What exactly IS love, anyhow? Well, that’s the bazillion dollar question, isn’t it? Let’s not burn out too many brain cells unnecessarily trying to define it, for, as A Course in Miracles says about teaching the meaning of love,

“…That is beyond what can be taught. It (the Course) does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of loves presence, which is your natural inheritance.”

So let’s take the advice of that Best Life Coach Ever, the Voice for God as author of A Course in Miracles, and see what we can do about those things that are blocking our experience of love.

Whether it is self-love, love for another, or love of our Source – it’s all the same. Love is love.

Our relationships in the world all appear to fall into one of these three areas, and they seem like they are separate. However, if we are having difficulty in one area, we will have difficulty with all of them. This relational trinity is holographic and thus wholly integrated – there is no way that the elements cannot be interconnected.

The rich, chocolatey, yummy, delicious, sweet truth about that is that as we awaken to the Truth of who we really are, and see with the eyes of love rather than fear – all of those relationships are transformed simultaneously.

Why? Why are these relationships inter-related, and how? Why can’t I just fix my person? Isn’t it loving to help them to see where they need to grow or improve, or what they need to work on, so that they can change and then we can all be happier?

Believe me, as a coach and therapist, if I had that recipe I would have not only mainlined it myself and changed everyone I’ve ever been married to, involved with, or worked for – but I’d also have bottled and sold it and be writing this from my castle located on the private tropical island of IGotFilthyRichChangingEveryoneButMyself.

My ego mind would like me to believe that that is not only possible, and that I should keep busting my ass to make it happen, but also that it would make me ecstatically happy and blissed-out.

But imposing our will on others is like the opposite of the definition of love. I think the word for it is worth a few more Scrabble points and is spelled something like C-O-N-T-R-O-L. It is our ego-mind’s idea of love. But real love has no agenda. Love wants joy and happiness for others as well as one’s self, seeing them as one and the same, and knowing that both are simply a representation of the love of God, with no separation between them.

Real love has no agenda. Click To Tweet

So here’s the thing – ALL of the issues we think we have – whether with other people, ourselves, or the God of our understanding – are all the result of a story we have been telling ourselves forever.

A Course in Miracles teaches that there are only two thought systems – one of love – which sees the world through eyes of trust, gratitude, generosity, compassion, forgiveness, acceptance, and grace; or one of fear – which sees guilt, resentment, scarcity, anxiety, conflict, depression, anger and blame.

Whichever thought system you identify with will be the one that will be the boss of your experience in the world, and the author of your story. So if there are any chapters where you are seeing yourself as the victim and not the hero, I invite you to empower yourself and use this coaching session to write a revision. You change your life by changing the story you are telling about it.

So, my love-sibs, my Valentine for you today is a virtual coaching session inviting you to co-author – with Spirit – the new edition of your life story, in which you are the hero, rather than the victim. The exercise is a downloadable PDF which will guide you through the process that I did to revise a story I told myself for years. I had amazing results, and I trust you will too.

For illustration purposes, what follows is an example from my own life that you can use that as a kind of template.

The issue I chose to work on was scarcity and lack around money – not really the acquiring of it, but the keeping of it, the care and feeding and general wise-adult management of it. Like, as soon as I got it I would be in this hamster wheel of insanity of not being able to really enjoy it because I was busy finding ways to get it out of my life as fast as possible. Whether it was by paying large sums in overdue bills or completely unconscious spending, or a cocktail of the two, it would be followed by a chaser of not planning for future responsibilities and leaving myself short and winding up with no money again.

Until recently it was a chronic cycle. My relationship with money has been a life-long conflicted one. Had it been with an actual person, I’m guessing they would have broken up with me a long time ago after tiring of my  “I want you, I love you, I can’t get enough of you, I want as much of you as I can have, I want to do everything with you, be with me forever, I’m getting rid of you, I can’t have you lying around all the time doing nothing, too much of you makes me anxious, you have to go, it’s not you, it’s me, get out, don’t leave me, I need you, I can’t live without you, please come back, I have to have you, I’ll die without you…” rinse and repeat crazy.

When I thought back to what beliefs I was harboring that could be related to this feeling of fear and scarcity around money, I realized that I had always felt that I could not really be completely financially independent, that I was needy, and had to rely on someone else to take care of me, provide for me, help me, support me, rescue me.

In thinking about why I believed that, I had a flash of memory that from the time I was a very young child, my mother would tell me that when she was planning to have me, she had asked God to “send me the soul that needs me the most.”

