What is the nature of love and how to define it?

The Nature of Love

By Ann Albers

Message from the Angels – There is a mistaken notion upon your planet, that love hurts. Love never hurts dear ones! Love heals! Love transforms! Love uplifts! Love makes you feel like the most beautiful, amazing, being that you can be! Love connects you with your very essence.

Why then, is it so hard to love upon your planet earth, and why do so many of you feel you must hurt in the name of love?

We hear this question all the time and the answer is rooted in a deep misunderstanding about the nature of love.

Humanity believes love is something you “do,” and while we celebrate expressions of love, we know Love is a state of being.

Humanity teaches you that love is something you “earn” and yet we know that Love is already there for you, living within you, in every moment of every day. It is the very essence of creation, available for all of you without condition. You are all worthy of love.

Humanity believes that love is something that requires reciprocation, yet here in the Heavens, we love unabashedly whether we are loved in return or not. We know Love is the energy that lives and breathes within us and needs nothing in return. Love is our nature. Love is your nature. Loving feels good. Withholding love hurts.

Love is the state of being in which the Light within you sees and acknowledges the light within another. 

So how do you apply this upon your earth, dear friends? We know, that beneath any hurt and pain, you truly desire to love! You truly wish to experience your own light and your own innate goodness. In your deepest truth, you want to see and appreciate the light and goodness within others.

However, you also want to feel good, and if you do not work to love yourself and grant yourself a life that supports your joy, you will look to the outside world for love and you will “fall” in love with anyone or anything that makes you feel good.

Now, there is nothing wrong with this. It is human and it is still a form of love. Nonetheless, whenever you worship false idols, whenever you give your power to be happy to another person or thing, you also grant them the power to take it from you. You love them when they make you feel good and you stop loving them, or worse, hate them when they can no longer do so. This, dear ones, is what human beings call love, but is, in reality, a small projection of the true, deep, and abiding love that is available to you all, right here, right now, in all of creation.

Take a breath. Ask yourself, “Do I love me exactly as I am right now, or do I tell myself I must earn my own love… by being prettier, more handsome, smarter, kinder, wiser, etc.?” Take a breath and accept yourself and your answer with compassion and without condition. You have just begun the journey to Self-love.

Ask yourself, “Do I treat myself the way I would if I were with a lover who adored me? Do I care for myself, maintain my life, and seek to be joyous, interesting, happy, as I would if I had someone to impress? Am I maintaining myself as if I am a person who is loved and adored?”

“Am I taking time to connect to whatever I consider being a higher, more loving force in the Universe?” “Do I ask my angels for help frequently and sit in the reception of their love?”

“Do I take time to listen to my own heart and care for its longings,” the way I would hope a lover would listen to me? “Do I nurture my dreams,” the way I would want someone else to do? Am I giving myself the Love that I seek, or am I waiting for someone else to do that for me?

These questions apply whether or not you are in a relationship. These questions will show you the areas in your life in which you can choose to love yourself more deeply, and therefore where you will free yourself from the bondage of expecting others to provide for you, what you will not. There is an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent Creator that wants to help you. There is a Love so vast and all-encompassing that you could never possibly be alone. Angels wait “in the wings” to assist you.

Rather than waiting for another to love you as you wish, whether it be the fantasy “love of your life,” or your spouse sitting in the other room, make a decision right here and right now, that you will treat yourself as if you are the love of your life. Rather than waiting for life, or others to behave as you wish, find the good in the here and now. Challenge yourself to love yourself and life exactly as it is, and then from that present moment of acceptance, challenge yourself to make the next moment better.

Then, from this fullness of Love within yourself, truly loving another becomes possible. Then you can accept others exactly as they are.

If you learn to cultivate your own joy and your own well-being, then you can accept the gifts of others when they are offered, but you can also bring love from your depths when others cannot. You will no longer need to feel a lack of love because you have connected yourself to the eternal, endless Source of Love itself.

