Gerrit Gielen

Introduction

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be loved and feel loved? To sense that wherever you go, wherever you are, love meant especially for you is flowing through you? It would be so powerful and joyful to know this. How might it affect your creativity? How different we would feel to be in the world and always feel loved, carried along by life itself, energized by love.

Unfortunately, that is not how it works for most of us. If you look around, you can feel the anxiety, stress, insecurity, agitation, and depression that people carry. At the same time, you can observe how little attention is given to the things that really matter.

What happened? What went wrong?

To feel loved, you have to feel connected to your fellow human beings, to nature, to the world you live in, to the source, to yourself. And we don’t. This is where things went wrong. Those connections were broken one by one. The first break and separation were with God who was deemed to be separate from the world and was even portrayed as being angry at man. According to most religions after all, man is considered to be evil and sinful. A person who is taught that they are this certainly is not capable of feeling loved. Without connection there are no channels through which love can flow.

The feeling of inner unity and connection between man and Source, between man and God, was broken. Thus, people lost themselves, became increasingly alienated, came to feel more and more like cogs in a machine, mere particles without an inner life. Their connection with nature, other human beings, the Earth, the Cosmos, with the past and future were broken. This left them feeling anxious, lonely, depressed, and that their lives were meaningless. What was left for them to do was compete in what I call the “performance society,” a contest that in truth has no winners. You will only lose if you join that competition.

What is the solution? It is to reconnect, reopen to love—feeling love, living in love, and being carried forward by love. How do you do that? If you are already swept up in the energies of fear and the other emotions mentioned above that we succumb to in this world, how do you step out of them? What is even more important, how do you step back into feeling connected?

Below is a step-by-step plan, but first an explanation of man and his relationship to the cosmos to put it all in context.

Man, and the cosmos in short (very short)

We have heard and have been taught that a human being has a body, a soul, and a spirit. We know we have a body because we live inside of one. We also know or sense that there is something way more to us than just our physical self. This is clear to most people, yet the bigger picture is not always clear. Some clarification will make the roadmap easier to follow.

Highly simplified, the universe consists of two layers and a core, which together form a kind of cosmic egg. Let us start from the outside layer and go in.

1. The outer layer: separation and division

The outer layer corresponds to your physical body. Your body resides in the world of where and when—time and space. On this level, everything is experienced through that lens. Time and space are responsible for everything including compartmentalization. Things in our life get labeled and defined by place and time. For example, you have to go somewhere—home, work, an appointment, to your wedding. To get there you have to know “where” to go and “when” to go. These variables define much of your life. If you are not on time or you are in the wrong place, a lot can go wrong.

2. The inner layer: connection

When we think of going inward, we tend to think that we reside inside the box in our head. We do not! Inside is where we are connected to everything and everyone by virtue of our soul. Within is where we sense others and where it is possible to have continuous telepathic contact with them. Within, we pick up on everything and even though we think time and space have a role in it, they play no role at all and thinking they do blocks love from flowing through us.

For example, many people think that death separates them from their loved ones when on the inner layer, death does not exist at all. The love between two souls will always freely flow. This layer of connection takes place on the level of the soul. If we deny that it exists, we suppress our soul, and our connections break down.

3. The core: unconditional love

Unconditional love is the core of the cosmic egg, the Source, the God within us, total unity. Here, we are no longer just connected, here, we are everything, total unconditional love for all that is.

The step-by-step plan below is based on the three-point model above. Its purpose is to help you disconnect your consciousness from identifying with the physical layer, the box, or head layer, and reconnect it to an identification with your soul. It is from the soul that both the unity of the inner layer and the separateness of the outer layer can be experienced. At this point, the conscious human being can feel at home in all three layers.

The Roadmap

Step one—give love a chance

First of all, choose to say to yourself, “There is unconditional love for me, and I am going to open up to that love from now on.” Allow that thought into your entire being. You don’t have to suppress your doubts and fears, merely open yourself to the possibility that there is love for you. Give love a chance. Allow it. Let this thought in and repeat it regularly. That is step one. When you choose to do this, you create a crack in your mental defense shield so love can flow through.