I had a total epiphany as I realized the way that I had interpreted that was:

“I am needy. I needed my mother THE MOST – more than all of the other souls did. If I need her that much I must not be able to be without her, or survive without her, or succeed without her, or make my way in the world without her. My mother wanted the soul that needed her the most, so that must mean that she wants me to need her. So if I become independent, if I thrive, and achieve, I won’t need her anymore. If I don’t need her, I won’t be me anymore. Maybe she won’t love me. Too scary to think about. I’ll stay dependent.”

So that was the false belief I formed.

The way I then unconsciously played out my neediness/dependency/scarcity scenario was by keeping myself a child in the area of finances. My whole entire life. Managing money poorly, never having enough of it, or having it and blowing it, not having savings, never having a decent credit rating, always being in debt, never owning a home, not having a retirement plan… blah blah f*cking blah.

When I began to really explore the truth of that story, that whole set of beliefs that arose from ONE THING my mother told me she had prayed to God for with regard to me, when I really looked at it with Spirit, I realized that it had been a completely fictional story all along – a total myth, made up in my mind when I was a child and gathering strength and reinforcing itself with what that energetic force-field attracted throughout my whole life.

So that is how I allowed one crazy-ass false belief to tell me a fake story for, like, half a century.

And here is how I, with Spirit as my Coach and literal Wing-man, became the hero, rather than the victim, of that story.

It came to me that in becoming a psychotherapist and coach and spiritual teacher, I have been directed toward being a healing vessel. My mother was a powerful spiritual teacher and healer. She was a nurse her entire adult life, but she was also a metaphysical seeker almost that entire time. She was a member of theosophical societies in the 1950s and a student of New Thought in the 60’s and beyond.

Growing up, I learned from her about such concepts as the power of positive thinking, visualization, reincarnation and the soul’s journey. She taught me that Jesus was a teacher and ascended master, and that we all had the same capabilities within us to do the works that he did.

I was attending a Unity church by age 9. I learned about consciousness and meditation and energy and intention and manifestation. My mother was a practitioner of biofeedback, and a teacher of hypnosis, and hosted ESP groups and Reiki sessions in our family living room. Our bookshelves were filled with such works as the spiritual healings of Edgar Cayce, Jane Roberts and the Seth material, and Charles and Myrtle Fillmore. I’m sure that had she lived in the world longer, A Course in Miracles would have found its way there too.

I say all of this because in doing this reexamination of an erroneous underlying belief I carried my entire life, I finally came to the realization that my ego mind had completely misinterpreted her statement.

My mother asked for the soul that needed her the most. It was me, but it wasn’t because I was needy or destined to be dependent on her or anyone else my whole life. It was because she was the perfect first spiritual teacher and mentor to open my mind, and help prepare me to do what I came here to do.

It was my mother who taught me to listen to the Voice within as my guides, my guardian angels, Jesus, ascended masters, and those in physical form through whom we hear guidance. She was constantly saying,

“Show me the way.”

She taught me that life is eternal and love is forever, and I have known for years that one of the voices that Spirit takes in my mind is hers.

My mom set me on the path to where I am now before I even went to kindergarten, and continued to do it until she made her transition when I was 24. Her final lessons to me were those of forgiveness and unconditional love, and what better pre-requisite to A Course in Miracles is there than that?

I offer a prayer of immense gratitude that I was shown the way to a new interpretation of this chapter of my story. In doing so, I was free to let go of my old story of lack and scarcity, and as a result I have seen immense healing and change in this area of my life.

I now see abundance everywhere. I am not yet the financial wizard I intend to embody someday (is anyone shocked to learn that my biggest challenge in school was math – and… duh… story problems?)  but I’m working on it from a place of strength, with Spirit guiding me, rather than the weakness of the ego. I am more financially responsible and conscious than I was, and the shame I felt around money and credit has largely been transformed by my revised story. To me, this has been nothing short of a miracle.

Please click here to download the PDF for your Become the Hero of Your Story Instead of the Victim virtual coaching session.

I trust that you have received the Valentine that Spirit sends through these words to you.

Own your truth – that any story in which you believe you have been victimized is only so because of the meaning that you have made of it, which arises from fear. When you shift your perception to love, miracles are always the result.

Thank you so much for being my spiritual Valentine, and for rocking the courage, and honesty, and willingness to rewrite your own story with love.

If the exercise resonated with you, I’d love to hear about your experience – please leave me a comment below. I love them, and I read every one.

If you want to give your friends a wonderful Valentine’s Day gift, click here to share this on Facebook.

If you are seeking to more deeply explore concepts like the one I have talked about today, please check out the wonderful programs available at the Teachers of God Foundation and the resources in the Transformation Room.

I love you more than mountains of chocolate and fields of red roses and rivers of champagne.

Rev. Kelly