COSMIC LOVE
Maurice Turmel PhD - May 26, 2019
Unitarian Church of Niagara
“When we let our fears limit and rule our lives, we are not able to express who we are and live the life we were meant to live. To overcome our fears and anxieties, we must face them head on. We simply stop running and hiding. With love and compassion for ourselves, we allow ourselves to feel. We give ourselves love and we forgive”. See higherdimensional.net
Cosmic Love may seem out of place, a way of justifying a mood and/or presenting a populist view of a world wide event, when all around us there seems to be chaos. I say its an event, a process, because its happening now, moving across the world and into our hearts. The drumbeat of a new world is being born, one no longer marred by war, but by Love. This would be the love of all mankind for each other and for our selves as well.
I know this sounds optimistic and precarious at best, easy to dismiss given the plethora of negative activity now in the world and here at home. But rather than see this as a total disintegration into nothingness, I see it as a preparatory step to ushering in a new era based on Love, acceptance and mutual appreciation - all Unitarian principles, I believe.
The negatives are plentiful and present. We see them all around us, in the worlds’ of many national leaders we once admired. But not anymore. It doesn’t seem like many of them have a clue at this time. And those that claim to have a clue want us to move back in time. In other words, go backwards to what they believe was a better time. This would be a time they have idealized to suit their own agenda.
Prior to the chaos we see before us now, we seemed to have had times of calm and peacefulness in spite of the drumbeat of cold wars and enhanced artificial differences between ourselves in the West and Communist Nations. We didn’t know it then, but we were at war with ourselves!
In a world of divide and conquer, leaders pitched the idea that it was them against us; ergo, World Wars 1 & 2 followed by many smaller skirmishes in little known nations with the proviso that we, the West, were bringing democracy to them, rather than the more obvious pillaging of their natural resources or positioning for greater power.
Now, we can’t even bring democracy to ourselves. Just look at south of the border. We have multiple scandals erupting here in the West. There is this inevitable sabre rattling that goes on between bully nations and those who would dare challenge them. For example, U.S.A versus Iran or versus North Korea.
However, mankind, as a whole, is not buying into this anymore. We are tired of war and see no gain there. We are skeptical of our leaders because there’s a new source of truth growing within each and every one of us. A deeper truth that we are waking up to ourselves.
This is what I call Cosmic Love which is literally in the air. And because we are shifting into this new dimension of being, there is chaos brewing all around which is the mark of a growing change in attitudes by earth’s general population.
Yes, we can focus on the negative and say the world is going to hell in a hand-basket. Or, we can begin to see the sprouts of a new life brewing, a life based on mutual respect, acceptance, friendship, accommodation, and recognition of the other within ourselves. This includes recognizing the universality of the human experience and our mutual interdependence regardless of political stripes, religious orientation or differing approaches to economic growth, all of which again I understand, is the Unitarian way.
Is there any physical evidence of a shift going on?
The Schumann Resonance, Mother Earth’s vibratory rate, measured at 7.8 hertz per second in the 1950s was considered stable. Since 2012, the Schumann has been climbing every year and spiking into the 30 to 60 hertz range and beyond. Most recently, at 2:00 a.m. on March 17, 2019 the readings spiked at 150hz before settling back to the 70hz range. (see prepareforchange.net). In other words, the planet is accelerating its vibratory pulse, and that affects all of us aboard. Feeling more edgy lately or having trouble sleeping are all possible reactions.
The shift has hit the fan! We are at the cusp of a major shift and we are in it, like it or not. What is this shift? In a nutshell, we are moving from fear based motivation to love based. In fact, it is the changes within us that are driving this shift. We are being called to take action, action that helps the planet and that accommodates the reality of climate change. Through this awakening to the universality of our human experience, we can hear and feel our brothers and sisters around the world crying out for help. Their pleas are reaching us and touching our hearts, where the true Love of Life ultimately lives.
We are getting in touch with that part of ourselves, that deepest darkest secret that Jesus referred to as ‘The Kingdom Within.’ Since we are chips of the old block called Source, we are each and every one of us capable of claiming that prize, a truth that is now engendered by millions around the world, and that will finally set us free.
We are Love. We are capable of Love. And we are stronger as we allow this Love to rise and thrive within us.
Oh yes, it does seem easier at times to look at the negative and complain. It takes courage to love and forgive, especially ourselves. It takes courage to look beyond the surfaces and see what all mankind is searching for, Love, Acceptance and Peace.
We are all capable of exhibiting these experiences. Their truth begins at home, inside each of us. Its a truth we must master or we slink away into the negative and join the chorus of complainers and professional victims.
I believe that we, our generation, have done enough personal growth work to make Love and all its consequences our priority. We’ve been doing personal growth work since the 70’s, since books like “I’m OK, You’re OK” came along and the plethora of self-help books that followed.