When you take on a series of fear-based beliefs, for example, that the universe is a cold, dead place, that you have to enter into the battle of “all against all,” and time and space lock you in a box in your head from which you can never escape—you close yourself off from the flow of love that connects you with everything in the universe. Those fearful thoughts form a kind of mental armor around you. When you believe these thoughts, you embed yourself deeper into your physical layer. Your negative thoughts suffocate you, which makes your soul want to rise up to the higher realms to breathe and escape! It is so that during the night when your body is asleep, your soul leaves and finds relief from this kind of thinking. This is why we need to sleep, our soul gets a rest too, and in the morning we feel refreshed.

When you think higher thoughts, you penetrate the armor, and your consciousness begins to function again in the layer of connectedness. No doubt you have met people who are so sure of something that they have become impenetrable, a new or different opinion bounces right off them. Don’t be that kind of person, be open to the possibility that there is a new way to think, and that unconditional love is always available to you.

You may have doubts about this, of course you may, because to doubt is to be human. But do you realize that doubt means that you are not sure? Thus, it is possible for you to hold the thought that goodness, beauty and love truly are possible for you. The most logical thing to do is to give beauty and love a chance. To close yourself off to the possibility that love is available to you is not so much doubt as it is deadly cynicism.

Allow the thought that unconditional love is the force that connects everything in the universe making it a loving whole and that therefore, love is also readily available for you. Look at the world around you with an open mind and imagine that love is there waiting for you to embrace it—in the stars above you, in the earth below you, in the trees, plants, and animals.

Everything is part of the web of unconditional love, it flows everywhere. Take a walk out in nature and open your heart to it. Put some distance between you and the hectic energy of the busy city. This is how you begin. This is how you give love a chance. This is how you start to emerge from your cubicle and free your soul, and when you do, love starts flowing throughout your life. All the beauty you experience is a sign from the cosmos that you are loved.

Step two: the angel

Love is the force behind the scenes. Love does not exist on the physical plane like gravity, for example. To truly feel it, you have to go inward, and your imagination helps you do this.

Taboos about engaging in fantasy or day dreaming started at school. We were told that it was wrong, that we had to stick to the lesson. To fantasize equaled trying to escape reality. And yet, all great human creations in literature, music, painting, even scientific discoveries—stem from fantasy. When we spend time in fantasy, we discover our own divinity, our creative power.

Why is fantasy a taboo? A human being is free within and the key to that inner freedom is the ability to imagine. Therefore, if you tell a person that dreaming or fantasizing is evil or nonsensical, you deprive him or her of their inner freedom. Anyone who wants to exercise power over others has an interest in preventing people from dreaming, fantasizing, and imagining.

We think that fantasy comes from the pigeonhole inside our heads, but that is not true. Our inner world is not in our head, it is in the connection we have with all our fellow human beings, yes, even the whole universe. Pigeonholes, boundaries, boxes, divisions are something outside of us. Inside, we are all connected. At the deepest level of our inner being there is total unity, we are the source, God, the universe. Again, these are the three parts of the universe, outer world—separateness, inner world—connectedness, the core—unity.

Imagine that an angel from heaven visits you. The angel symbolizes all the unconditional love there is in the universe for you. When you imagine this symbol and fantasize about it, the universe will use it as a channel for love. The angel is a symbol of your own soul. When you call up the angel within you, you are sending a message to yourself—I can express my soul again, I can be who I really am.

Imagine that the angel puts her arms around you in a field of light and unconditional love. She tells you “Every doubt or fear you have will turn out to be alright, don’t be afraid. You will be helped; we are with you.” Allow those words and that love to penetrate and calm you. Let the words chase away your restlessness, fear, and the busy energy of the world.

Then imagine the angel flies you to a heavenly sphere. From there, you observe how human beings live in fear, you see how agitated their lives are, how they worry about everything. But from your new vantage point, you realize they worry about nothing. They live in the unreal world of fear.

When you experience this, the broken connections are restored for you. The feeling of Oneness you experience dissolves your insecurity. You start to act less out of fear, and more out of peace, trust, and love. The shift happens gradually. You let go of fear and enter a world of love—the real world.

Step three: be grateful

Gratitude is necessary to reconnect with the center of Oneness. If we are aware of living from the center of Oneness, we feel totally happy and loved, One with everything, in other words, we are that. When we lose ourselves in the outer layer, we experience loneliness and separation, which leads to fear. To counter the fear, we increase the size of our little cubicle, so to speak, and make it larger by filling it with possessions, seeking power and prestige. However, this approach will not solve anything. To go after power and accumulate things never provides us with genuine heart connections. In the end, it can result in more unhappiness.

