Trusting Love: Living An Ordinary Life In An Extraordinary Way

: By Maresha Donna Ducharme

Thanks for visiting InnerSelf.com, where there are 20,000+ life-altering articles promoting "New Attitudes and New Possibilities." All articles are translated into 30+ languages. Subscribe to InnerSelf Magazine, published weekly, and Marie T Russell's Daily Inspiration. InnerSelf Magazine has been published since 1985.

break

Trusting love is a radical severance from one’s preferences, addictions, and obsessions. It is a persevering willingness to enter and re-enter the unknown. It is a commitment to listening to the voice of one’s Soul anew each day.

But what is it that we trust when we are trusting love?

What Is This Love?

This love is a willingness to open ourselves to a higher will; it is an absolute acceptance that we are not the initiator. We give up the ego and walk to the water so that we may immerse ourselves in the stream of consciousness, the stream of love, and merge with the infinite Mystery. This inner posture is held in every situation we meet.

Outwardly, the actions of life look just like everybody else’s. Inwardly, we let life be revealed. Inwardly, we rise to every occasion with acceptance and grace, knowing it is the higher, Divine Will working through us. We live an ordinary life in an extraordinary way. Even the simplest act is performed differently by one who is free.

What Does Trusting Love Look Like?

Trusting love is round, intuitive, receptive, and flowing. It moves without obstruction, open to the unknown, asking to be shown, and being endlessly surprised at each revelation. It is simple, clear and honest.

Trusting love means that each day you begin anew, exactly where you are. There is nothing special to do, there are no requirements to fulfill, nor do you have to go to any special place. The inner posture of acceptance and trust creates an ability to meet life exactly as it is.

Liberation lies within each one of us. When you trust love, you can observe and respond both to the mundane rhythms of life as well as to the extraordinary Mystery of the eternal quest.

Expanding the Boundaries of Love

Expanding the boundaries of your consciousness is the same as expanding the boundaries of love. When you begin to trust love, you will see through the eyes of spirit that you are self-creating, and what is real for you is created by you. If you are willing to release that which no longer serves you, then you can begin to extend the boundaries of your love.

Trust means that you have to be willing to be exposed for who you really are and to take a risk and get nothing in return. You must be willing to face lack and rejection along with the reality that things never do work out the way you planned anyway.

What happens when you do that? You find freedom when you release your attachment to your fear of things not working out, of being used, of not having enough, or of being rejected.

Expose yourself, show everything that is there, let it all be seen, and then there is nothing to hide. If you do not risk everything, you will never be able to expand the boundaries of love.

Be Willing To Be Used

You have to be willing to be a fool for love. You have to be willing to change your position because your position is your ego. You have to be willing to be seen and be used.

What is it to be used? It is to give with no expectation of anything in return. Be willing to take a risk.

Do you know what will happen when you take a risk? You will face rejection and abandonment, and you will also face getting used. But none of this can touch you if your heart stays open and in love, and if your heart trusts love. You will see those things for what they are, which is just fear. It will not destroy you.

Instead, you will grow compassion and you will no longer take everything personally. You will understand that someone is just playing a role for you so that you can extend the boundaries of your love. Or, you will see that you can have compassion for someone who is limited in their capacity to open their own heart, and you will not judge them when they make a mistake.

When you fix your eyes on the Divine, you will be fed from the infinite fount. There is always enough, it always works out, you get used, and you are blessed because of it. You accept everything. Rejection no longer exists, and all of the imperfections you have been hiding from for so long, can be accepted and healed.

Spirit is benign and loving, and mysteriously and incredibly wonderful. You can trust love, and you can trust your heart to know love.

Be Willing To Let Your Heart Break

Be willing to give something and get nothing in return. It may not look like you are getting anything in return in a specific and deliberate way, but everything you give comes back tenfold.

The infinite energy of the universe can cycle back to you in your fearlessness. You will find out that love has nothing to do with attachment, jealously, control or ownership, and your heart will be in love at all times.

Find Liberation By Taking A Risk

We find liberation only by taking a risk, by taking whatever it is at the core and flipping it over. If you are greedy, then give. If you are fearful of rejection, stop rejecting and accept. If you are afraid of exposure, expose. Release your fear and be that which you want.

When the pain, rejection and hurt come, let them come. Let it all wash through you like a wave. Feel everything completely and then let the wave recede.

Shutting out the pain hurts even more because you not only shut out the possibility for being hurt, but you also shut out the possibility for love. If you take a risk and trust love, even if it does not turn out the way you wanted, you have still given yourself the opportunity to love.

