See if you can't begin holding people not to who you think they should be,
But learning to accept them as they are and loving who they are.
And so I'm going to do this for myself right now and I invite you if you choose to do it too.
I'm going to close my eyes and I'm going to visualize my parents.
And you may visualize a parental figure.
It doesn't matter if your parents have passed on,
Relationships never end.
I'm going to call them forth and I'm going to say to them,
I let go of my attachment to who I think you should be and I accept you as you are.
I love you as you are.
I'm going to call forth my children and you can call forth your kids,
Someone you mentor or have high hopes for in your life.
I'm going to say to them,
I release my attachment to who I think you should be and I accept you as you are.
I love you as you are.
And now I'm going to call my partner to mind and you can call a partner,
An ex-partner,
The imagination of your future partner to mind.
And I'm going to say to her,
I release my attachment to who I think you should be and I accept you as you are.
I love you as you are.
And now I'm going to call myself to mind and I invite you to call yourself there too,
To visualize yourself and to say,
I release my attachment to who I think you should be and I accept you as you are.
I love you.
I love you as you are.
And lastly,
Call an image of the divine forth for you.
Allow whatever shows up to show up as I'm allowing what will show up for me and say,
I release my attachment to what I think you should be and I accept you as you are.
I love you as you are.
As I do this practice,
I feel any defenses around the heart begin to crumble and to fade so that I can live with a greater sense of intimacy with those I love,
Those I will love and that divine presence of life itself.
And so speaking a word of affirmative prayer,
What I know and declare for each of us who decide to be a part of this prayer today is a real love,
A true love,
Not lost in imaginations or fantasies that are unpragmatic or unrealistic,
But in the suit,
In the soil,
In the grist of the mill,
In the patience and even in the hurt feelings or the uncertainty that there is a divine and real love that is the most powerful love that there is.
And as I accept it for myself,
As I choose courageously to practice it towards others,
Even those who tick me off,
Even those I may feel separated or I've separated myself from,
I know that this divine love brings together and creates healing of body,
Of soul,
Of mind,
Of connections,
Of memories,
Of understandings and of future idealizations.
I know that there's a divine good right where I am,
Right as I am.
It is right where each of us is.
There is no greater power.
There is no greater love.
And we only need choose to say yes to it and to use it with clarity,
Conviction,
And the consciousness of the heart,
Freeing us from past judgments and allowing us to step into what the great is,
The great spirit has imagined for all of us to be and to become.
And so it is.
