“All men and women are connected by an energy which many people call love, but which is, in fact, the raw material from which the universe was built. The energy cannot be manipulated, it leads us gently forward, it contains all we have to learn in this life. If we try to make it go in the direction we want, we end up frustrated, disillusioned, because that energy is free and wild.” ~ Paulo Coelho

Universal Directions (Photo by Maggie Begley)

Sometimes, there’s a signpost right before our eyes, if we choose to heed it. This one says to me, “Yield to Love, give it the right-of-way, and keep heading in THAT direction!”

Every day I am presented with a choice. Do I choose the way of Fear, or the way of Love? To name a few, Fear’s byproducts are: Negativity, Misery, Judgement, Anger, Guilt, and Anxiety; while Love’s byproducts are: Positivity, Hope, Acceptance, Joy, Freedom, and Serenity. Fear is invested in expectation and outcome; Love is not. That’s the energetic polarity of Lower Mind vs. Higher Mind.  Here is an old tale which demonstrates this not-so-new concept:

An old Cherokee told his grandson, “My son, there is a battle between to wolves inside us all.  One is Evil.  It is anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies and ego.  The other is Good.  It is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy and truth.  The boy thought about it and asked his grandfather, “Which wolf wins?”.  The old Cherokee quietly replied, “The one you feed”.

The path of self-help, and self-love, is an interdependent enterprise which begins and ends with me. And by “begins and ends with me”, I mean taking adult responsibility for my own choices and reactions to situations, people and things, even when I get graffiti-ed on. 🙂 Fortunately, since Universal Love has no beginning and no end, I might as well start tapping into that ever-present Energy Source right here and now, and never forget that it never ceases…to be an option. 🙂

“Faith came singing into my room, and other guests took flight: Fear, Anxiety, Grief and Gloom sped out into the night. I wonder that such peace could be. But Faith said gently, ‘Don’t you see? They really could not live with me’.”