I’m not a big texter, but I do text with a few people in my life. Sometimes I’ll ask someone, Hey, could you help me with this? Instead of Sure! with an exclamation point, or a smiley face, or a heart, the reply is just a little Okay.
It feels so flat to me.
Of course, we don’t know what it means unless we ask the person. Yet sometimes it feels like they’re withholding Love. Withholding that connection. Withholding that spark of warmth.
I recognize it because I was an expert at it. I used to do it all the time. Withholding Love was one of the main ways I made barriers to Love in my heart.
No, I’m not going to go the extra mile for them. No, they don’t deserve my kindness. I don’t even need to say thank you. Or I’d say “thanks” in a curt, unkind way.
I have a right to be angry about that. I’m never going to forgive that. These are thoughts and feelings I’ve had so many times. I understand them very well, and I know how much pain and suffering they create.
Every single one of them is a way of saying, I choose the world I made. I choose my own personal hell rather than Heaven.
That’s what withholding Love really is.
Some barriers are easy to see.
Waiting for someone to say I’m sorry first.
Holding onto resentment, regret, thoughts of revenge.
Avoiding eye contact.
Avoiding a simple hello.
Avoiding being a little bit sweet or generous, patient, thoughtful.
Any place we’re avoiding connection is a barrier to Love, because we’re one with everyone.
A Course in Miracles gives us a very different calling: “Fail not in your function of loving in a loveless place made out of darkness and deceit, for thus are darkness and deceit undone.“
Other barriers are harder to see, because they are hidden inside things that look like Love.
Years ago, I used to joke in my family that food is love. We have a lot of cooks in my family. Whenever everyone got together, each person had a desire to make something special: a really nice meal, a dessert, a salad, a soup, bread, rolls, muffins, cakes.
It was always an expression of Love. It wasn’t to get Love. It was to share it. I love you, and I love baking bread, so here’s the bread I baked for you.
If we’re baking the bread to get Love, to get appreciation or recognition, it’s a different story. If we feel annoyed that the bread didn’t come out right, or upset that nobody liked it, then we know we had attachments. The bread carried a different meaning than simply being an expression of perfect Love.
It’s specialness.
Instead of being dejected, angry, and upset when we find that kind of attachment, we can be grateful and thankful.
The Love of God is what we truly are, and now we have awareness of a block to Love in our mind.
Isn’t that great? It’s so helpful.
Sometimes it’s a shock to the system to see how many barriers to Love we have. I’ve learned to be grateful for every one I find, because I’m looking to get them all off my plate and onto the Holy Spirit’s plate. That’s my strategy.
If you feel guilty about withholding Love, or punishing people with your withholding, then come join me for my Free Forgiveness workshop on Monday, October 12th – Indigenous People’s Day. We’ll work on it together and have a miraculous healing. Click here now to learn more.
Love was never meant to be held back. It was meant to be shared from the overflow.
LATEST PODCAST EPISODE: Make No Decisions by Yourself So many of us carefully choose our days and still end them feeling disappointed. We weigh the options, even ask for guidance, and then the answer feels wrong. A student’s breakthrough and a friend’s reminder brought me back to Chapter 30, Section I of A Course in Miracles. You’ll discover what a neighbor home from the hospital and a party that fell flat reveal, why a small tightening in my stomach mattered, and the surprising reason inner guidance can feel like an attack.
