Confusion #1: That loving something means liking or preferring or seeking to sustain it.
Loving something does NOT mean liking, preferring or seeking to sustain it.
Love is the recognition and expression of my oneness with something and the feeling I get when I experience that recognition and expression.
Before I have a thought and believe it, I am at one with everything. I cannot be separated from anything except in my story. When I find myself out of love, I can question what I’m thinking and believing and return to my unseparated true nature.
Which means love is always my own doing and always its own reward.
Confusion #2: That my LIFE is ever more important than my LOVE.
My life is NEVER more important than my love.
Without my love I have no life.
Life lived in love is the only life worth living. Because without my love, my life is hell. Literal hell. That's what hell is. That’s the only hell there is. Better to love than live in hell. Suicide comes from an attachment to a particular kind of life: it’s an attempt to end my loveless state and have a better life. But I can’t love my life by going to war with the way things are. I can only love life by letting go of my argument with reality and loving what is.
Without the confusion that my life is more important than my love, I have no reason to ever be at war. And so no reason to either fight for my life or fight to end my life. I release my life completely into the universe’s hands, in favor of love.
If I’m ever forced into a decision between keeping my life or my love, I am determined to choose love and let life do what it will. Because love is the only choice that ever delivers any real sense of living. If I can do that, I will love every second of my life until the moment the lights go out.
One may be able to end my life, but no one can end my love. Only I can do that.
Confusion #3: That it is possible to experience anything unacceptable.
It is NOT possible to experience anything unacceptable.
Unpleasant, maybe. Downright terrifying, maybe. Excruciatingly painful, maybe. But I never experience anything unacceptable.
Everything that has ever happened to me, I have accepted, whether I realize it or not (which, again, does not mean I “like,” “prefer,” or “seek to sustain” it).
There it is, and here I am. When I let go of the idea that I must suffer because it is there, I am released from it.
Without the confusion that I have experienced something I cannot accept, it is impossible to have trauma.
When I believe my past is unacceptable, I move to protect my future and I become a paranoid prisoner of fear and anxiety from which I believe I need to escape. I am peaceful the whole time underneath my confusion.
Without this confusion that I can ever experience anything unacceptable, it is impossible to have PTSD. Whenever I clear up this confusion, PTSD leaves me completely. (This is my direct experience.)
Everything that has happened should have happened. How do I know? It happened. The question is not “What am I going to do about what happened?” it’s “What am I going to do NOW, about now?”
I’ve sacrificed enough “nows” in a fruitless, soul-sucking war with what happened. It’s time for this now.
And this is yet another opportunity to love.
Confusion #4: That situations or other people cause my suffering.
My suffering is NEVER the result of a person, place, thing or situation.
All of my suffering is the result of what I am thinking and believing ABOUT a person, place, thing or situation. All of it.
Without the confusion that suffering can exist outside of what I am thinking and believing, I have total freedom to work with my thoughts and love what is.