The True Meaning of Unconditional Love

Did you know you’re worthy of unconditional love just as you are now? Even with all of your seeming imperfections and all the unloving acts you do, you are worthy. That’s the real meaning of unconditional, according to the book “Reality Unveiled” by Ziad Masri.

He explains there’s nothing you have to prove to deserve love. You’re already there, at the finish line, behind the illusion. Your only role is to be a conduit of experience to the Infinite Self that you truly are, which wishes nothing but to experience itself from an infinite number of perspectives and to expand from this experience.

And how do you do that? By simply being the expression of the love that you already are as best you can. That is our real mission. And every other mission you may have is secondary to simply learning how to express your Beingness as purely as possible, reflecting the unconditional love that is your ultimate nature.

When you do that you’re being of utmost service to the world and living the awakened life, because you are putting being first and letting doing be inspired from that calm center of the true Self.

“Our greatest service and primary purpose in life is to be our true Self. That’s it.”

A Little Bit of Nonsense

This is how the world ends, not all at once, just a little bit at a time.

 Why is J. D. Vance’s little bit of Jabberwocky making such a big splash? Twas brillig and the slithy toves –you know the rest–doesn’t everyone?

I’m appalled by this pandering to an opportunistic quasi-hillbilly who has indecently laid claim to the name. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised since it’s simply more of the same: disrespect for a people who fought to independently carve out a life for themselves and their children in the wilderness through their own labor.

Although I left eastern Kentucky many years ago in order to find employment I continue to be proud of my heritage. My ancestors were pioneers in eastern Kentucky, several generations (including one great great grandfather who was about two years old) coming into what is now Letcher County in the Adams Wagon Train.

I’m proud because I know what we stood for in the beginning and still do. I took my heritage with me when I left, passing my values along to my own children. I taught them to take pride in our ancestors who built this country from scratch. There may be a few bad’uns somewhere in our lineage but if there are, then God Bless Them.

The Bully Within

Do you often find yourself being attacked by a bully? I don’t mean the one at the office or the obnoxious one sent by the government to harass you. This bully waits inside you, usually until night when you’re in bed trying to sleep. He sneaks in with memories of your past trangressions (especially the embarrassing ones) using them to shame you. with. You try to chase him away but it doesn’t work. Your face grows warm, becomes buried beneath the covers.

Once this bully has your attention, it’s hard to get rid of him. “There’s nothing I can do about that now,” you say. “It was a stupid thing I did (or said). I suffered because of it.”  Or “It was an accident. I didn’t know a piece of toilet paper was stuck to my skirt. You should’ve told me instead of snickering to each other about it and pretending you didn’t see it,” Etc, etc. The things this bully has collected to shame you with knows no end. What do you do?

If a friend were to confide one of these incidents to you how would you respond? Would you feel compassion for your friend, assuring him or her that we all make mistakes and it was nothing to be ashamed of? How come it’s harder to express compassion for ourselves? Everybody needs support in healing and growth, so why shouldn’t it come from inside us?  You need to be a friend to yourself, getting rid of the bully who is set on shaming you.

The inner bully is a by-product of the lack of self-compassion. We struggle with shame and self-doubt until we are able to bridge the difference between how we treat our friends and how we treat ourselves. So kick your bully out in an act of compassion for the person you’ve become.

My Words

Do you hear it on the wind? Shhh? A whisper asking you to be quiet. So you can hear the voice of God? I believe He speaks to us always, through every thought, every feeling, every vision our eyes can see. When we learn to listen.

I have discovered that for most of my life I’ve been on a search for words; words to say just what I feel, just what I think or believe, what I mean. Yet words continue to elude me. Then recently I remembered a day when my son was four, before he entered kindergarten. He had repeated swear words he’d heard his father say. “Please,” I had pleaded with my husband “do not use those words in front of the children or they’ll repeat them.”

But I also told my son: “Those are Daddy’s words’ and you aren’t allowed to say them.” At first he listened to me but then he started kindergarten. One day when he came home from school he had learned new words, bathroom words! “Now those,” he said, “are MY words!” I was dumbfounded, hoping if I didn’t make a fuss he would outgrow the need to use them.

But it seems strange to me that all these years later I’m finally aware that the strongest need in my life, has always been to find the words with which to express my thoughts and feelings. Words to say just how I feel, to say how the sky appears to me just before a thunder-storm, as it fills with dark boiling clouds or calmly permits the Sun to shine through. For all my life I’ve been on a search for words.

I have a vision of Truth waiting for me on the peak of a mountain with many paths leading to it, aware my path is only one of many

HANGED MAN HOLLOW

My new book (with the correct title restored) is now on Kindle in the digital version. My daughter Teresa, who created the cover, is now creating one for the printed version, which will be available soon.💖

December 23, 2020: The print version of this novel is now available on Amazon.💝

This story is a labor of love begun long ago. For a while I called it “Calliput Mountain”. The story first came to me in an inspired writing about a young White girl who was kidnapped by a Cherokee Indian brave and bore his child on the ancestral mountain. The mountain was named for her after she died in childbirth at age fifteen. Her spirit waits for a seventh great granddaughter to come home, one named for her, whose soul also hears the song of the mountain. But the Callie who returns must recall what she once knew, but left behind, before she can remember the song.