that would otherwise be mostly lacking; but once you have learned how to navigate the world, it becomes a barrier to further spiritual growth. It functions on just one me-me-me note. We all have known people who were sadly unable to think beyond themselves, and we have assumed it was because they had “big egos.” But in fact, a selfish attitude is a sign of a pathetically weak and grasping ego fighting for a place in the world. Vanquishing your ego isn’t difficult. It will try to panic you with the fear that its diminution will be your destruction, but if you can ignore that and simply concentrate on the other steps outlined here, your ego will gradually shrivel and fade.

Vanquish Your Fear of Death

The single most important thing you can do to jump-start your spiritual growth is to put in the effort to fully internalize the fact that your mind really is eternal. You always have lived, and you always will live. And for certain, you will live a happier life on earth when you are sure that you cannot die.

I’ve been teaching about the afterlife for a decade now. I have seen the transformational difference it makes for people to take the trouble to learn and then to live the eternal truth! And this week, in time to share it with you, I received an extraordinary testimony from a young man who has reached out to me several times over the past two years. At first he was panicky and fearful. Then he sent further emails asking thoughtful questions. And then there was a silence that was followed this week by a message I am sharing with you here with his permission:

Hello Roberta, it has now been 2 years since I searched for the truth after my fear of dying really hit. I dealt with anxiety for 6 weeks, it was terrible. I thought I would never see my wife and dogs again after this life. My wife found the pets in the afterlife post you wrote and sent it to me. I didn’t believe it but I eventually went back to it and found out you have a podcast. My whole life changed from there and I’ve also found the great Craig Hogan because of you. The two of you, along with many others have helped me realize this: we are eternal, we continue to live on after this life in a beautiful world, we are still with our loved ones including pets, we will remain individuals and there is nothing to fear. The journey like you said took me 1.5-2 years to fully know everything. Took lots of reading and investigation but it was all worth it. 

Putting in the effort to do the work and develop a certainty that you cannot die will transform you from a fearful, fighting, life-sucks-and-then-you-die sort of person into someone like this beautiful young man, happy and now fully empowered to make the very most of his life.

Vanquish Your Youthful Traumas

The Christian religion and Western cultures all are fundamentally fear-based, with the result that a great many people suffer unnecessary childhood fears and traumas. For an extreme example, here is part of an email from a fifteen-year-old that was shared with me by a worried pastor: “I had intercourse with my best friend. I haven’t told my parents. Now we think she is pregnant. Please help me pray that I will die.” My pastor friend had no idea how he could help! He felt that his duty was to involve the parents, but he worried about panicking the boy into suicide. I submit to you, though, that in a more family-based and less sexualized culture, this young man’s problem would seldom occur; and with a primary religion less rooted in sin and the judgment of an angry God, no child would suffer as this boy is suffering simply for being inexperienced enough to have acted on a normal urge.

If you are carrying lingering guilt, shame, or fear from a less-than-perfect childhood, the time to lighten your burden is now. Get counseling. Do whatever it takes for you to really heal! Learning Oneness is tremendously empowering, but it cannot be that unless you can first empower yourself to embrace it from an emotionally healthy place.

Learn to Love as God Loves

Since last week’s post, I have had a number of emails and comments that were some variant of, “You can’t forgive this! Some things you must fight!” You will find that the urge to fight will lessen considerably as your consciousness vibration rises, but even before you are fully living the truth it will be essential that you internalize the need to come from a place of love and never fight back. Mother Theresa’s explanation of why we must always be peaceful and loving is brilliant. Now let’s add to it the thoughts of the Greatest American of the Twentieth Century:

“To our most bitter opponents we say: ‘We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.’
                – Martin Luther, King, Jr. from his essay, “Loving Your Enemies.”

Truly and forever, nothing more need be said.

