What is love?
July 21, 2021
In the beginning it is all we are…in the end it is what we become. We are down here to become that love ❤️
Just imagine you are given a gift from four different people. The gift is identical from all four.
The first gift is from your partner, someone you love very much and so you show your appreciation by giving a hug and maybe a kiss as well.
The second gift is from a parent, someone you love very much too but life being as it is you may give a quick hug and at the least a smile and a thank you.
The third gift is from a friend, not your best friend but someone you know a bit so you at least give a smile and a thank you.
The fourth gift is from a small child and in this your empathy almost automatically responds with an ‘Oh isn’t that cute’ with a thank you darling and big hug.
They are all different people, yet its the same gift. You are responding according to your circumstances with each of those people and what you have been brought up with. You have learnt over many years of these many different ways with people and how you respond in your love, compassion, empathy and for that matter all of your emotions you have handled in all those circumstances to become who you are.
You are ‘allowing’ through that love, you are measuring it, you are quantifying it, you are the gatekeeper to its doorway, you are even the captain of its river in life.
But you will only ever fully appreciate that love when you have finally stopped measuring, quantifying, gatekeeping and captaining it…because you will finally see that true love is a gift, unconditional in its giving or receiving. After many, many years of gifts, physical or heartfelt, you will finally remove the tape you measured it by, the weights you quantified it with, the toll your heart paid at its gate, and the flow your mind staggered with in its rapids so that after having endured such a bewildering journey you will finally see that you have only allowed that restricted flow because you could not love freely simply because you cannot love you.
Your life has taught you that you weren’t lovable because of those things you were taught by those you loved and looked up to, how could they be wrong. But they were, only because they too had not seen that their rivers were also blocked by all those things taught from those they loved and looked up to also.
We need to learn and experience it all so that slowly we will understand that no appreciation can be met until we feel and understand its many opposites, comprehend it is only our own hearts that measure this world and blocks it by that very same measuring tape. See everything you measure, especially within you, and understand we cannot do anything but by what we know. How can you build love if you’ve only learnt hate. How can you give a hug if it has never been given to you.
Dare to break your heart free, dare to throw its measuring tape that is fear, away. All it takes is that one urge to go beyond what has held you. You don’t have to do it all at once, that is what life is for, to give you time to become that unconditional within you. Grab a friend, partner, cute child and just dare to do something. Even if to just talk, it too has great loving power. Even a child speaks to us without a word being said.
So, what is love? It is all we do…everything all comes from it, to it, and beyond. Eternity has very big, loving arms. Ask God, He will tell you all about it in each breath you take ❤️ 🙏🏽 🦋
So inspiring ❤️🙏
Thank you Ananda, it is a journey for us all. It may be difficult but that very path is a healing in itself, and in hindsight it can be seen exactly for what it is. Any that are asked ‘would they do it again’ is always a resounding yes 😀 ❤️ 🙏🏽 🦋
I love the metaphor of fear as measuring tape! Really resonated 🙂 .
It is a measuring tape indeed Kristine, we hold it against everything we do. Don’t get me wrong it has great purpose in showing us those conditions we hold on one side of us so that we can test it, measure it against what we know, and find and know that unconditional love waiting on the other side. The fear holds us in all those negative states of unhappiness, anger and pain and as we see those things we don’t want to be there because among those states we touch the happiness, love and freedom and know where we would rather be…so the search begins until we realise it is only us holding it there from what we are unintentionally taught, those actions we think are normal but cause us so much pain and hurt are all that are holding us back. May your normal be…well, built on that love dear lady 😀 ❤️ 🙏🏽 🦋 😂 🤣
Mark, every time I read a post from. you, you touch my heart in ways that deeply affect me. This post was no exception. Thank you for being you, for making life and love easier to navigate, to understand and to grow! 💕
Thank you Yvonne, it is a gift of understanding for us all. I can do no other than pass on a beauty that was given me and share something that can change us forever. I was a bit worried in the beginning because I thought I wasn’t allowing others to appreciate and find themselves in this journey but Spirit assured me it would only ever be understood and appreciated by those who are ready to stand in a particucular truth within themselves. Many won’t understand because it may not even be their journey for a particular topic I may share. Plus there are many times that I am blocked, I’ll go to write something or say something and I find I can’t go there or need to express it differently. But I know that they always come through with a love like no other, a guidepost to a path, a very lovely one. I hope it always gives you what it is made of my friend xo 😀 ❤️ 🙏🏽 🦋
xo 💗🙏💕🦋 xo
So powerful Mark 💕🙏💕 The journey from conditional to unconditional love is life. We are love.
