Love, Clarified


Meditate every day for thirty—no, sixty—days, and your whole life will look different.

So spoke Barbara Sanson, who has run the healing temple at Lily Dale Assembly for twenty-six years, at a workshop entitled “Spiritual Healing.” Many of us imagined we were there for the “how to” details of “doing” healings, but the logistical method was unimportant, Barbara said, compared to the intention of the healer. We needed to understand with body, mind, and soul, that all healing comes from an intention of love. She had written on an easel:

My love is a healing force in the world.

I believe the depth and clarity of that intention dictates the depth and clarity of the healing.

What is meant by “love”? About 15 years ago, I had a vision of becoming a therapist and starting a healing center with a sliding scale for people of every income. At that time, though, my human understanding of love was sinewed with beliefs from childhood that I was responsible for the life and health of my mother. I believe I confused love with “saving”—not a healthy underpinning for therapy! My soul, of course, knew exactly what a love, clarified, looked like; like all souls, mine was wholly of this love: the kind of love I think we use meditation to remember; the kind of love that instantly sloughs off memory of an argument, that wishes only to return to connection, wholeness, oneness.

Just before the blessed evening I had luxuriously earmarked for writing this post, I had an unexpected argument with a loved one. By the end, I was full of anger, mostly that my quiet writing time had been “taken away.” I have many arguments with this beloved soul mate, and “all the things I should’ve said” frequently rankle between my ears and needle into my heart like tiny worms.

But lately, less so. I have taken to retreating upstairs and meditating before the dragon in me turns our house into a scorched earth. I call on angels, which is a new part of my practice, and ask that “my heart return to love” for the person. Almost immediately, the presence of angels around me issues a rush of potent healing vibration penetrating the holy vessel of my body: all the stopped up, ego-based hostility evacuates the long cylinders of my limbs and moves on to my torso and heart. Like changing the oil in a car, and with no carbon footprint, the light of awareness floods into all that newfound spaciousness. My mind sees almost immediately how I have been defensive, or (in the extremely rare case that I haven’t been acting the part of an untamed dragon), I see what my beloved needs and the resistance to giving it ceases.

That, I think, is the love Barbara Sanson was talking about. While it is natural to us, it doesn’t come “naturally”—at least, not for me.

I do know a few people who walk this earth perpetually inhabiting that clarified love. Some of them are part of the OMA board. Some of them have been or will be OMA speakers.

Clarified love, like clarified butter: a love that shines all light through.

A love that clarifies us through its light.

A love freed of the deposits of memory: negative beliefs, long-held fears.

I have to consciously remember this state of awareness and enlist the help of angels to return to it. I will say it has become a very quick transition, lately, because I followed Sanson’s advice, which bears repeating:

Meditate every day for thirty—no, sixty—days, and your whole life will look different.

I offer you this suggestion, if you would like to meditate. If you, like me, are excited by the idea that your whole life might look different:

Meditate for thirty—no, sixty days, and report back the changes in your comments below. Or report back your experiences in an email to us. We’d love to hear from you.