Learn to See Yourself More as God Sees You

Learning and living the love of the Godhead doesn’t mean you must give up all earthly delights! God wants us to enjoy our lives. As you continue to grow spiritually, you are going to find that you naturally want less anyway; and you also will find that you are a lot less bothered by life’s daily stresses and pains. You will like yourself better. You will be so much happier! In eternal fact, you are the best-beloved child of an infinitely loving God, which was something that my parents’ devotion made me readier to accept than are most people. Always and forever, you are deeply treasured and safe in everlasting arms.  

Only when we have fully internalized the Oneness of the Godhead will we be ready to apply it to our daily lives. And understanding how God’s perfect love might work in every situation does take some thought! Please read again what Mother Teresa said. Read the words of Dr. King above. And let’s begin together to think about how our living God’s perfect love might actually work in the stressful rough-and-tumble of our modern lives.…

I decided long ago never to walk in anyone’s shadows.
If I fail, if I succeed, at least I’ll live as I believe.
No matter what they take from me, they can’t take away my dignity.
Because the greatest love of all is happening to me.
I found the greatest love of all inside of me.
The greatest love of all is easy to achieve!
Learning to love yourself. It is the greatest love of all.
– Michael Masser (1941-2915) & Linda Creed (1948-1986), from “The Greatest Love of All” (1977)

 

Jesus in water photo credit: ClaraDon <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/7267297@N05/6331727087″>Love Shining Through</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a>
Jesus in Boston photo credit: Thomas Hawk <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035555243@N01/35203301661″>Jesus in Boston</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/”>(license)</a>

Roberta Grimes
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36 thoughts on “Living a Love-Based Life (Part II)

  1. hi, i have read that before that when we come back to earth, and accept amnesia about nearly everything we have known. that has never seemed fair to me, because if we forget and we do, how are we suppose to progress, at all, no matter how many times we have to come back. we never get a head, because we forget. what is right about that?

    i enjoy your blog Roberta.

    1. We don’t remember, but I think the vibration level we achieved in the previous life remains. So that way, you are in a position to maintain your growth. Let’s see what Roberta has to say

      1. Dear Francois, we do tend to carry forward from lifetime to lifetime our spiritual growth already achieved, but that progress is not automatic. If you advance considerably over several lives, for example, but then you go badly off-track for some reason – and the most common reason seems to be an especially wealthy or successful lifetime in human terms -then you can regress a bit spiritually. The whole process is highly individual!

    2. Dear Ramonia, I sympathize! We are told, however, that it has to be this way or we cannot make any spiritual progress at all. It is difficult for us here even to imagine the glory, the grandeur and power of who we actually are eternally. Each of us – and even the least of us! If we were in full possession of our vast, eternal minds and stuck in these material bodies, then from infancy we would be fretting and fighting to go home again. Our whole minds would be concentrated on figuring out how to get free of these bodies. We would take none of this seriously, we wouldn’t bother to push against negativity, but instead as soon as we were old enough to manage to pick up a bottle of Drano, we would joyously be out of here and home again!

      Fortunately for all of us, this existing process does work. While we don’t have conscious use of most of our mind-power, we do use it unconsciously. We do gradually elevate our consciousness vibrations over many lifetimes. And what is a few or a hundred lifetimes on earth? Even if we live for 150 years in one lifetime, we live eternally! Each lifetime is nothing, when compared to that.

      What is going on now – this thinning of the veil so we can more easily get behind the illusion – is really just a minor adjustment, so we will grow spiritually just a bit more easily. But the negativity stressors have to work, no matter what! Without them, coming here would be like going to a gym with no machines and no weights: spiritually, we would be hardly able to grow at all.

  2. I am divorced. My wife was very abusive, especially mentally, but sometimes physically too. But it pains me deeply to the core of my soul that she didn’t really love me and got so freaking angry with me, and calling me every name in the book (like that I am Satan’s most beloved fallen child). I have forgiven everything, have even been grateful for the growth it provided me, but yet, there is that underlying fundamental pain of not having received the love from someone I loved. This sense of unrequited love is the hardest thing to deal with. We were married 30+ years. Any advice? It truly depresses me at times. And all my prayers haven’t been answered, and I feel God has left me. Yet, I love God with all my heart and soul, and have done a lot of spriitual reading, and could write books, give great speeches/sermons on unconditional love, etc., but yet, there is that horrible void in my heart.

