What's love got to do with it?
How often do we allow ourselves to judge someone — even ourselves — without considering that we are consciousness ever expanding? We form an opinion of someone in a hard season, a bad moment, an old story, and then we keep carrying that opinion long after they've moved past it. An awakened heart is willing to look again. And again. As many times as it takes. It is willing to see the person standing in front of us today, not the version we filed away years ago.
So, what does it actually take to awaken the heart? I've come to believe it happens in two movements: first inward, then outward
The Inward Movement
Before love can move through us toward others, it must find room inside us. We cannot pour from a heart that is clenched, guarded, or full of old static. That happens through four practices:
We calm down. Most of us are running so fast and carrying so much noise that we've forgotten what our own center even feels like. Calming down isn't about doing nothing — it's about slowing ourselves enough to empty out the chatter and reconnect to that quiet place inside that never actually left, it just got buried. You cannot hear your own heart over the noise of a life lived at full volume.
We let the past go. This is not the same as pretending the past didn't happen, or rushing past pain that deserves to be felt. It's something more specific: we keep the lessons, but we release the old stories about how we got them. Carrying yesterday's wound into today's relationship isn't loyalty to your healing — it's just exhaustion wearing a familiar coat.
We enlighten ourselves. This is the work of raising our consciousness — and it looks different for every single one of us. For some it's study, for some it's prayer, for some it's simply paying closer attention to the patterns we keep repeating. Whatever the path, the purpose is the same: to respond to life from a place of love rather than reaction, while still powerfully co-creating in alignment with our highest path. It's a daily choice to see a little more clearly than you did yesterday.
We create abundance. We are each Creators at our core — not someday, not once we've earned it, but right now, at this moment. We can build the life we dream of on every level: emotional, spiritual, relational, material. This isn't about denying hardship or papering over real limitations. It's about remembering that abundance is built not despite our circumstances, but through how we choose to meet them.
The Outward Movement
Once the heart has room, love doesn't stay private. It moves outward into how we treat one another — into the texture of our actual, daily relationships. I have found the following eight qualities show us what a truly awakened heart looks like in relationship:
Attention: Neglect born of inattention damages relationships far more often than outright malice ever does. Most heartbreak doesn't come from cruelty — it comes from being looked past, day after day, until you start to wonder if you were ever really seen at all. Showing up, fully, with your phone down and your mind present, is itself an act of love. It costs nothing and it is everything.
Trust: The entire fabric of our life together — working, living, breathing alongside one another — rests on a subtle, inherent trust in each other's basic goodness. Without it, every interaction becomes a negotiation. With it, we can rest into one another. Trust is rarely lost in one dramatic moment; more often it erodes in small ones, and it is rebuilt the same slow way.
Honesty: Still, after everything, the best policy. Not the brutal kind that uses truth as a weapon, but the kind that simply refuses to build a relationship on a foundation that isn't real. Every small dishonesty we allow ourselves — the "it's fine" that isn't, the omission we tell ourselves doesn't count — quietly withdraws from a trust account we'll eventually need.
Loyalty: We stand by the people we love in their darkest moments — not because we want to stand in the dark with them, but because we don't want them standing there alone. Loyalty isn't agreement, and it isn't blind defense. It's presence that doesn't disappear when things get hard, which is exactly when presence matters most.
Acceptance: We appreciate our similarities and respect our differences — both, not just one. It is easy to love what mirrors us back to ourselves. It is harder, and far more important, to extend that same regard to what doesn't. Acceptance doesn't mean we abandon discernment; it means we stop requiring someone to become like us before we'll consider them worthy of love.
Forgiveness: Imagine if everyone you knew were equally willing to apologize and to receive an apology. Most of our relational pain lives in that gap — the apology withheld, or the one offered and refused. Forgiveness is your remedy — yours to offer, yours to receive — and it is one of the few medicines that heals the giver as much as the receiver.
Empathy: It is our shared pain, more than our shared joy, that connects us at the deepest level. We are all walking through something, even when it doesn't show. Treating each other with that knowledge — gently, without assumption, with room for what we cannot see — changes everything about how we move through the world together.
Self-Love: Relationships don't create joy — they reflect it. The joy was always meant to come from within first. We cannot offer attention, trust, honesty, loyalty, acceptance, forgiveness, and empathy from an empty well. Self-love fills the well so there is something real to give.
Coming Home to the Heart
Right now, wherever you are, bring your attention into your heart. Place your hand there and feel it — not just as an organ, but as the seat of something larger. Notice the subtle shift in your awareness, the quiet ground beneath fear, sorrow, anger, doubt.
This is the place we should pray from. This is the place we should speak from. This is the place we should live from.
Blessings on your journey,
Rev. Gayle
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