Issue #104

What’s New in Nov/Dec 2023

Featured Article

The Power of Love
and How to Bring It to Daily Life

Compiled by Glenn Hovemann

 

Recently I participated in a one-day mini-retreat at Wild Grace Community. We were each asked to make a little presentation. It occurred to me to explore the “power of love,” which Jesus mentions in both A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love (four times in each) but uses 36 times in the seven-volume Choose Only Love. As I looked further, how he uses the phrases present a compelling path. In addition, on the very same day I had edited a section of another not-yet-published book received through Jesus, tentatively entitled “The Consciousness of Resurrection,” which seemed perfectly on point. Here is the gist of what I shared in the retreat.

From Choose Only Love:

This is a call to allow the explosion of the power of love that you are. You who read these words are ready to let the love that you are manifest. Do not choke it off. Be pulled by the wings of the spirit of God. BkI:3.IV.4

Begin to remember the irresistible force of love. Begin to remember, now, the strength of the pure love that embraces the universe. Begin to remember how attractive is God’s power. Stay with those memories. Carry them in the silence of your heart. Become one with them. Join with the power of love. Fulfill yourself in it. Let its immeasurable, unfathomable force penetrate you and transform your mind and heart with the ecstasy of peace and truth. BkII:4.IV.1

The power of your will is immense, even immeasurable. You fear it above all fears. The power of your will is the power of God, which is the power of love. Because you feared it, you chose to enslave it to reduce its power. You wished to subdue and control the power of your will. When you were repeatedly told to “let yourself be loved,” it was meant to trust and “let yourself go,” as your will permits. BkII:11.I.4

Do not look for power of any kind—just let yourself be loved. The power of love has nothing to do with what the old world called love. Rather, the power of love resides in its sweetness, in the softness of its words, in the delicacy of its gaze, in the transparency of its being, in its perpetual benevolence. BkII:15.II.7

By remaining in the silence of your heart you are the perfect expression of the power of love. BkIV:17.V.8

Remember that we are not advocating the non-expression of feelings, emotions, or thoughts; we are advocating the power of love and its necessary relationship with truth. To live in truth is to live consciously in the truth of everything that is happening in your inner world. The Kingdom consists of ideas, memories, thoughts, desires, emotions, feelings, intuitions, and many other things. It is the realm to which the consciousness of every place, time, and circumstance must be brought for the alchemy of your soul to be completed. BkIV:18.III.2-3

Outside of love there is no power possible because outside of love is nothing. Remember, only love is real. Therefore, only the power of love is real. BkIV:21.III.12

Creation exists because of the power of love. The power of life that you see is the power of God manifested in form. BkIV:21.III.13

You have replaced the power of love with the power of anger, which is nothing but fear. That apparent ego power, which is all that you associate with violence, aggression, anger, and many other different forms of fear, is the substitute for love. Fear seems powerful but is not. Your weakness is evident, and that is what you fear most. Thus you fear fear. In other words, you are not afraid of fear because of its power but because of its weakness. Fear weakens. BkIV:21.IV.2-3

The fear of the power of love is so great that it is buried in your mind and heart, and is the fear of not knowing what to do with power. BkIV:21.IV.8

The power of love cannot be used. It can only serve the cause of love. It cannot be for anything else. BkIV:21.IV.11

Once you recognize and accept the absolute inoffensiveness of God’s power, you begin to feel comfortable with it as your own power. BkIV:21.IV.13

[F]or those who have lived for so long without the joy of living, the power of love has become a mystery, even though it is the best known power in the universe. BkV:4.I.4

Those who live in God have nothing to fear. They can afford to be happy and live happily in love because they know they have a loving mother who watches over them as no other mother can or ever will. They know the power of love. They accept it and rejoice in it. BkV:4.I.8

The power of love is beyond all human understanding. Its force cannot be overestimated. BkV:12.IV.18