    1. A3,

      My heart goes out to you, because I have been through the same sort of thing. You have to realize that she is just a broken person. You must not take it personally. The way she treated you is a reflection of her brokenness and has nothing to do with your worth. You can’t fix her, she is on her own journey. But you can fix yourself. Learn to love yourself so you don’t need so much of that outside validation. All of this is easier said than done I know. But you are on the right path. God bless you friend.

      1. Oh my dear Daniel, this is beautifully said! You clearly have learned and grown wonderfully from that very difficult lesson, and I’m sure your words here are balm to A3’s heart. Thank you!

    2. You can’t control what others feel or do. Each person has its own challenges to face. When you give, you don’t expect something in return, same goes for love. Perhaps you should have left her much earlier, as the love was not reciprocal.

      1. Dear Francois, sometimes from the outside it does seem that people who are in awful situations ought to simply remove themselves sooner. But when you love someone in an imperfect relationship, there are often a lot of lessons being taught and learned beneath the surface, and a lot of growth still to happen! Just in my own case, if I had left my early less-than-perfect marriage I would have missed out on what were some of the most important lessons of this lifetime for me, and for my husband as well.

        As I am fond of encouragingly telling new brides, “The first 25 years are the hardest.” I think that thought should be wonderfully inspiring! But oddly, a lot of brides don’t feel so inspired…. 🙁

    3. Oh my dear beautiful friend A3, I am so sorry! This has been an important earth-life negativity stressor, but such a painful one. In fact, the evidence is consistent and overwhelming that these awful interpersonal situations are planned before birth and are eagerly entered into by all the participants for the wonderful spiritual growth that can come from them; and the need to truly forgive it all is the ultimate, hardest lesson still to come.

      Just based on what you have said here, you seem to have done a wonderful job with this very challenging lesson. You have managed to perceive the lesson in its larger frame, and you seem to have forgiven the situation, forgiven your wife, and grasped the fact that it was all a lesson; but you still have considerable forgiveness work to do, and the tip-off to that is that you feel estranged from the Godhead.

      My dear, I have limited information so I might be wrong, but it looks from here as if your having done part of your forgiveness work has simply reduced the field of blame: you seem still to feel that God has given you a raw deal, and that there must be something about you yourself that makes you unworthy of receiving back the love that you give. If this is true, then congratulations for having come so far! Let’s see if we can help you come the rest of the way. Here is what I suggest that you do:

      1) Accept the fact that none of this is real. And following the steps outlined this week should go a long way toward convincing you of that! When you see the lesson in its larger frame, you will begin to feel less wounded by it.

      2) Know for certain that you are infinitely and eternally loved. Your guides will likely help you with that. My husband has Asperger’s syndrome, which makes it difficult for him to feel and express love, and long before we knew about that there were times in our early marriage when I was sure he didn’t love me. I recall once when I was feeling rejected that I thought, “When I get to heaven I’ll bet there are people there who love me.” And at once I was flooded by such an overwhelming sense of being infinitely loved that it stopped me in my tracks. Wow. And that same degree of love is always there for you, too. When you get home you are going to be living drenched in love, so please, dear, know that perfect love is always your whole reality! Any lack of it that you feel is just another removable block to your full awareness of who you actually already are.

      3) Once you more clearly see all of this as simply a planned life-lesson in an eternity filled with love, you should be able to begin to see that you have no culpability in this. You have no reason to feel that your wife didn’t love you, and in truth the being that she is loves you very much and has given you this wonderful lesson as a gift. Know that you are beautiful, worthy, and infinitely loved! And when you know that, you will begin to see yourself as not a failure in love at all, but instead you are entirely worthy of love and forgiveness. So you can forgive yourself, love yourself, and look hopefully for your next, more love-filled lesson.

