Do you want more love in your life?

To forgive is the highest, most beautiful form of love. In return, you will receive untold peace and happiness. ~ Robert Muller

Here are 5 great practices for returning to love.

On a spiritual level, we already are love, so we don’t really need to return. But we can block the awareness of love with our minds and habits like I do when I get too mental with analysis of life. The practices below help us to expand our awareness of love, allowing it to be experienced and grown in our hearts, minds and bodies. I also believe love in action is the highest expression of love.

1- Gratitude is my core practice.

I’ve written about the power of gratitude many times as a way to acknowledge and grow the blessings in our lives. It’s also a great way to feel connected to more than ourself. It’s easier to be grateful for the things we enjoy and cherish like our friends, home, family, etc.

My current gratitude practice is to be grateful for everything, even my challenges. I’ve gradually accepted that challenges are my growing edge. They are life/ spirit bringing us the perfect opportunities to stretch and grow to become more of the beautiful beings we are meant to be. Will you join me in practicing more gratitude?

To help you get started, here’s a popular post on gratitude called Open Your Heart to Gratitude.

2- Before gratitude, many of us need to work on forgiveness.

Anger, blame and holding onto the past in many forms can greatly block the flow of love and life. I’m learning to forgive those I thought had harmed me. Gradually, I realized that my own thoughts were causing me much more pain than the original act that triggered my feelings of hurt or anger. Why keep torturing myself? Did that person harm me? Sometimes yes, but forgiveness is more for ourselves. Often, we hold a seed of unworthiness that locks us into the past and pain. I’ve done this with financial losses. My journey is to keep releasing and forgiving, helping me to expand my capacity to love in the moment.

If you want some inspiration on forgiveness, read this powerful story told by Jack Kornfield. I guarantee it will touch your heart. You might want tissues nearby! 🙂

3- Acceptance is a great daily practice.

Acceptance is what brings us home to self and holds our other practices together. It’s a doorway to the love we want. Each time we offer acceptance, our capacity to experience love grows. It doesn’t matter what direction (to ourselves or others) that we send acceptance, it blesses all. The more of life that we can embrace (from the light to the dark, the hurts, imperfections and all), the more we align with our core identity as love. Once we embody love, then our lives flow with more grace, beauty and purpose.

My new vision is to consciously dance with the divine every day. To be looking for the divine in all people and situations. As a course in miracles teaches, everything is either an expression of love or a call to love.

4- Speak the phrase “I love you”, over and over, until you embody love.

This is a new practice for me that I heard from Matt Kahn. He suggests the simple practice of saying I love you as the way to align with love. Watch the video for more on using this simple practice to transform your life.

5- Communing with source.

Meditation is the time-honored practice for connecting with source. It’s a great way to still the mind and body, allowing our energy to settle like a muddied river. And sometimes I connect more easily through movement like dancing or walking. Do whatever helps you to connect to the divine.

Are you ready to return to love? 

Here’s another way to love from Ihsan at iithinks blog. Ihsan (a lovely poet and kind soul) offered this Rumi video to remind me of the way home to love. Thanks Rumi and Ihsan!

PS, I Love You, musebrad ❤