The Love Revolution

Religion to liberate humanity I admire. Religion as a means to control humanity I abhor. Discontent with having been instructed by all of the wisest spiritual teachers to simply love others as you love yourself, our ancestors and our friends today want rules. With rules comes judgment about who is a good rule keeper and who isn’t. With judgment comes pride, fear, and condemnation. For condemnation to be effective, guilt, shame, and punishment are required. The time to break the chain of judgmental control is now. It’s the love revolution. You were not created to live in chains. You are the image and expression of God, and God is Love. This truth will set you free.

Jesus was a revolutionary. His spirit of rebellion brought him into constant friction with the religious authorities. He spoke against their hypocrisy and rule-keeping self-righteousness. He said ‘enough is enough’ to the idea that a person should not experience God to such an intimate degree that he or she could not say, “I and the Father are one.” Jesus was a liberator, a chain breaker, and a perennial lover. He calls those of us who would walk in his footsteps to join the love revolution.

The first order of business is to love yourself. Love yourself enough to set yourself free from old ways of thinking that are no longer serving your highest good. If necessary, enumerate your grievances on paper against the limiting or damaging government of wrongful thinking and sign your declaration of independence. Love yourself enough to truly forgive yourself and all others. Do it for you. Love yourself enough to set yourself free from all chains of addiction. Love yourself enough to meditate and fully embrace the Divine Presence within you, who is you.

The “shot heard round the world” in the love revolution is fired when you make an honest commitment to love yourself and allow yourself to be all that you can be. “Infuse your life with action. Don’t wait for it to happen. Make it happen. Make your own future. Make your own hope. Make your own love. And whatever your beliefs, honor your creator, not by passively waiting for grace to come down from upon high, but by doing what you can to make grace happen…yourself, right now, right down here on Earth” (Bradley Whitford, actor).

For many of us, including myself, I am asking for a careful analysis of our approach to life. Ask yourself, “Why do I think that way?” “Why do I think I can or cannot do that?” “What do I believe is my purpose for my divine, eternal spirit to have been clothed in human flesh?”

What is it I want to do? I rewrote the following paragraph and replaced “I want,” with “I am.” I am a preeminent preacher of love. And what makes me a preeminent preacher of love? It’s because I hold love to be all preeminent. I am the apostle of love and the evangelist of love. With love, I am a bridge-builder and a wound healer. I am a link between prejudicial division, past or present, in whatever form it has manifested. I am standing on a solid rock with outstretched arms, for I stand upon the rock of love. I am the gentle and gracious father/mother who in the name of unending love calls all of my children to feast at my table, and everyone I see with either my eyes or my mind is my child. I am a catalyst for change in your life, for I love you as I love myself and I affirm your highest and noblest good.

Do you remember the words from this popular song? “What the world needs now is love, sweet love, It’s the only think that there’s just too little of. What the world needs now is love, sweet love, No, not just for some but for everyone.” The world, truly needs to be flooded with love. Let’s make it happen. Let’s start a Love Revolution.