      4) Then, at last, it’s time for you to tackle forgiving God. You are blocking God now, and probably drenched in the notion that you were trying your best and God has simply given you an awful deal! It will be only when you have managed to forgive and bless the whole situation, and even yourself, that you will be able to open your heart to God enough that the Godhead will fill every bit of the void that you are still feeling there. And you will forgive God. And then your much greater life will truly begin.

      Please consider yourself loved, my beautiful friend!

  3. Hi Roberta, hi everybody! I think the unfortunate influence of Sts. Paul and Augustine on Western thought and traditional Christian beliefs of ourselves as separate, “fallen” and ultimately unworthy should be closely considered as we try to see ourselves as God seed us.

    God sees each of us as the number 1, best beloved “child”—and infinite number of “children” and yet each of us in God’s mind is an “only.” Further, each of us is seen by God as the reflection of the Godhead. Being made in God’s image means more than that we “look like God” or God looks like humans. God sees God reflected back in each of us.

    Sorry about all the quotation marks, but as usual the language is inadequate. We are not God’s children in the way that word works in English—but full and perfect aspects of Divine creative power, willfully experiencing what we perceive as incarnation.

    1. Dear Mike, you are entirely right. Christian theology and Christian thought altogether has been from Constantine’s day both highly negative and personally demeaning. Christianity tells us in essence that God loves us so much, but we are such a gigantic disappointment that God can’r forgive us even for Adam’s sin, let alone for our own, unless Jesus takes on the spectacular task of carrying all of humanity’s sins and then dying the horrible death that we all so richly deserve. That notion is the core of Christian thought. And we teach this level of horror and shame even to our own children!! It is a wonder that we who were reared in that teaching even can dare to show our faces 🙁

      1. Last night by coincidence I found a YouTube video featuring Fr, Rohr —whom we have discussed here—and a sermon he gave, not on learning to love ourselves but learning not to be afraid of ourselves. I am summarizing, but basically once we realize who we really are, the power we have is fearsome. Embracing that divine power, rather than being afraid of it, is really what we are talking about.

        1. Don’t you just love the good friar, my dear Mike? He is a strict Catholic, but he ventures so far afield into basic truths – I love to watch him do wonders with little twists of the old religion!

    2. Hi Mike. Your comment reminded me of something odd but funny that came in meditation about a week ago when I was asking for suggestions from my guides on what to study next, “Paul is crashing along after all these years.” It makes me think of a drunk driver or a demoltion derby. 😄 Subsequent things that came through seem to point to his denigration of women and the feminine in the Church, and he certainly added to all the negative judgement Christians heap on themselves and others. I guess we should give him his due credit for getting Christianity more widely spread across the Roman Empire and passed down to us today, but he left a lot of messes to clean up too, and his legacy is still creating more.

      1. Dear Scott, I have long had my differences with Paul!! I share your sense that he may have been helpful in beginning to establish a following for the Lord, but what he built really didn’t last very long before Constantine came along and built his fear-based religion in place of Paul’s attempts to push the Lord’s love-based cause. But no point, I guess, in dwelling on the past, when in our new day we can re-create the true movement that Jesus Himself began, all as fresh and lovely as a brand-new day!

    1. Thank you, dear Kathy! It really is more complicated than just “love your neighbor,” isn’t it? But gloriously, once we actually learn to practice the pure love that Jesus teaches, it makes such a wonderfully transformative difference. I’m excited about it now!

  4. Hi Roberta,
    Thank you for this week’s beautiful blog. How interesting that I posed a question about spiritual growth to my Helping Parents Heal group this morning and then I read your post. I coincidences!

    1. Dear Rosanne, thank you for sharing your synchronicity! And Helping Parents Heal is a wonderful group – thank you for giving us the opportunity to give them another little plug here.

      As you may know, those now in spirit actually tell us there are no “coincidences.”

  5. Dearest Roberta,
    this is an unexpected directional on living a love-based life. When I read the opening lines I smiled inside, realizing the wisdom in Thomas’ idea that we need to include ourselves in who we most love.