Most certainly dear lady, it just requires a bit of polishing on the way through 😀 ❤️ 🙏🏽 🦋
Polishing and buffing 😎
Go for it Val, may it keep your heart purring 😀 ❤️ 🙏🏽 🦋
Beautiful Mark. Sometimes we have to learn not to hold back and measure our feelings and reactions to others that we love. We should love as if we were a child that knows nothing but love and can give and receive unconditionally, which is the purest of loves. xo
Our journey will finally reach that place inside us Michele, it just takes a little while to appreciate what we have down deep. When we work at something we will appreciate it more than if we were just given it. Like our first home or car. And we look after it so much more because of that. Mind you, I think I’ve done a few wild donuts in the gravel a few times in my youth…to my heart too 😀 ❤️ 🙏🏽 🦋 😂 🤣
Beautifully expressed, Mark! To love and be loved is great medicine for what ails us.The last couple years have been really tough on most people. The news can be so depressing and dispiriting.In the years I’ve known you from blogland, your message has always been to mend, uplift and heal. 🙏❤️🙏
It has been a testing time dear lady, pushing those boundaries we make a little further than normal to make us ask within where we are. Many bits will be pushed and ask us to change in many ways and become something more. And I most certainly stand in my heart space dear lady, regardless of the world. It is too beautiful in my understanding not too.
But having said that an interesting thing happened recently with Spirit…I was given an image of the abandoned Peruvian city of Machu Picchu and ‘felt’ that all these abandoned cities that we find around the world buried in jungles etc, were once thriving but disease wiped the populations out. Otherwise the city would go on changing as time goes on. But only disease stops that evolvement because like any city we have now it is continually pulled down and replaced, constantly evolving. But a disease loses those parts of information that many people have and won’t allow it to progress further and they go back into basic farming etc. If it was war the winners take over and keep using those spoils and life goes on.
I wonder what people will think of us in a thousand years and find our cities and try to decipher us. And no, that’s not a prophecy (I hope), merely a warning I think ❤️ 🙏🏽 🦋
Mark, this has left me speechless. I never thought about it but it is so true. We differ and judge by the way WE look at the person who gives something to us (whatever it is). It can mean so much from one person, and we even push it away when it comes from another person. This is such an amazing insight. However we interpret, why the person gives this or that to us defines us and not the gift of the person. As you stated so well, the love we receive will be interpreted too by the way we let love flow (or not at all). Your example is fantasic and the insight of it makes even more aware that we experience everything from the way we look at it. This is so profound, I am blown away!
