Open your heart to love’s free flow
By giving love to those you know!

To receive more love give it away more generously.  That’s one of love’s mysteries.  As a lively and nurturing in its dynamics as a wilderness stream, love must be shared to be enjoyed.  We have the capacity to allow love to stream through us vivaciously but have lost touch with that elegant dimension of ourselves.  Because modern society teaches us to hide our hearts to protect our most sensitive feature, we learn to hide from love as we learn to fear its untamable qualities.  Hiding from love stifles its dynamics and dams up its flow.  In the absence of love’s natural flow, we stiffen our resolve to survive and forget how to thrive.  Our hearts become embattled by fears when they could be embraced by love.  To enjoy more love we must unlearn fear’s lessons and open up the channels through which love flows and grows.  Learning to re-open of our hearts to love’s flow is the purpose of the Gift of Love.

Be and Live as a Tree Planted along the River of Love

If love is a stream of energy flowing constantly to empower us to experience lives filled with love, how do we tap into this powerful stream?  One picture to have in mind to help answer the “how” question is a tree.  Trees put down roots into the soil to draw up water and the nutrients they need that flow within the water.  The roots draw up water only to the extent that the leaves release water into the air.  Release of water into the atmosphere is called “transpiration.”  (Read more about this cycle at Transpiration Water Cycle.)  The release of water into the air creates a change in pressure within the tree that causes water to be lifted upward from the roots.

Humans are like trees in the way we draw love into us and release love from us.  That is why we must give love away to draw more love to us.  As we give it away, love flows through us from the Source of Love within us.  Generous giving creates generous receiving.  Do you recognize the Golden Rule?  Ha, ha!  It works!

As we learn to put down roots into the realm of love within the core of our beings, we naturally draw more love into us to share with others in the social atmosphere around us.  My educational services teach how to replant or transplant your life’s orientation into this inner realm of love.  I will help you put down roots there, learn how to nurture yourself as a “tree of love” and share yourself in the world’s social environment from this changed perspective.

This is the change in perspective or orientation toward which all paths of faith in a benevolent Supreme Being by whatever name addressed and all forms of positive spirituality point.  It’s a change that is universally available to each of us by exercise of free will.  No matter how strongly our wills may seem to have become chained by fear to conform to the world’s love-stifling ways, we can learn to set them free by studying the truth about love.  As each of us become trees planted in the river of love, together we create a forest of love that invites all others to join us.  This forest is the field that the Sufi poet Rumi had in mind when he wrote “Out beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field.  I will meet you there.”  That’s the field of study I invite you to join me in mastering.  If this is the change you want to see in the world, you can learn to be it, as Gandhi encouraged us to be.

Lessons that Liberate All of Us to Share Love

It may sound strange, but it’s true.  Most of us learn as children, teens and young adults to hide from love because we’ve been hurt too much by risks we’ve taken to love others or allow them to love us.  Early in life we are more spontaneous about love and take risks without even knowing that we are taking risks.  We allow our hearts to be open and vulnerable because that’s the orientation in which we give our love away most courageously and compassionately.  Yet heartfelt openness and vulnerability is also the orientation in which we can receive the most pain.  So, to defend against receiving pain, we learn to limit how open and vulnerable we allow our hearts to be.  Eventually many of us simply learn to keep the walls around our hearts well fortified and create obstacles in the way of love as if we’ve protected our hearts behind a minefield through which few dare to pass.  We install tripwires and hair-trigger alarms that cause love to be diverted from us just as we hunger most to receive it more generously.

As a result of our earlier training, we can become lonely without meaning to make loneliness our normal experience.  We don’t do it purposefully, as if we mean to become isolated and alone.  It’s just a side effect of our protective training.  When, as is true, most people learn to accept loneliness as an unspoken norm or standard as if there’s really no alternative, lonely people hunt for love but cannot find it because they no longer trust themselves and others to share it. Trust becomes The Issue.  Love is right here inside of us hungering to be found and shared, but our well-trained habits of mistrust prevent us from finding and sharing it.  Fortunately, we have the power to purposefully undo this training and open our lives to the natural flow of love again.

My Gift of Love lessons will help you or anyone you choose to unlearn the distrustful mental habits and beliefs that make up a person’s mind-field and walls of resistance to love’s flow.  My method is simple.  I teach the concepts and tools by which love is set free and you practice them as you enjoy the results they provide.  Many of the concepts and tools I share are posted on this web site as my Heartbook of Healing Wisdom.  You are welcome to access and consult this heartbook any time.  My lessons, classes, workshops and presentations will help you and others make more complete and artful use of these basic materials.  You’ll enjoy the adventure of love’s renewing journey as you practice using the concepts and tools you acquire.

My heartbook is the simple text of a curriculum by which love is set free after being held prisoner in our hearts for so long.  As your Gift of Love to yourself and anyone you choose, you can liberate yourself and others to no longer be prisoners behind fear’s bars.  If it helps, think of my tools as prison-break tools – the file, shovel, pick-ax and saw by which you help yourself and others cut the bars, burrow though the walls and dismantle the mind-field on our shared way to freedom to love and be loved in return.

Love’s Lessons Taught in Many Ways

• For Individuals, Couples and Families of All Kinds

I offer love’s lessons in many formats.  I can teach one or more people in private sessions.  This approach often appeals to singles, couples and families.  I will teach in my home, your home or anywhere we can share a suitable environment for conversation and talking heart to heart.  It is often helpful that we meet wherever you feel most comfortable so that your mind is at ease and your heart is open to receive the benefit of our time together.  We can meet on your schedule with whatever frequency suits you and anyone else you invite to participate.

• For Dinners, Parties and Social Gatherings

I can present my materials to groups as part of any social gathering where people are interested in stimulating topics and in discovering something of benefit.  Perhaps you’d like to surprise your guests with more than entertainment by giving them the Gift of Love as your expression of gratitude and esteem for their friendship.  In these settings, my presentations are light-hearted while still remaining meaningful.  Your guests will appreciate the generosity you’ve shown them when you share the Gift of Love.

• For Religious, Civic, Service and Community Organizations

I can teach in classes and workshops held in your home, in back rooms of restaurants, coffee shops, art galleries or other businesses, or at any organization in which people might value learning about love.  For example, I can teach one or more classes in a religious, civic, service or community organization to augment the regular curriculum or experiences of its participants.  My materials are compatible with many approaches to personal growth and positive community development.  Sharing the Gift of Love with volunteers by offering a class or workshop is a meaningful way to reward volunteers for their service.  Staff retreats can also include the Gift of Love as one of the benefits you provide.  I can custom fit my presentations to all audiences, settings and time frames.

• Inspirational Presentations, Talks and Keynote Addresses

Another way to give the Gift of Love is to arrange for me to present my concepts as a motivational talk or keynote address.  My presentations will stir up the energy of love within the audience, allowing for peace, hope and joy to increase within the hearts of all who participate.  I will integrate my presentation with the vision and mission around which the audience has gathered to ensure that the power of love renews the audience’s commitment to the cause that unites them and renews their enthusiasm for participating fully in their achievement of its goals.

Innovative Opportunities to Share the Gift of Love

Ways to share the Gift of Love are as varied as a creative imagination can conceive.  Listen to your heart.  If you sense the desire to create a unique opportunity for sharing the Gift, please contact me.  We can put our hearts and minds together to create the perfect gift your heart desires to give.  In the circle of life, as we creatively give love away, love flows back to us as surely as the sun returns to the sky each morning no matter how dark the night may seem.  By giving the Gift of Love, we are simply cooperating with the Golden Rule to grace everyone, including ourselves, with more love.

Copyright Art Nicol 2014