Humans have been struggling with this thing we call love for eons of time, with broken hearts littering the very ground we walk upon. Some people simply walk away without looking back continuing a heartless life. Others stop, pick them up and attempt yet again to heal it before jumping back into the love arena because it’s so addictive. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it. So what’s a girl supposed to do?

Well this girl set out on a mission to dissect this thing we call love to get to the crux of this merry-go-round that continues to run out of steam as the music slows to an agonizing stop. I tried on a multitude of different love hats. There’s the religious hat, parental hat, the sibling hat, the friend hat and the most addictive one of all, the romantic hat. What did I discover after all that exploration? 

I realized that each of those hats were designed by someone other than me and none of them fit me. They all came with scripts and programs written by our parents, religion, friends, neighbors and the media. Each time I donned one of those hats I reacted from the wounded place within me adding to the script until it became so convoluted it was too heavy laden to wear anymore. I experienced all forms of crazy love, the kind of love that requires you to love me before I can love you. After your heart’s been broken once, twice, three times. . . who wants to risk it all again.

I do!!! I do!!!! Crazy me!

Thus I took all those hats and tossed them out. Where did that leave me?

It left me with a bare naked head. There was nothing to hold all those crazy words rattling around in my head anymore. I was fully exposed without any protection. Ha!! That my friends held the answer I’d been looking for.

Once you have the courage to stand naked without any protection, it allows your heart to fully open and the walls come tumbling down. You see, it’s constantly scaling those walls that inflicts all the scraps and bruises upon your heart. And we’ve been scaling the walls of the heart for eons of time. We’ve been scaling our own walls from the inside out trying to escape the pain. . . and we’ve been attempting to scale other people’s walls to enter their heart space. No wonder we’re so beat up, afraid to go the full distance to dive into the depth of of love. Not so afraid that we will no longer dabble in love. We’re just too afraid to make a commitment to love.    

When I finally decided that I wanted to love and be loved more than anything else, I made a total commitment to love. I surrendered to love. Yup that’s what it took, an absolute surrender.     

What I finally discovered is Divine Love. I invite you to pause here, take a deep breath and breathe it in with me. . . pure Divine Love. That felt so good, let’s do it again, and again. That my beloveds is the very air we breath all the time. We’ve just forgotten to let it in.

So what is Divine Love?

Divine Love is what some might call unconditional. But even that word creates a stumbling block because we’ve only ever known conditional love. Divine Love is what your GodSelf feels for you. Much like the first time you lay eyes on your precious child. In that moment you are experiencing Divine Love. A Love that is pure and untainted.

Divine Love doesn’t have expectations, hold grudges, attempt to fix or control other people. Divine Love is judgment free because your GodSelf understands that EVERYTHING is happening in your life to open your heart more fully to more Love. And it’s an ongoing process, continually learning, experiencing and expressing more Love. How awesome is that!!! Who doesn’t want more Love!

So, how do you get there?

By loving your self, your scraped and wounded self, moment by moment, just like you would a precious child that’s calling out for your love. You see, it’s not the other person that’s hurting you. You are hurting yourself every time you judge yourself or another because your heart aches every time you do. It’s not in your place to change another person for each is on their own journey and that needs to be honored. It’s your job to love your self. And when you do, Divine Love will begin to trickle through the cracks in your heart to erode the walls from the inside out, until one day the dam will break and Love will flow freely. Once that happens there is no turning back because your soul will not allow it.

Now that you know what it is and you’re learning to fully breathe again, it’s time to practice Divine Love in your daily life. Love is ever flowing. You can ignore it for awhile but before long it will envelop you. It will flow through your veins like an elixir and you won’t want to ignore it anymore. Meanwhile some of the old programs and habits are floating around like debris in a murky pond. If you continue surrendering to Love, grace will effortlessly heal and dissolve them for you without having to dissect or process them.

Here’s where it gets tricky. Not everyone is living in the flow of Divine Love and there are still arrows flying around out there in the world. What to do? Dodge them as best you can without engaging. The only reason you recognize them is because they are triggering something inside of you that has not yet been fully loved by you. It’s what some call pushing our buttons. When a button is pushed, it’s our button, not anyone else’s. It can only be inactivated by taking responsibility for loving our selves, rather than reacting to the personal pain someone else is hurling at us. When we can see their pain for what it is, their lack of love, then our love and compassion can flow more freely than ever before.

Once we’ve experienced Divine Love, we’re no longer insecure about love because we’re not dependent upon anyone else for love. We realize we’ve got more than enough Love for all of us, effortlessly sharing it with everyone because it becomes who we are, not what we do.

So I’m back on the merry-go-round again. This time it’s the carousel of Divine Love where the music never stops. Each act of Love that I experience adds more harmony to the orchestration. The stallion I’m riding goes up and down, up and down. It never stops. My heart is here to love and I just keep Loving. And that my friends is the end of crazy love. Instead we are crazy in Love, Divine Love.

~Sharon Lyn Shepard~
“message from my inner wisdom”