When your being remains in the peace of Christ, you remain within the transforming power of love because love resides in peace. Outside of peace you cannot access the treasures of love because out of peace is nothing. BkV:20.III.5

[T]he creative power that resides in you is of such magnitude that if you do not first let go of the fear you have of what you are—that is, of the power of love—then you will be unwilling to create anything. Remember, you had the experience of trying to create an identity for yourself, and it seemed to turn against you. BkVI:6.III.7

Love is powerful, as is truth. They are a unit. Many underestimate that power or think of it infrequently. Thus they either feel helpless or seek to create other sources of power. To be aware of the power of love and truth is to honor God for what God is and to love yourself for who you are. You are the living expression of that power. You are the effect of that joint power. BkVI:8.III.12

Loving is not about doing this or that, or acting in any particular way, but about being authentically yourself in union with God. BkVI:18.II.15

God’s plan is to live His life in you. This is the same as saying that His will is that you participate in His life. There is no other way to do it but to allow the flow of the power of love that God is to be received, accepted, and to pass through. BkVII:12.III.7

The power of the miracle has spilled over you. The power of love has touched your heart. You have found Grace and holiness. Every fiber of your being has been embedded in the divine essence that travels in my voice, as if it were a breath of love that moves human wills to love more. BkVII:14.III.11

And from the forthcoming book “The Consciousness of Resurrection”:

Now it remains for us to know how to put into practice in daily life what we are remembering here, while experiencing earthly life. There appear to be countless ways, spiritual techniques, medical treatments, scientific trends, belief systems, and the list goes on. There are countless alternatives available.

Ask yourself: Which of all those paths allows you to live in the fullness of the risen love? The answer: all of them and none, at the same time. What is meant is that a full life, which is the expression we use here to define the state in which you live in perfect harmony with the will of God, and therefore in the fullness of love, is achieved by reason of your willingness to do so, and not because of the ritual or technique itself.

Nothing external can produce any real effect on you; you are the sole creator of your experience. As inside, so outside. Actually, there is no such thing as inside and outside, but only the reality of the soul expressing itself in its beautiful vastness.

When you wholeheartedly decide to find the truth, you find it. You do so whether you set out to find it through reading inspired books, through religious practices, joining groups, or even doing nothing at all. What makes you find is not the path itself, but your purpose. As you can see, everything is resolved in the field of free will, in the disposition of each of the sons and daughters of God.

Once you sincerely decide to live in the truth, things begin to move in favor of that purpose regardless of the degree of awareness of this determination. The universe will conspire in favor of your disposition. It always does. There have been plenty of examples in your life that have confirmed this for you, eloquent confirmations. What is revealed here can be generalized to everything that comes from the free decision of the soul.

Radiant and graceful heart, this work is saying unequivocally that you can remain united in resurrection, which is but the awareness of being the risen from love, all the days of your life on Earth, just as in Heaven.

Why not live in the truth of who you are and enjoy the life-giving energy of love? You do so every time you think loving thoughts and cultivate noble feelings, whenever you deliberately decide to walk away from what is not true and to live in the light of wisdom, and when you immerse yourself in prayer or in a silence without judgment. And even when not doing any of these things, when you say in your soul: I want to live in the truth, I want to live in a world full of peace, I want love to flood my life, I want to return to the Father’s House.

Glenn Hovemann

I was born in the City of New York, but I’m really a country boy, for my heart loves nature. I co-founded a rural intentional community in 1972. After our first child was born, Muffy and I left and I went to law school and practiced law; but after a few years, I felt, for the first time ever, that the firm was not where I needed to be. We moved to Ananda, a large and more explicitly spiritual community where we lived for seven good years until certain discomforts and limitations led us to move to nearby Nevada City, CA. Muffy and I published beautiful books about nature for children. Then something unexpected happened: the universe presented me with the remarkable opportunity to publish two spiritual masterpieces, A Course of Love and the seven-volume Choose Only Love, through our company Take Heart Publications. It’s been a huge gift—and has kept me very busy!