Today, I’ve been working on the final edit of the manuscript for Life Loves You. Christopher has been playing in my office with his new tractor. He’s so happy. “It’s the best tractor in the universe, Dad,” he tells me. His old tractor sits on my desk now, next to the angel Bo gave me and the picture of Christ holding the lantern. Hollie and I are still amazed at how this picture appeared in our home.
This morning I was thumbing through my copy of You Can Heal Your Life. I was checking a quote for accuracy. It’s a well-worn copy, several years old now, and I’ve only just noticed that Louise has inscribed it. The inscription reads, “Remember, ‘life loves you.’ Tee Hee. Love to Robert. Louise Hay.” The Tee Hee is underlined for emphasis. Why did Louise write Tee Hee? I wonder. Did she know something I didn’t? I smile in gratitude for the journey we have taken together.
My sciatica has healed now. I am free of “sensations,” as Louise puts it. My physiotherapist gave me a clean bill of health a few weeks ago. The timing of the sciatica was symbolic. It began just a few days before I started to write this book. Another coincidence! In You Can Heal Your Life, Louise describes the probable cause of sciatica as hypocrisy. When I looked closely at this, I found the place in me where I believe that life loves me, but I also found shadows, doubts, fears, cynicism, and unworthiness.
Life Loves You is a big inquiry. Louise and I took our dialogue as far as we could together. And there’s more to go, for both of us. In a recent conversation, Louise told me, “I still get afraid, and sometimes I doubt that life loves me, but it happens less now. I know, deep down, that a fear is only a fear and not the truth. When I find a fear, I meet it with love. And I remind myself that life is not judging me or rejecting me. Life loves me.”
This book is nearly finished, but it feels like the inquiry has just begun. Each of us has a self-image, an ego, that we hope is loveable, but egos are full of holes. These holes hide buried fears and doubts, and they cast a shadow on the world as we see it. Life loves you asks us to dig deep, to excavate the ground of our being, where our true nature lives. Here is our buried treasure. Here is where we meet our Unconditioned Self. This is the Self that life loves.
An inquiry on love is infinite by its nature. Soon Louise and I will work on the online program for Life Loves You. We’ll create a Life Loves You card deck, full of spiritual practices and affirmations. We’ll also post a series of interviews on the Heal Your Life website. These offerings will help to take the inquiry even deeper.
The more we let life love us, the more we can be the person we truly are. The inner work, then, is to dissolve the blocks to love and to keep on doing so until only love remains. Love is our true nature. Love is how we express our heart. Love is our soul’s purpose. We are here to love the world. We are here to choose love over fear. This is our gift to ourselves and to each other.