What does this have to do with gratitude and how does gratitude work?

Gratitude is an alchemical force that takes things from the outer layer and integrates them into our inner world. They are transformed in this process as they become part of our inner universe, and this causes us to grow. When you die, you can’t take your physical possessions or your social status with you, but you do take everything with you for which you are grateful. If you are grateful for your parents, then you take their love, warmth, and wisdom with you, forever. This bond of love will always be there for you. They will be with you always. When you are grateful for the home you have, you will have a home forever in the universe. Be grateful for natures’ beauty and you will meet it everywhere.

In the deepest sense, gratitude is an important aspect of becoming aware. By merely existing there is always a place in the universe for you. By existing, it is so. When you practice gratitude, you will become aware of this. When you are grateful for your parents, you feel an ever-present mother and father energy in the universe just for you.

Gratitude is reaching out in love to something outside of you and saying, “Come to me, you have a place in my inner world forever.” Just by saying it,  you know that it has always been there. Gratitude is a path of self-discovery. To be grateful for everything is to BE everything, to discover that you ARE everything.

People do all kinds of things to grow spiritually. Being grateful is the simplest way.

Step four: enjoy the happiness of others, it is yours too

If everything is connected, is One at the deepest level, then someone else’s happiness is also your happiness. If you are in opposition to it, you remove yourself from Oneness, and lose contact with the source within you. The result can be depression, anxiety, loneliness, and anger.

It sounds simple to be happy for someone else, but human beings often  struggle with jealousy. We are programmed to see that the grass is greener on the other side, and it disturbs us. Jealousy is one of the main reasons why people are so unhappy. What a wonderful world it would be if we were happy when something good happened to another person, even someone we dislike. Then, instead of them seeing jealousy in your eyes, they would see the light you carry in your eyes for them.

You connect with others by enjoying the good that happens to them. As long as you are envious of another’s happiness, unity is broken, and if it is broken, love cannot flow.

Imagine if you could feel joyful when something good happens to someone else? Wouldn’t it make you feel happier? It’s a choice you can make but how do you manage the feelings of jealousy, schadenfreude, and envy? You let these feelings be, but you don’t feed them or entertain them. You consciously take time to pause and put yourself in the other person’s shoes and understand they are just like you—a person who might feel afraid at times, insecure, sad even. From this perspective you can sense their inner child who needs to hide out behind a mask. You can be more empathic with them.

When you feel empathy and feel one with the other person, because we are all connected, you get a taste of their beautiful, joyful experience—perhaps it’s their financial windfall, their fine relationship, or their beautiful house, the birth of their child. Feel their joy, and then feel that same joy within yourself. You can say to yourself, “I am enjoying this with you, this is good for you, this is good for the universe, this is good for me.” When you do this, you feel your connection with the other, you feel the Oneness.

In that moment of recognition, you sense your consciousness expanding and growing, and feel yourself rising above the jealous, negative feelings. In that moment, you feel and know exactly who you really are.

Make that choice. This is how you break down the wall between you and your fellow humans.

In conclusion

Once I had a dream. I was locked in a room that had no door with some other people. At one point, I realized I was dreaming, and I said, “This is a dream, these walls are not real.” As soon as I spoke, the walls disappeared, and we were free.

We are individual, connected and one. Body, soul, and spirit. Problems arise when we believe that we are only individuals. This causes us to completely dive into the world of time and space, identifying with our bodies and forgetting that we are connected, that we are one with the whole.

We find ourselves in a situation similar to the one I was in while dreaming. We live our lives in a mental prison. We limit ourselves, and sooner or later it causes psychological and physical problems. The way out is to feel love unconditionally once again. Love frees us from the mental prison we are in. Simple but also difficult if you grew up in a world where you were taught that love is something you have to earn, and you earn it by staying in the box you were put in by others.

This is rightfully a Catch 22—we need love to free us from the mental prison we are in, but we actually believe that we only get love if we stay in it. Don’t fall for that. Open yourself to unconditional love. Love that is available to you for being who you really are, and not the role you play.

You are infinite, embrace it once again.

© Gerrit Gielen

Edited by Suzy Conway

---