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27.

Universal Love Meditation

 Liam Quirk

Universal love is what makes sense of all emotions, and acts like true north for our emotional evolution and personal growth.  As such, it is a complex energetic, composed and woven of unconditional energies in whose synergy we are guided and enriched as we grow into ever greater understanding and experience of the universal love that creates and supports our being.  This meditation exercise will help you sort out and compose the many strands of universal love that are the foundation of your identity so that you may fulfill your potentials for creativity and true, unconditional intimacy with others.

Find a place to sit comfortably, either in meditation pose or on a chair with a straight back.  If you are sitting in a chair, make sure your feet can be placed squarely on the floor.  Place your hands on your knees, palms up, and put your fingers in the given positions.  At all times maintain a freely flowing breath.  For each step of the Universal Love Meditation say
the word (such as Gratitude) either silently to yourself or out loud, and then simply pay attention to what you feel and think in response.  From time to time you may wish to repeat the word.  Pay attention only; this is a practice in mindfulness.  Later if you wish you can try to make more sense of your experiences.  Allow 3 to 5 minutes for each step.  (You may wish to record the following, perhaps substituting "I" for "you," on a tape recorder, then play it back and follow the instructions you have given yourself.  Be sure to allow several minutes for silence between the steps.)

1. Gratitude (thumbs and pinkie fingers touching) Gratitude is appreciation and thankfulness for all that affirms and supports us.  Connect with whatever gratitude you feel (or don¹t feel) at the moment, whether for family, friends, love, health. Just allow whatever it is to bubble up into your consciousness.  Feel it in your body, and let all the forms of gratitude you are feeling to be expressed inwardly.

2. Worthiness (thumbs and ring fingers touching) Worthiness refers to the truth that we are already absolutely worthy, and
that our living this truth comes from embracing the path that is shaping us to our highest expression.  Connect with your own worthiness.  For now, focus on your worthiness, even though it is true that all are worthy.  Feel into your self image, and what it is you like and dislike about yourself. Connect with how it feels in your body.   As best you can, touch in with your ultimate Divinity, your essential Being that is completely worthy, completely Love.  Remember also that your worthiness is based on that Love. You are completely worthy simply because you love, and because you open
yourself to being loved.

3.  Praise (thumbs and middle fingers touching )Praise for the joyous creative force of all life, including your own. Praise is a generosity of spirit, a creative expression of the Love that is you.  You praise life with your love of live, whether in your relationships (as a friend, lover, father, mother, sister, brother), or simply in your words and feelings of praise to the All-Loving All.  You praise life with your creativity, either as a creative artist, or at work, or even when you find a clever way to do something in a new way.  Self-care is an especially potent form of praise, for it demonstrates your gratitude for life, and your worthiness.  When you are Love, every breath, every thought, every action is praise.  Giving love and receiving love are both forms of praise.

4.  Compassion (thumbs and pointer fingers touching) Compassion maintains the integrity of self and asks for nothing.  It is the recognition that everyone is unconditionally divine and struggling to know and express that truth.  Connect with your feelings of compassion for others, for all Beings.  Genuine, authentic compassion arises from the understanding that we are all struggling, either consciously or unconsciously, with the same problem: how to know ourselves as Love Itself. Everyone we meet or see is involved in this process, this same journey. Devotional Compassion, the deepest form of compassion, arises with the experience that we all share the same Heart.

5.  Trust (hands together with the compassion thumb/finger positions maintained) Trust grows from experiencing the truth that you will be met with guidance and support for each step you take to live your authentic life.  Tune into how well you trust the truth that Life is relentlessly working with you to guide and shape you to your highest potentials for creativity and Love. Whatever steps you take toward acting on that truth are met with grace, with what you need in the moment for you to realize yourself as an expression of the All-Loving All, indeed as Love Itself. Trust comes from the understanding that whatever is in your life, whether or not it feels good, is there to facilitate your evolution.  Understanding and experiencing that this is true, that Life works in concert with our efforts to reach our potentials for genius, for expressing the Love of the One Heart, brings us back to Gratitude, completing the circle.

Closing:  Place your hands in prayer position at your heart center (sternum).  Or, keeping your hands in the trust position, bring your hands overhead, then slowly bring them down the front of your body as far as you can.  Then, bring them to rest at prayer position.

From: Taproot Transcendence Course by Liam Quirk. Liam is the author of The
Art of Emotional Wisdom, published in 2004 by Unlimited Publishing LLC. More
information can be found at www.emotionalwisdom.net.