{"id":18118,"date":"2019-06-18T09:38:38","date_gmt":"2019-06-18T13:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18118"},"modified":"2019-06-18T09:38:38","modified_gmt":"2019-06-18T13:38:38","slug":"laying-down-our-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18118","title":{"rendered":"Laying Down Our Life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Conscious Love<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cac.org\/laying-down-our-life-2019-06-18\/\"><strong>Laying Down Our Life<\/strong><\/a><br>\n<strong>Tuesday, June 18, 2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YzlCNh7d1v8\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p><em>Cynthia Bourgeault continues reflecting on authentic love, distinguishing it from infatuation or romance. She begins by sharing insights from Scottish psychiatrist Maurice Nicoll (1884\u20131953), offering a basis for understanding union within the Gospel framework. Nicoll suggests that laying down one\u2019s soul for our neighbor \u201cis the supreme definition of <\/em>conscious love<em>.\u201d Cynthia explains:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That is to say, through a life of conscious love\u2014the persistent practice of laying down one\u2019s life for the other, of the merging or union of wills in the effort to put the other first\u2014the conditions will gradually come about for the creation of one soul. As long as the life goes on, in a renewed union of wills, one may speak of one soul, \u201cfor the soul is the image of the life.\u201d [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This union of souls cannot be done out of sheer romanticism, that initial rush of erotic attraction that is all most of us ever know of love. It is not a product of attraction, but rather of purification: the commitment with which the partners adopt the spiritual practice of laying down their lives for each other\u2014facing their shadows, relinquishing old patterns and agendas, allowing all self-justification to be seen, brought to the light, and released. In other words, without a mutual and conscious commitment to bring one\u2019s human love into sympathetic vibration with the sacrificial and giving love that is the font of all creation, there is no union of wills or souls. The willingness to die, on whatever level, for the other\u2019s becoming is the practice that gradually transmutes erotic attraction into a force of holy fusion. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Love calls forth the reality of the beloved, and the act of loving calls forth our own most authentic and dynamic center. The result is a mutual thrust deeper and deeper into becoming, the unfolding of the wonder of each person. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If there is a secret to love\u2019s transforming power, surely it must lie in its uncanny ability to call forth who we truly are. \u201cLove always seeks the ultimately <em>real<\/em>,\u201d says [Beatrice] Bruteau [2]; it has an infallible knack for pushing though dim outer shells and inner dark places and bringing the essence of who we are into the light. Love always brings an increase in being, and it does so by giving us the courage and power to live out who we truly are. . . . Love actualizes essence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One fact that contemporary psychology has made eminently clear to us is that wholeness can come about only if we embrace the whole of ourselves\u2014not only what is highest in us, but the shadow as well. For majesty to grow in us, all must come to the light, both the dark parts of oneself that need healing and the light parts that need birthing. [3]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Conscious Love Laying Down Our Life Tuesday, June 18, 2019 Cynthia Bourgeault continues reflecting on authentic love, distinguishing it from infatuation or romance. She begins by sharing insights from Scottish psychiatrist Maurice Nicoll (1884\u20131953), offering a basis for understanding union within the Gospel framework. Nicoll suggests that laying down one\u2019s soul for our neighbor \u201cis [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18118"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18118"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18119,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18118\/revisions\/18119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}