SUNDAY’S LONG READ…A NEW KIND OF LOVE
Aug 15 -- For most of us, Love is a response. We fall in love with someone because of something. It could be something almost ridiculously simple, like the way they wrinkle their nose when they laugh. But that was it. They did it once, and we were smitten. Done. Kaput. In love.

Or it could be something more complex or intensely meaningful, such as their point of view about God, or their constant kindness and evident gentleness toward others, or the way they were with YOU one day when you are not at your best. Or, perhaps even most personally impactful, you have seen yourself in them. Some part of you --- a part that you consider to be a majorly important aspect of your innermost identity --- was powerfully mirrored to you in the person of another, and that’s it. You were smitten. Done. Kaput. In love.

There’s no one reason why one person loves another, but I am guessing that for most of us it is because something “over there” lights up something “over here.” I’d like you now to consider an idea that you may have never considered before: This may be the most significant difference between you and God.

As you know (or I presume you know, with you having read a bit, or at least heard a bit, about my conversations with God), I believe that you and God are one. This is the core message, the central theme, the leitmotif of the 9-book CWG dialogue. This does not mean, however, that you and God are identical. You are a part of The Totality that is God, and The Whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

The principal difference between the Part of God that is You and God Itself is how you and God love. God does not love because of what God experiences of the Beloved. God loves because of what God experiences of Itself. That is, God’s love is not rooted in what someone ELSE is, but in what GOD is. God’s love for us is thus not dependent on anything we do or don’t do, think or don’t think, say or don’t say, are or are not.

It is the greatest tragedy that we are not taught this in our schools. We are told that God loves yes, yes…but only if and when and because we are doing what God wants. We have been taught, in short, that God loves us in the way that most humans love each other.
Let me quote something here, directly from Conversations with God, Book 1
.
“Having thus created an entire thought system about God based on human experience rather than spiritual truths, you then create an entire reality around love. It is a fear-based reality, rooted in the idea of a fearful, vengeful God. Its Sponsoring Thought is wrong, but to deny that thought would be to disrupt your whole theology. And though the new theology which would replace it would truly be your salvation, you cannot accept it, because the idea of a God Who is not to be feared, Who will not judge, and Who has no cause to punish, is simply too magnificent to be embraced within even your grandest notion of Who and What God is.

“This fear-based love reality dominates your experience of love; indeed, actually creates it. For not only do you see yourself receiving love which is conditional, you also watch yourself giving it in the same way. And even while you withhold and retreat and set your conditions, a part of you knows this is not what love really is. Still, you seem powerless to change the way you dispense it. You’ve learned the hard way, you tell yourself, and you’ll be damned if you’re going to leave yourself vulnerable again. Yet the truth is, you’ll be damned if you don’t.

“(By your own [mistaken] thoughts about love do you damn yourself never to experience it purely. So, too, do you damn yourself never to know Me as I really am.

“Until you do. For you shall not be able to deny Me forever, and the moment will come for our Reconciliation.)”

That’s the end of the excerpt, but not the end of the story. In fact, it’s just the beginning. Because we can re-write the Cultural Story of humanity. And we can do so by re-constructing our idea of who we are in relationship to God. If we accept and embrace the understanding that we are each an Individuation of Divinity, that Divinity is Pure Love and so are we, and that Pure Love needs, expects, requires, and demands nothing in return for its expression, we will create new outcomes. For ourselves, and potentially, for all those whose lives we touch. For we will have seen ourselves as Who We Really Are, and we will then experience A New Way to Love.

You are on this path right now. You are on your way to creating yourself anew, in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever you held about Who You Are. You must be, or you wouldn’t be here, reading this article. Do you imagine that coming across this message at just this moment is happenstance?

It is not.

So don’t be surprised if someday soon you hear yourself saying to your Beloved ten words that can change your, and their, life.

“I love you for the sheer joy of loving you.”