Can I choose love instead of fear?
There is more love around. I can feel it. Or is there more love in myself?
Love and joy have no upper limit. You can carry only a certain amount of hatred, sadness and grief inside you, because at some point they will all change into love. This will happen either during this life or the next one. Universal love is infinite freedom. It is freedom to choose and to learn from one’s own choices.
You are never alone. You are always accompanied by love which manifests itself in different energies and forms of life. What you feel and perceive is different from what reality is. Your feelings and perceptions are but partial truths. The more you manifest love, the more you will feel and perceive yourself to be part of a whole, which is a good deal greater than the world you are living in.
There is much more love in the world than what is usually thought. People would be able to live in a much greater love for themselves, each other, nature and the whole planet if the distorted structures in our societies all over the world did not limit and suppress the expression of love.
Someone says that we are living in a loveless world. I say that we are living in abundant love. It is a different thing than whether we are able to discover and recognize the abundant love in ourselves. We are living in a world of illusions. The value system around us may rather be more destructive than loving. We are being sold self-esteem without love. Our yearning for love is appealed through our self-esteem.
Commercials and advertisements make us feel unhappy unless we acquire this and that. Those that we call charity organizations may say, ”Buy yourself a good feeling, donate for charity.” Love has been turned into merchandise. Yet love is free of cost. We can show love and radiate love around us all the time, and totally free of charge. If you saw the impact of love energies, you would understand their power. The spirit is stronger than matter.
Joy is free.
Joy is love.
Joy is in your attitude.
The more you feed joy and love, the more you will be them. This must happen unselfishly, without compulsion or artificiality. The world is full of pretension, smiles and promises which are not real. The world is also full of honesty, smiles and being which are real. You must recognize them in you and in others. You must recognize yourself. Do you know yourself? Many think that they recognize themselves, their expectations and needs although they only recognize the needs and expectations that the environment has
created for them.
Can you distinguish real love from market values? You can if you only want to. Can you distinguish between desire and love? For love is much more of the attitude “how I love” rather than “how I am loved.” The need to be loved has prevailed for too long over expression of real love in humanity. All kinds of means for being loved have been and are being used. People do things, buy products, and choose attitudes in order to be loved.
In the course of history many distorted attitudes have become generally accepted laws and patterns of behavior. The world is so full of these norms restricting love and freedom, rites and attitudes that an individual who expresses love may seem as unfit for the society…because love and freedom are one.
When we express love, we are free. There is no wrong in love. Real freedom is absolute love. The notion of freedom as well as that of love is distorted in our world. There are attempts to buy and attain both of them in ways that are nothing but delusion when compared with real love and freedom. In the most extreme case, nations think that they can buy freedom by reinforcing their armed forces. In doing so, are they imagining that they are buying love, too? For freedom is love. Freedom attained through life-destroying methods is dependency and fear. Fear is a challenge for reaching real love. Love has no fear. How could love have fear because love is eternal, infinite power and wisdom? Infinite love, infinite wisdom, and infinite power are in you. So why would you be afraid?
Fear is not in you. It is in the societal, social and economic structures. Fear is energy which maintains these structures. These structures are so distorted that they are sustained by life-destroying energies. They are antiquated energies which are having their death struggle, when at the same time life-constructing energies of love are manifesting themselves ever more widely.
(Timo Teide is an artist, author, and spiritual guide who lives in Finland. He has had dozens of art exhibitions and he has done meditative music and books about love. The healing power of art and the multidimensional impact of colors, forms and sounds are the most important elements of his art. Visit: www.teidegallery.com. Contact Timo: timo.teide@gmail.com.)