We dug deeper into this mantra in the 80’s when we learned about dysfunctional families and their attributes (John Bradshaw, for example) when we were forced to look at Guilt and Shame, its origins in our lives, and how that tied us into psychological and emotional knots. We saw how sexually abused women and men were led to resources like “The Courage to Heal” written by recovering victims who put themselves out there, and were attacked for
doing so.
Then, along came the books describing co-dependence (Melodie Beattie) and the latest in personal growth authors, both academic and popular, (before the internet) many of them appearing on such shows as Oprah. There were the Seth books and, yes, even Shirley MacLaine who put out books on our evolving spirituality (Out on a Limb). There was Deepak Chopra and his take on our evolving spirituality, and on and on the list goes. We have become a generation in search of healing.
I grew up in these eras, psychologically and spiritually speaking. My personal growth walked hand in hand with my professional growth. The more I learned about these psychodynamics, the more I grew personally and, therefore, the more I could help my clients with their growth. (I was a practicing therapist for nearly 2 decades).
For me, there was no looking away when spiritual issues were presented. There was no side-stepping that part of my human experience whether it fit into prescribed psychological boxes or not. I had already accepted that we were spiritual at our core. This is the part of us that vacates the premises when the body expires, and goes back Home to have a review about what was learned this particular time around. (These are my beliefs and I own them.)
I began to refer to myself as a Spiritual Psychologist during this last decade. Spirituality, which includes Love, is definitely a key component in my life. I bathe in it daily. I pay tribute to it in all my writings. I have 3 books on Amazon and 3 albums of songs at bandcamp.com. I have manuscripts filled with poetry and short stories yet to be published. This is who I am. I am a writer and song-writer and my main subjects are Personal Growth and Love.
I honour my connection to Source, the Divine within. I honour it because that’s who I am. After 45 years of personal growth efforts, I have come to that conclusion and I am satisfied that this is me.
I finally reached a place called Self-Acceptance, where every new dimension of my being that I uncover becomes the latest addition to my evolving identity. I am all these dimensions that I’ve come to recognize, including the ones I don’t like, and I take responsibility for all of them. This is of course an ever evolving process.
I trust that the deeper part of me knows what I need before I do, even before I become fully aware of what it is or means. I have come to agree with that and I accept it. This has been the inspiration for my manuscripts and song lyrics. They all come from this deeper part of me, including the ideas presented here in this talk.
It’s taken the better part of this lifetime for me to learn to trust and accept myself, warts and all. The pursuit of perfection is gone. I Am What I Am, and I have a blues song that bears that title.
Back to Cosmic Love, and what is that about? A few years ago I came across a quote that was attributed to Albert Einstein, “Love is the most powerful force in the Universe.” That quote hit home for me. It reverberated within where I feel and intuitively grasp whether it fits me or not, even as there is controversy now surrounding the quote’s attribution.
Was this quote from Albert Einstein in an alleged letter to one of his daughters? The controversy online says “no”, it’s not possible, and these sources offer good reasons to doubt that he authored it. This brings up the following questions to which I have no answers: Why would someone, anonymous, attribute this to him? What would be the motive? What is there to gain?
Controversy aside, for me the quote stands up. I feel it. I’m growing into it. It’s what I see happening around me and in my own life. I am growing my capacity for love, in both receiving and giving. That said, here are some authenticated quotes from Albert Einstein, followed by those from other thinkers, which I have found inspiring.
On mystery:
“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his/her eyes are dimmed”. A. Einstein
On imagination:
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world”. A. Einstein
On love:
“Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love”. A. Einstein
On Being Human:
“A human being is part of the whole called by us Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty”. A Einstein For me, what he is referring to here sounds like Cosmic Love.
In terms of Cosmic Love being a powerful force that surrounds us, Pierre Telhard de Chardin did make such quotes regarding the universality of Love, and I offer them here.
“Love is as old as the cosmos itself”. The Jesuit scientist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, spoke of love as a cosmological force. “The fundamental law of attraction in the universe,” he wrote, “is love”. He described love “as the primal energy of the universe, the energy of attraction, union and transcendence. Driven by the forces of love,” he said, “the fragments of the world [continuously] seek each other so that the world may come into being”. Elsewhere he wrote, “Love is the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mysterious of the cosmic forces… the physical structure of the universe is love”. Although many scientists and non-scientists balk at the idea of cosmological love, Teilhard thought from a different level of consciousness, one much closer to the medieval writers who had profound views on cosmos, nature and world soul.