This Love is a true, deep, and real state of being in which you allow yourself and everyone else to be exactly as they are and simply decide if you want to “dance” or not.

Love dear ones, does not hurt. Love accepts. Love trusts. Love heals and transforms. Love is who and what you are made of… and no one has the power to take this from you. Love yourselves. Fill up your cup… then you will be able to truly love.

We love you always, without condition or expectation. We experience our eternal abiding connection to the Source of Love itself and so whether you love us or hate us, we love you… simply because we know that is our nature, and that kind of love is what feels good at all times.                             

Message from Ann – I’ll never forget a time in my thirties when I was sobbing, talking to my angels. “I love him! I love so much I hurt…” sniff, sniff. “That’s not love!” The angels were very firm with me. I got offended. “What do you mean?” I protested. That’s not love, they said. That’s longing. Love feels beautiful. They were right. I was crying that I loved someone when in reality, I was pining away for this person to love me back. The angels told me to stay away from this person completely and work on myself instead. It was tough love on their part, but it was love. They saw the light within me and didn’t want me to torture myself looking for a cheap substitute in another who couldn’t offer it.

And thus began my exploration into self-love, which is an exploration into the true, beautiful connection that we have with the Divine as it lives and breathes within us. Now, finally, a few decades later I truly know how to love. It doesn’t hurt. It feels amazing.

Earlier this year I felt compelled to comment on a string of nasty comments under a YouTube video. I gently but firmly reminded others that all that matters is being loving and kind, more so than being right. A rather angry gentleman responded to my comment by saying, “Shut up you stupid $!*!!” I won’t repeat the word. It was too vulgar. I felt only compassion for this man. Only a hurting soul could make such a childish and wounded attack. I wrote back, “Thank you and God bless you.” I meant it. I didn’t accept his pain into my soul. I sent love. “Thank you for showing me you need love. Bless you.” He didn’t know what to do. It changed his energy. I felt it. He wrote back more kindly and even with a bit of humour.

The more I enter the mystical realities, the less I want to do anything other than let love flow through my being. It hurts to withhold love. It hurts to expect or long for others to love me back if they don’t. It feels amazing to create love in my everyday life for myself and for others. It feels amazing to simply accept life as it is, and accept myself as I am too. Decisions become easy in this uncomplicated reality. I fill my own cup by doing simple things I enjoy every day. I share when I feel full because it feels good. I hold my head up high whether others like me or not. As Rachael Ray, the famous cook once said when an interviewer asked her what she thought about a “hate site” dedicated to bashing her, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.” The less attached we are to others’ opinions of us, and the more true to our own heart we strive to be, the happier we become.

I no longer absorb or feel the need to change or even stay around unloving behaviours. I can love someone without liking their behaviour. I can love someone with whom I want no more interaction. I am loving the light within them, respecting their right to act as they do, while also respecting my desire to spend personal time only with those that uplift my soul. It is a balancing act. It took many years working with angels before they convinced me that honouring my own heart could be loving even if meant someone else might not like my choices. I took a while to truly believe that when we love ourselves and honour ourselves, everyone grows. We serve souls, not egos.

Love doesn’t hurt, but it does expose the unloving behaviours in ourselves and others. These are the ones that do hurt. 

Even when people cannot love me the way I wish, or don’t act as I would like, this light that I have worked to find within myself, rises up and helps me sees their innocence and their need to listen to their own hearts. This light celebrates growth and expansion. This light comforts me even when I don’t get my way.

Mother Theresa is quoted as saying, “I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.” Our challenge in life is to grow through the less evolved forms of human love, longing, expectation, etc., into a deeper form of love – one that wants only to honour the light within ourselves and others. This love truly does elevate our spirit. This love feels as if we are running pure water through our souls. This love makes us feel like our best self, it fills us with joy, and it needs nothing in return. In the words of Thomas Merton, this love “is its own reward.”

©Ann Albers, www.visionsofheaven.com