    My wonderful father taught me that I have two eyes, two ears and only one mouth for a reason. It is wiser to watch and listen to others and their understanding, than to spout off my own ideas endlessly. So I did exactly that and I learned that rampant, bellicose ego is far less common than self deprecating thoughts and self loathing. Mostly people feel unworthy or too unimportant and imperfect to be really loved. The dark, dry, voice of self criticism creaks ceaselessly within, and convinces us that we don’t deserve to be perfectly loved at all.

    So Roberta, when you suggested that we vanquish our ego I thought of its dark underbelly, the voice of self loathing and hence, the negative conditioning that we carry within our minds. (Of course, there is no deeper negative conditioning than that born of childhood trauma, as you rightly say.)

    Something that helped me was identifying these negative ideas one by one. (Writing them down helps to pinpoint them.) Then I worked on each one and reasoned out why a particular idea was nonsense and I soon realized how silly it was that God would not love me because of it. Over time, I began to rule a line through each one when I felt that the particular negative idea no longer bothered me.

    Examples of such ideas for me were:
    I fall well short of being selfless. I am inconsistent and hypocritical at times. I can be too lazy. I can be too obsessive. I am gay. I let somebody down. I haven’t got enough ‘go-get-em’ ambition. I am worried by what another thinks of me. My mind is too scattered. I am woefully imperfect because of ‘x’, ‘y’ and ‘z’…etc..

    In short, whatever the ‘hot thought’ that burned me was, I identified it and debunked it thoroughly. It takes time to retrain the mind and rid oneself of depressing thought-emotions, but like weeding the garden it is well worth doing. 🙂

    My amazing mother gave me the sense that I was always loved and worth listening to. (My father joined her in this.) Hence, I think it for this reason that I am able to do one practice that has truly helped me, effectively. This may also help people who prefer to pray, meditate or even just contemplate the Divine Being. It is such a simple thing that I include every time I sit in meditation:

    I put a little bit of myself into the Divine while meditating on or praying to Him. Therefore I’m already part of the One Mind and not separate from it. This means I’m part of the Beloved One and I too, am worthy of love.
    🙏🏼🌅❣️

    1. I love what you have to say here, Efrem, about paying attention to, and “debunking,” all the negativity we have internalized and lost sight of how much it rules us. Those are some great suggestions. I guess Roberta’s prevenient forgiveness practice can apply to ourselves as much as to others. I’m not sure what she would think of this, but after “I love you. I bless you. I forgive and I release,” I’ve taken to adding, “Thank you for teaching me,” which equally applies whether the other person(s), myself, or my inner demons (or most likely some combination of all the above) will be at fault. This spiritual work we’re doing is a constant process of excavating the old junk and trying not to deposit any new messes in our minds. Also, when I say, “I release,” I repeat it a few times for emphasis, and it truly does feels like weight is lifting off my heart, tension is releasing, I’m breathing a bit easier, and I’m a bit lighter.

      1. Your ‘thank you for teaching me’ addition to the forgiveness technique is a great idea, Scott. What could help amplify forgiveness more than gratitude? And if your forgiveness practice is an act of love in the first place, then you have three of the most powerful things in existence: forgiveness, gratitude and love.
        I’m going to try your way of doing things; it sounds and feels right. Thanks my friend. 🙏🏼🕊

        1. Forgiveness, gratitude, and love – that truly is a winning combination, Efrem, or should I say win, win, win. 👍❤

    2. Dear Efrem, a needy little ego quite often expresses as big-headed selfishness, so it isn’t always obvious that someone is thinking less of himself in the midst of all his self-absorption! But you’re right in saying that many people tear themselves down and need to be helped to think better of themselves. I am glad that your parents gave you that help, as did mine!