Another writer I came to appreciate, Richard Maurice Bucke, made similar suggestions in his book, ‘Cosmic Consciousness,’ where he analyzed the lives of exceptional individuals, including Jesus Christ. Bucke was a Canadian psychologist from the early part of the last century. He is buried in London, Ontario where he is well known and appreciated. Dr. Bucke was also a contemporary and friend of Walt Whitman, another great writer and poet with a spiritual bent, who would come up to Canada on occasion to visit
family and friends.
Joseph Campbell, a great American Mythologist, gave us a portrait of The Hero Myth (The Hero with A Thousand Faces) as it is found in all cultures around the world and down through the generations. The structure of the Hero’s journey is broken into 3 components:
- Separation
- Initiation
- Return (which ultimately is a return to Love)
The Hero’s journey, here, is an internal enterprise, with heroes and heroines engaging with their inner dynamics to find their way back to love, or Home, as is often the reference.
John Smallman is another author I find engaging:
“Be of good cheer, because you are all awakening to the realization that you (we) are all One, regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, skin colour, and political or religious persuasion. And you are, therefore, also One with your living planet, Mother Earth, whose vitality and good health directly affects you”. (e.g. again, Schumann resonance spiking to higher levels affects us all). There is growing recognition that Love is the unchangeable nature of every sentient being, and that happiness and joy arise when this is recognized, and when all live constantly holding that most powerful intent”.
These are the sources that, for me, hit the nail on the head. As much as I once chaffed at the idea of Love being a dominant force, I have come to believe it and accept it. But to get there I had to let go of my need for revenge against those who hurt and abused me in my childhood years. I had to heal all associated pain and come to love and accept myself as I am. Again, this is, of course, an ongoing process.
There is no peace in anger or revenge. Nelson Mandela is a great example of this. He forgave his abusers and those who unjustly incarcerated him. Instead, he chose peace and forgiveness, and exemplified this higher level love in doing so. Not unlike Jesus, some would say, in his life of teaching and sharing. Was Mandela perfect? Of course not! What he did was simply choose peace and forgiveness over revenge and hate.
Cosmic Love exists like the air we breathe. It lives inside of us and we can access it if we choose to reach for it. It exists permanently in our hearts whether we choose to connect or not. We have to learn to receive first, to let ourselves bask in the glory of Universal Love. Yes, it’s hard to believe that such a force exists. But what’s the alternative?
We either devolve into chaos and extinction, or we grow past our need for anger, revenge and retribution and bring love into and through our hearts while nourishing ourselves back to psychological and spiritual health.
Online Reactions to 1st Cosmic Love post:
Paul Fouchard Christoffersen - Spiritual Free Thought Study Group - Alberta:
“I've been privileged to have glimpsed Cosmic or God's unconditional love thanks to an NDE - Near Death Experience. Many others have experienced this infinite realm of love and bliss. My wife too has experienced this indescribable love on numerous occasions. We all originate from this realm and we all return there after our brief sojourns here on Earth”.
Kate Chard - Spiritual Free Thought Study Group
“Pondering the idea of our ability to experience Cosmic Love, I am certain
. . . that we can experience Love in its Cosmic or Divine aspect beyond our phenomenal world. Here I do not mean to limit this infinite love to any type
. . . but rather a love that transcends our sense awareness”.
My 2 Experiences with Cosmic Love:
- It was Summer, and I was sitting in my favourite lounge chair admiring the flowers, bushes and plants that adorned our backyard garden and that were flourishing beautifully thanks to my wife’s stellar green thumb. All of a sudden I felt connected to everything I was seeing, including the bees and butterflies floating around doing their usual chores, and the birds flying overhead. I felt blissful. I felt peaceful. I felt at One with everything before me. It lasted about 20 minutes.
- This past Fall I was was home alone listening to soft meditative music, thinking about my family and friends, and all of a sudden, I felt a huge wave of Love envelop me. I felt love for all these people in my life. And again, I felt blissful. I felt peaceful. And I felt deeply connected to these wonderful people through this wave of Love that had enveloped me. I felt at One with all of them. This also lasted about 20 minutes.
The deepest source of Love is truly our own Heart. Where we live and breathe spiritually and emotionally is where we touch Love’s true grandeur and tenderness. Where we are connected to our essential Selves is where we finally discover authentic Love and, what I believe, “The Most Powerful Force in the Universe”.
This is what I refer to as Cosmic Love, the essence of who we are at the core of our being, the unspoiled Me that comes into the world ready to share and serve. There are many examples of this all around us, often referred to as service-to-others in a great variety of forms.
In conclusion, I choose Love. I choose Cosmic Love as it exists within me and as I am able to set my ego aside and his primitive need for “getting even.” I choose Love, and I choose it every day.
Am I a saint? Absolutely not! Am I capable of grumpiness and complaining? Yes, indeed! Am I working on it? Yes, I am! Why? Because 45 years of personal growth work have taught me that I Am Worth It, and So Are You!
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