Loving with gratitude

The following is a recording message from Oprah and Deepak's "Manifest Grace through Gratitude".

According to Marianne Williamson, there are only 2 emotions in life: love and fear. When we open up love with gratitude, something miraculously happen. Fear starts to melt away. Love is life's great teacher. Through love, we experience joy, acceptance and freedom. Gratitude is not someone receives or responds to us, but rather about how we connect the true expressions of ourselves. When we choose to love everything around us, we send to clear message to the Universe: My love transcends fear, anger, and rejection. I love you even to those who hurts me because they are the persons who really need love most. I thank you for the experience, good or bad, which has shaped me who I am today. Loving fearlessly through gratitude is one of the greatest thing a human being can do.

Grace has been connected to love in every wisdom tradition. Sages and spiritual guides teach us that divine love doesn't have to be deserved. To a modern person, this seems to be unreasonable, because for most of us, we withdraw love when we are displeased. God, or whatever name applied to the 'High Power' seems to love bad people too. This is the central part of grace. The reason is that grace is not a choice. Whether or not, we believe in the Higher Power, grace exists in infinite field of consciousness. It is the supporting principle behind everything in nature. Including our lives. Clearly we can choose to think whatever we like, without nature's support, our body cannot exist for more than a few minutes. Spiritually, this support is called the divine love. We don't have to accept the word or the idea of divine to accept the basic idea here. Love is already a part of our awareness. We can choose to express it or not. To give a little love, or a lot. If we choose to give a lot, something magical happens. We become who we really are. This is one of the most joyful aspect of love, but also the most frightening for most people. We hold back the expression of love for fearing of being rejected, of seeming needy or weak, or exposing us our own insecurity or vulnerability. But nothing stops us from giving thanks to someone sharing our life. This act of gratitude gladdens the heart and awakens the grace in our life. Love is active when it is expressed. Gratitude simplifies love by removing the ego. The mother's love for a child with fearless appreciation of the child is the template for merging love with gratitude. Love is an expression of unity that we share with other people. Love means overcoming the feeling of separation. It brings us for completion that denies to the ego.