Love as a Spiritual Practice
The prosperity teacher Catherine Ponder defines forgiveness as giving-forth. My favorite definition for me, of forgiveness, then, is “being a place for Grace to show up or giving forth Grace/Love regardless of a situation.”
T.D. Jakes gives a great talk on capacity in an Oprah Lifeclass. Jake says “There are people amongst us who are volumous. We are ten gallon people. But we may have been born into families of people who have pint capacities. And when you are a ten gallon person and you want love, you want it on a ten gallon level. But if you fool around and hook up with a pint person, they could be giving you all that they have, sincerely giving you everything but it doesn’t fill you up because you’re bigger than that. You operate on such a higher level you say, ‘is that it? Is that all you are going to give me?’ But you must realize for some people that’s all that they got.”
I remember sitting in my practitioner’s office and waking up to how stingy I had been with my love. I had so wanted someone else to demonstrate and give forth love to me when they didn’t have the capacity to do so. I wanted so desperately to feel loved by this individual that I boycotted love to them when I had it to give. I was withholding what I could give when they weren’t withholding anything. They didn’t have the capacity. At that moment I felt cheap. I realized that by my unwillingness to love, I was preventing love from getting all over me. By loving, I would turn on the faucet allowing a flow of love that by its very nature, had to have spillage. Yet, my stinginess was in the withhold mold so there was no love coming forth. I confessed this to my practitioner and decided at that moment I would love.
When I heard TD Jakes speak to capacity, I stood up in front of my television with a resounding audible YES. How often have I made someone wrong because they couldn’t love me the way I desired to be loved? How many people have I met whose self-perception was one of brokenness and their energy system was going to support their own wound so they couldn’t love beyond themselves? And, out of spite, how often have I withheld love? Whew. This is where forgiveness exists for me. Am I willing to love regardless? Am I willing to give out love regardless of the return or lack of return? Am I willing to simply love because that’s who I am and what I do?
It is easy to love someone who loves me. Everyone can do this. However, the Sacred Bible says to love the enemies. I took to a practice years ago of praying for my enemies, that they may have the good life. Then I realized that the concept of enemy was constructed of thoughts within my mind. I was, in essence, praying that my belief in enemy may be transmuted into my belief in love. This commitment to prayer expandee me.
