Raising the Love-Light of a Child

You can spend a lifetime trying to be One with the Great Spirit … or simply focus on Love and realize you already are. —anonymous After the experience of an inward journey, it is time to return home, coming full circle back to defining and understanding love as the center of our lives, with 360-degree vision. When all is said and done, and each of us reaches the end of our time here on earth, nothing else will ever really have mattered except how we have loved and have been loved. Love is a feeling of comfort, of acceptance, of being one with the universal power outside of our physical bodies. Look closely, and you will notice how even a little dog feels it and expresses it, as does a tiny seed nourished by Mother Nature to sprout and to grow. Even that seed pokes its way through the darkness of the soil and reaches upward, growing, growing as it seeks the light. In this way, it is not much different than we are in its purpose. Love is the central connecting force to all that is. Can you not feel that love energy in the glow of the moon, in the touch of a breeze upon your cheek, in the sound of ocean waves lapping on the shore, or in the wail of a loon? If you stop to notice, if you are present in the moment, you will feel it; you will know it. You will see it; you will hear it; you will taste it; you will smell it, touch it, and be it. And the love that envelopes you in this way is so awe-inspiring that you won’t be able to help feeling grateful as it merges with your spirit—if you take the moment to notice that it is there. The world, in this way, is perfect as it is. Beauty is everywhere. Love is everywhere. Growth is everywhere—even in things and experiences that, on the surface, appear ugly, unfeeling, or stagnant. All that we need to know is all around us—if we notice and if we use the tools available to us to stay on path. It may seem, at times, as though we are trapped in an illusionary maze with no way out, but it is only when we stray from love and beauty with our thoughts and actions that the world challenges us to find our way back home. Even then, look closely and notice the glimmer over the hill to which you could connect, and if it’s seemingly not there, you certainly can look and find the glimmer within. If each of us could reconnect to that inherent love and nurture it, we would interact differently with the environment, and, as a simple consequence, create and experience a different world. Love is the gift that children bring with them into this dimension. The intrinsic love-light of a child is visible in the innocence of the little face—in the deepness of the eyes, and in the infectious smile and laugh. There is much to learn from this untainted pureness that the children bring with them. Babies are the new arrivals from a place of oneness and promise, but with each new thought of connection to or separation from others, their imprinting begins, and the light either appears to shine in all of its brilliance or to dim, as they somehow place themselves on the illusionary sliding scale between darkness and light. As caregivers, do we work to preserve this gift or to diminish it? Interestingly, we begin the journey toward our eventual physical death at the moment of our birth, and on that journey, we often struggle to keep the inherent love-light, with which we were born, vibrantly shining. As we continually progress through our life experiences, our faces show the strength of that love-light or the illusion of shadows. And the more we mask the light, the more disengaged we become from each other, from ourselves, from our Source, or God. If you have not recognized by now that you have been intentionally provoked to think about the kinds of daily life interactions that actively preserve and, when needed, nurture, strengthen, and raise the love-light in children, let’s be straightforward now: Be mindful/aware of who you are, what you believe to be truth, what you choose, and what you do as you present your model of love to children and adults alike in the world. If you have discovered even one way to enhance your own light and connection, you are more equipped to assist children to preserve and enhance their inherent light.