Drop all your concepts around how you think it should turn out, and then there is nothing to be hurt.

Respect and Acknowledge Yourself

Other people do not have to respect or acknowledge what you have to offer. You have to respect what you have to offer. You have to acknowledge yourself.

Clear out the space, go inside of yourself, and learn how to give yourself what you need with Spirit. Other people are just bringing up your own feelings of lack of self-worth; they cannot give to you what you cannot give to yourself.

Just feel the emotion. Let go of feeling that you should get something, and just be the pure emotion. When you do not ask why, you are trusting love. The emotion will come in like a wave and wash out like a wave.

Stand in your core. Learn to let those places wash in and wash out. When you do that, you will stand in love. You will not put up any barriers. As soon as you do not like something, the edges of your ego are blocking love.

Feel your pain and disappointment, but let it be pure so that it burns in your tears, and then it is dissolved. Even though you feel rejected, go forth anyway because you trust love. When you know it is not personal, you do not have to isolate yourself from people anymore.

Keep Your Heart Open And Trust Love

When your heart stays open, you will have more capacity to accept and love people exactly as they are. Release your judgments, and trust love.

Spirit has its way with us, and you either surrender to it or you do not. When Spirit puts you on hold, stop. When you are pushed forward, go forward. When something is taken away, let it go. When something is given, receive it.

Trusting love means dropping your position; it means not fighting. Surrender is an active choice. It does not just happen; we have to choose it in the moment it is presented.

Surrender means there is no separation, isolation or positioning. It is accepting what is. It is releasing judgment and trusting love. If you fight against the ego, it will gain strength.

Trust the place in your heart that tells you that this is a loving and benign universe that is abundant and supportive, and then, take all of the risks to prove it to yourself. You do that by trusting love.

Love Asks You to Take Risks

Taking a risk might mean speaking the truth or saying “No.” Taking a risk doesn’t have to mean leaving your marriage to go to India to find your guru.

Your guidance might not give you permission to do or say something, and your mind might wrestle with “What will they think?” or “I don’t want to offend anybody.”

The risk is to follow the guidance, to trust love. There is a risk in it because you are used to doing things a certain way according to your pattern, and you do not want to offend anybody.

But there are also times when our lives feel especially risky, like when we go through a divorce or lose a job. “Will I be safe, will I be taken care of? Will I be loved?”

Years ago I had a relationship that lasted for ten years. One day my partner drove out of the driveway and never came back. He left me with all the debt, mortgages and loans, none of which I had when I met him.

I realized I was either going to become bitter and get into a fight and end up in court “duking it out” over the next two or three years, or I was going to let it go and let myself be taken care of by the universe and be loved. I chose expanding my own boundaries to receive more love. So I said, I’m not going to fight.

So I did not fight, and I took it all. I took on the mortgage and all the debt by myself. I did all the things that God gave me to do: running the Sanctuary, doing healing work, conducting yoga teacher trainings, and all of the other things I was given to do.

Not only did I take care of everything that needed to be taken care of financially, but my life flowed and was supported in a beautiful new sequence which I could have never imagined.

Love Asks You to Expand

The thing about love is that it asks you to expand all the time. And when you expand, you have to break through the wall within you that wants to keep you in one place.

The wall says, this is your comfort zone, this is what you feel good believing, these are the people you like to be with, and these are the things you like doing. These things over here? No.

But Love does not work that way. When you expand, you give up your comfort for a while. And once you expand in one place, as soon as you have expanded into that, Love asks you to expand again.

Article Source

The Way Home to Love: A Guide to Peace in Turbulent Times
by Maresha Donna Ducharme.

The talks and spiritual teachings in this book were given at gatherings and retreats for spiritual students and seekers at Snow Dragon Sanctuary. Each one is an inspiration, reminding us how to live a conscious life. Each one helps us to remember the true nature of love and the guiding principles of spiritual living: how to be peaceful, beautiful, and more deeply connected to God and how to sustain and nurture our faith.

Click here for more info and/or to order this book

About the Author

Maresha Donna Ducharme has been inspiring people to realize the sources of healing and peace, which exist within each one of us for over 35 years. Maresha holds degrees in Teaching, Education, Wholistic and Macrobiotic Counseling, and Energy Medicine. Her background and experience in spiritual and theological training is diverse. She is the resident teacher of The Snow Dragon Sanctuary and author of “The Way Home to Love: A Guide to Peace in Turbulent Times”. Read more of her discourses at SnowDragonSanctuary.com