At the core of all people is love. That might be seen as a hopeful, optimistic view of human character. But the truth is that there is a power that emanates from inside all of us. And it is not just a random power either. It manifests itself in the intelligent design of the body and in the genius and inspiration that shows itself at times in the human experience. We can say that this intelligent power comes from within us, but from an intellectual standpoint we would have to acknowledge that we do not know where it comes from. So from purely a mental standpoint, the origin of this intelligent power is a mystery. Nonetheless, we are living in the current of it all the time.
Love is a name for the intelligent power within all people and within all of creation. While it shows up differently depending on the person, it is the one universal energy. If you study the human body or the cells of the body or the DNA, after accounting for some anomalies, we are all very much the same. Our forms are very much the same, and it is the same intelligent power of love that powers us all.
Recently, here in Colorado, there was a tragic shooting in a movie theater. Twelve people died and many more were wounded. There were many heroes in the midst of this tragedy. One of them is Colorado State Senator Mike Johnston. Shortly after the shootings, he wrote a message full of inspiration and insight. It included these words:
America’s awesome strength to fight is overwhelmed by its irrepressible strength to love. James Holmes took twelve lives last night. Love saved fifty-nine lives. Policemen on the scene in minutes, strangers carrying strangers, nurses and doctors activated all over the city.
But we didn’t stop there. Love saved the 700 other people who walked out of the Aurora movie theater unhurt.
But we didn’t stop there. Love saved the 5,000 who went to see Batman all over Colorado, and the 1.2 million who saw it all over the country, who walked in and out safely with their friends, arm in arm.
But we didn’t stop there. Love claimed the four million other Coloradans who went to bed peacefully last night, and who woke up this morning committed to loving each other a little deeper.
The awe of last night is not that a man full of hate can take twelve people’s lives; it is that a nation full of love can save 300 million lives every day….
There is only one power and it is love. The intelligence of love inspires service to others. It instigates creativity, joy and care. It brings life. What is clear from this tragic shooting is that while the power of love is within all people, human consciousness doesn’t necessarily receive the intelligence that comes with it. If love is the carrier wave, there is information and intelligence that rides on that carrier wave that guides us. For James Holmes, the Aurora shooter, there were clearly processes at work in his consciousness that overrode the intelligence of love. The power at work through him was the same power at work through all people and through all creation. But when a person has tuned out the information and intelligence that come with that power, it is no longer lovely. It is hellfire. When the information and intelligence that come on the carrier wave of love are received, the power of love brings life. When it is tuned out, it brings death. Of course, James Holmes is not the only person for whom that happens. All people are born into the body of humanity, for whom this is the primary issue.
Love, by its very nature, uplifts and brings life. But just as a nuclear bomb can take the universal power within all form and turn it into an inferno of destruction, human consciousness can distort the expression of love beyond all recognition.
The man who founded Emissaries of Divine Light, Lloyd Arthur Meeker, described the path of love in a most insightful way. He said that when a person begins to turn to love and be affected by love and to respond to love, they are drawn to that experience, however they name it.
As that process continues, something else comes into play. He described steps on the spiritual journey as response to love, and then attraction to love, and then union with love, and then unified radiation, meaning that at that point in a person’s experience, the name of the game is to be one with love in expression. For many people, up to that point they are somehow seeking to run away from their humanity. Maybe the shooter in Aurora had this problem. Perhaps he was in some way running away from humanity—his own, and the humanity of other people.
I suppose the ultimate of that is when someone tries to take their own life. They are on the run from their humanity. But I think people do that in small ways all the time. They are seeking to move in a different direction than their humanity, and perhaps they aspire to something spiritual or religious, however they think of it. But at some point along the spiritual journey, when we have been seeking and aspiring to do something spiritual, we have union with that reality and we find ourselves looking back the other way—looking at our humanity.
When we know love as the reality of our own expression, we are then facing our humanity. You might say we are confronting it—not fighting with it, but we are confronting our humanity. We are not running away from it. We are confronting it, embracing it, and penetrating it. We are embodying the expression of love through our humanity. That is apparently what love is doing already. If love is the energy of the universe, apparently it’s inside us and it is penetrating our every cell. That is what love is doing, and it is love that is emanating from us.
For many people on a spiritual path, they are looking in the direction of love, trying to go there, trying to be that. They may call it enlightenment, ascension, salvation or something else. But whatever they call it, if a person is wholeheartedly moving on their spiritual path, there is a point when they say, “I am that. That is who I am, and I am embodying who I am through my human experience.”
When a person comes to that place in their experience, they are in the process of penetrating their humanity. And if you are penetrating your humanity, you have the opportunity to penetrate other people’s humanity, because you are that universal intelligence and power that is already penetrating all of humanity. It is just that there is some kind of spiritual amnesia, so that most people are not conscious of what is going on. We have the opportunity to be one with the reality of love that is already within all people. If we are, then the people with us are getting double-teamed. For them, love is present from within and without.
For most people, there are elements in their humanity that are running their lives. There are negative beliefs and powerful emotions that are telling them what to pursue in their lives and what to avoid. Those elements are most often in the background of consciousness, but they are, nonetheless, overriding the intelligence that comes to us on the carrier wave of love. As Eckhart Tolle describes in his book The Power of Now, the emotional pain body is usually in a dormant state, but when the pivotal issues of life arise, it becomes active and asserts itself.
When we experience union with love and we are coming from love, we are confronting our humanity, including our emotions. I do not mean that we have got to kick ourselves in the butt, give ourselves a hard time, or shame ourselves. But we can confront ourselves in love, embracing our humanity in love. We can say, “I know how you feel. But we are going to tune in to the intelligence of love and follow that.”
This is the emotional and spiritual mastery that lets you live life as who you truly are. The truth is that we are powerful, loving beings. We’re not made to be bossed around by our emotional pain body, or by whatever pattern of belief we have adopted that substitutes for the intelligence of love. The reality of who we are easily and naturally takes ownership of the human capacity, starting with our own. Then we are in a very powerful position to inspire and assist others.
I am on a recruiting mission. Not for converts—I’m not sure what I would convert you to; not for members, although I like it when people sign up as members of Emissaries of Divine Light. I am on a recruiting mission to find people who will come into a place in themselves from which they bring the inspiration and intelligence of love to others, so that they can truly make a difference in another person’s life. I’m not interested in flash-in-the-pan spirituality. I’m not interested in weekend workshop highs, though I am in favor of inspiring, empowering workshops. I am interested in people who know who they are so deeply and so well, who express themselves so fully, that they are a force of nature in their own life and they are a force of nature with other people; that they have the ability to assist somebody to change their life and become a clear embodiment of the love within them. Let’s build a body of people around the world who have the ability to assist somebody to come into their power, to refresh their thinking and give away their old thoughts about themselves and other people, to admit that they don’t really know exactly what love is supposed to be about in their life but that they are ready to find out. Somebody who can inspire another person to give away their desperation in favor of the opportunity that they have to live in joy and pleasure, to live a fulfilled life, and to truly be who they are.