Choose Love. It is always the right choice. Let it flow from a pure, authentic place within you. Its intention governs everything and aligns things imperfect, perfectly.

Choose love. Expecting nothing back in return. For love is its own reward. In giving love, you automatically receive it back. It is not something to seek outside of you. It is already in you. Others simply remind you of who and what is within you. So simply BE….Love.

Sometimes it may look, sound, taste, smell, feel like love but really be a distortion or projection. A faux reality of a conditioned mind. Or the clawing need of an unresolved pain. Be gentle with yourself as this awareness reveals itself. The purpose is not to self-flagellate but rather to grow. To be. To transform. To love more.

Empathy and compassion allow love to bloom. Judgment and apathy create a toxic air for it. Responsibility and Accountability humble it to really take a look at itself and bridge the integrity gap between what is Says/Does on one hand AND who it BE, on the other. Because in the gap between the BEING and DOING axis is a whorl of pain unfurling. And the more it widens, the more that pain gains momentum and lashes out like a burst dam of emotions.

Forgiveness flows from compassion and empathy, as they allow you to see yourself as a reflection of another. The hardest part of forgiveness is the FORGIVENESS OF SELF. Healing and forgiveness are intertwined. You cannot have one without the other. TIME is the connector of both; one leads, the other lags, either way. Non-sequentially, across multiple dimensions of time, in time….

Forgiveness is the externalization of an inward unconscious healing. It chooses us, we do not choose it. We may decide to or not to forgive, and it happens regardless, in each step of our healing process. We are all constantly healing, co-creating, re-building. As individuals; as a collective. We are all inter-connected and inter-related.

To think yourself separate from the common threads of our humanity is a delusion, a fallacy; albeit a beautiful one. We’re human BEINGS. Love is the oxygen. Our BEING-ness is rooted in it. And our shadows and light flow from a disconnect or connect to it, respectively. Our inter-relatedness creates our vulnerability to one another. We will always stumble and cross each other’s boundaries, and we will always rise up and continue the journey…

When we cling to the notion that we will never forgive certain wrongs, we unconsciously say to the universe: “I am on my journey of healing; be patient with me. Some things are healed and some haven’t. I do not yet know what these things are, but they are there. Buried 7+ layers within.”

God bubbles things up to our conscious awareness only when we are ready to handle them. And he veils us with denial when our core is not yet strong enough to deal with the pain that will follow. So I urge you, be gentle, patient and kind to yourself. Simply allow yourself be. Do not fight against what is or what you feel. Feel all your feelings – anger, sadness, joy, pain, laughter, fear, guilt, hardness of spirit, freedom, shame, light..

It is actually not in our conscious power to forgive. It happens at a deeply layered level of truth within us. Forgiveness is a gift of the spirit. Our role is perhaps to simply SURRENDER. To chose to yield. To whisper gently into God’s ear: I cannot do this on my own. To let it flow in tears. In laughter. In songs. In poems. In an embrace. In our shutting down. In everything. In wordless conversation. In meditation, in a kiss, in love-motion….

For to merely say: “I forgive you” or “I do not forgive you” do not automatically make it so. Often, that’s simply a forced concept of wanting peace and love and freedom in order to move on with our lives. OR wanting to hold on to the comfort of our unresolved pain. Forgiveness happens by grace. Unconsciously. At a quantum level. In the deep backgrounds of our minds, spirit and souls. Then it manifests physically in our bodies. Forgiveness is activated by Truth and Compassion. It is rooted in a deep love that flows simply from our being-ness. Forgiveness is a gift. it is always there; open-armed.

So perhaps in our journey of love, our role is simply to embrace our truth and to be open to compassion/empathy. Which is simply surrendering to using the lens of love to see another as a true reflection of yourself. Sometimes, it takes an instant, other times, it takes a lifetime. Either way, be gentle with yourself in the process. Feel all your feelings. They are valid and will lead you to your truth.

When love ‘falls apart’, perhaps it is not your heart breaking to pieces. Rather, it is a breaking open of a new plane of existence, a new dimension of your being that is resonating higher and can give or receive more love than what you settled for initially. So it may not really be that love died, rather that it transformed. (For love is the greatest energy source of all, it cannot be destroyed).

Perhaps, the pain arises from the expansion of our ‘cups’, as we become stretched when we question everything about all our choices. As you grow, your awareness of love grows. Be open to letting love go, without attachment, so that a different kind of love will grow and flow back to you.

And you may be amazed to find that the source of the springs of love is always within. In the places inside that you have dared not to explore. In the lies you stubbornly cling to. The denial you veil your eyes with. The anger masking your fears. The social structures that imprison you. The truth you fail to acknowledge. BE STILL…

Choose Love. Even when it makes no sense. Love never demeans, or strips you of choice or of dignity. Love is truth. And truth is freedom. Love is a decision. And even when you decide NOT to choose it, you are not shielded from it. It is our humanity and divinity rolled in one. It is our connection to source. A DIS-connect from love creates the havoc, chaos and drama we unconsciously crave and enjoy! Love grounds us. To self and to one another. To the universe.

It unleashes our creativity and possibilities, in a way that brings ecology to all. It shifts our universe in a way that heals and not destroys. It is always of and in the light. Love does not do or thrive in the shadows. And the more you embrace your inner light, what disguises as love (but is not love), crumbles and falls apart.

Love may sometimes seem to hurt but in the end it only heals. It is the one freedom God’s given all of us: The power to choose LOVE! Be gentle, patient and caring to yourself and others. Everyone is searching. Lost in a maze. Blindly seeking and fighting over what is already freely given….Remember, you are still HERE; YOU are still here! Not banished ‘there’, where love does not exist.  💕– Cyber-hugs, Juliet ‘Kego Ume-Onyido

Happy Valentine’s Day!