Thank you Erika, it is something that we spend much time ‘blaming’ the other in all our love, not realising it is just how we are taught to love. The difficult part, but very much needed, is that ‘seeing’ where it comes from and understanding we need the rectification, not the ‘others’ in our life. Yes, we can change, and sometimes drastically which is good in its understanding…but…someone can still come up to you and abuse you profusely. But the difference is in how you reply. Where before you would probably (but not always), go toe to toe back at them…but after seeing your own heart you will ‘see’ you in them, where you were before your awakening and so therefore now have compassion and treat them differently. The only option after giving that compassion and empathy (which you are now giving yourself after discovering who you really are underneath it all), is to walk away. That very subtle law of attraction will always bring into our lives the exact thing required for both parties. I wish I could show you that in particular as it blew my mind to see truly how our interactions are perfect for you, me, the baker up the road and even your cat. I was absolutely gobsmacked that such profound numbers of us all together will touch ‘everything’ as it should to guide us. It just can’t be put into words…but that is love, we can’t truly put words to it because it is just ‘everything’ we see, touch, feel and understand. May yours glow as it should kind lady, you share it well 😀 ❤️ 🙏🏽 🦋
Yes, absolutely, Mark. Like attracts like. If we don’t like what we attract, we need to ask ourselves what we need to change to attract what we want to attract. It all begins within. Always! Again, you conveyed this brilliantly🙏💖😊
As you just have kind lady, thank you 😀 ❤️ 🙏🏽 🦋
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“But you will only ever fully appreciate that love when you have finally stopped measuring, quantifying, gatekeeping and captaining it…because you will finally see that true love is a gift, unconditional in its giving or receiving.”…My dear friend, Mark…this says it all. What a beautiful and heartful post. You really know love! I’m blessed to know you. Karla 🤍🙏🌈🎵
I had to hit my head many, many times to understand what I have, and trust me there is much, much more to ‘feel’. Each time I think I have witnessed it all I get sat on my backside…again. In fact, the hardest ones seem to be now, just when I’m getting to that age of putting my feet up and enjoying a ripe old age. Lol…but in hindsight I wouldn’t understand unless I had experienced all else. Thank you for sharing your journey too dear lady, it gifts us also to feel and be a part of it in your posts. I hope your current wander is alive and experiencing it with those ‘feelings’ within 😀 ❤️ 🙏🏽 🦋
Thank you for your beautiful wisdom. I’ve had many hits on the head~and a few more. I understand what you mean! I’m thankful for the experiences; I’ve learned to see them as learning tools to help me find real love. I appreciate you so much! ❤️🙏🏻🦋🍃
And I appreciate you also dear lady, your smile precedes you 😀 ❤️ 🙏🏽 🦋
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Thank you, Mark! ❤💚😊
What a terrific reminder !!! The older I grow, the more I wonder if learning how to give and receive/accept love is indeed the primary reason why we are alive here on planet earth… Thank. you!!!
It is the only thing we take back with us kind sir, all else turns to dust. Oh, except our fellow souls wandering back from this beautiful holiday destination called Earth 😀
And everything we do is about us, be it just sitting in the sun or that tester of souls…falling in love…with everything. Everything we do samples how we ‘feel’ about it…clean our teeth, housework, digging a hole, talking to our pets, falling in love, and the only thing it touches is that barometer we call our feelings, which when we look deeper it is in a constant adjustment to that ability to find that one thing we always look for, that love and happiness in our journey. Who doesn’t want to be in that place within, and we only ever find it by experiencing it all and slowly (sometimes quickly), tuning those feelings to its destination, to its truth of what it becomes on experiencing it all. Thank you for sharing 😀 ❤️ 🙏🏽 🦋
Beautifully said Mark.Beautifully said Mark.
Thank you Pam, here’s hoping that our forest trails go on forever, discovering more of that beauty within us all 😀 ❤️ 🙏🏽 🦋
Good morning mark, what a beautiful story to wake up too! A story about love, and discovering it for ourself through our life experience. You must be quite chuffed to see you have indeed discovered it all and be able to write about the magic of love and share with us all❤️ Thankyou mark… much love Barbara x
Thank you Barbara, I just share that journey that has taken me somewhere beautiful. How can I not, it was given with such love that I could not keep it locked within, it has no boundary and wishes to be in its natural state. And I am still learning, I don’t think this journey ever ends. It’s like a walk in a forest…around each bend in the pathway is always something new to discover…as above, so below. And thank you also for sharing your love, it too is one of those places on that pathway. Love and light to you also kind lady xo 😀 ❤️ 🙏🏽 🦋