  6. The childhood years are the most important part of a person’s life. If a child is accepted, encouraged and loved in childhood, he or she has a “head start” in accepting that they are worthy and have the potential for pursuing what they want to achieve. Conversely, if a child is mentally, physically or even sexually abused during their early years, it is not surprising that they all too often develop a feeling of inferiority and hatred and as they approach adulthood, this usually shows itself in very negative ways. Most times, these feelings are repressed, but still exist in the subconscious mind. This, in addition to fear based religious teachings, is a recipe for feelings of failure and unworthiness. As Efrem pointed out, it takes a lot of hard work to retrain the mind and free it of these false ideas.

    1. Hey 👋 Lola,
      I think you’ve expressed the importance of childhood very clearly and accurately. You are right; childhood is where attitudes and patterns are laid down for life.

      You know, I’ve known and had long chats with people who were surviving addictions of the most deadly kind. I often spoke to people who were born and raised in the same city and time period as my self. They too were raised in families that were economically struggling like mine. Many of these individuals were very intelligent, talented or artistic. Many cared about the same things I did. The only difference (besides the addiction itself) was that they had horrendous childhoods, whereas I was raised by extremely loving parents.

      Truly, the ‘merciless Mother’ or the ‘dark father’ (Darth Vader?) is a cruel anti-archetype that looms large and powerful in a person’s psyche all their life. Sometimes Lola, the stories they told me of their treatment as kids were horrific, even just in terms of blatant and severe neglect.

      Hence, it was the tremendous hurt, fear and anger that these kids felt as they grew up, that lead them to lash out and adopt self destructive behavior…. If their parents didn’t love them then, somewhere inside, they felt unworthy. And if they were unworthy then they could trash themselves and anyone who stood in their way. However, alcohol, pills and drugs can only dull the pain for a while before taking a heavy toll of their own.

      Understanding even one person’s childhood situation is a damn good reason to stop judging people and to start feeling for them instead. A horrendous childhood explains so much of the pain, anger, addiction and wrong action in the world.

      Heck Lola, humanly sorely needs transformation. 🙏🏼❣️

      1. Dear Efrem, yes indeed! The fact that there are so many horrendous childhoods does indeed explain so much of what has gone desperately wrong with the world!

    2. Dear Lola, this is beautifully said. And as modern families are more and more broken, leaving more and more children to feel unwanted and unloved, the problem only worsens! One of the great fruits of a Western culture that is ever more centered on living the love that Jesus taught will be a much-enriched quality of life for children!

  7. You are 100% right, Efrem. Horrendous childhood experiences stay with people forever and account for many atrocities in the world, and it is these people who will find it hard to accept that God loves them unconditionally, It probably sounds crazy, but I believe courses on correct parenting should be taught in schools and maybe it would help to reduce the constant chain of handing down the destructive kind of parenting from generation to generation. People don’t realize that this affects all of us, not just the victims and their immediate families.

      1. Dear A3, I do feel for you. I know how terrible an ongoing hole in the heart feels. Speaking for myself, it was only when I started to see how much I had learned from my own ‘oppressors’ that I could begin to let go of the pain.

        The sheer volume of things I had learned, that I could never have really understood otherwise, made me see why God had let me go through my long and harrowing experience in the first place. When I knew that my life drama was not the underlying, true reality I could feel that God did love me after all.

        What began as feeling vanquished at heart, somehow clicked into perspective; it was a soul growth, learning experience given by God who loves me and wants me to draw near to Him.

        I don’t know how relevant my words are to you A3. Yet I do wish you an ever lightening heart and joy in the simple beauty of life, my friend. 🙏🏼🌅

    1. Great idea Lola.
      Imagine teaching such core, formative subjects in school such as parenting. I guess the narrow and myopic science of modern education is begging for an enlightened transformation.

      Should enough of us transform ourselves, this may indeed come to pass. ❣️🙏🏼

  8. What a synchronicity to read your wonderful words of how to really live our lives Roberta! It dovetails into so many other lessons I have been learning late in life. But it’s never too late. I dove into your link on Mother Teresa as well and was perfect as well. I have been compiling what I call a ‘Spirit Book’ for articles that sustain my need for spiritual growth. Now I have two new sources of ‘soul’. Thank you so much for what you give to us all. We love you Roberta.

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