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Shifting Perceived Realities
What you perceive to be reality magnifies™ ... beca lewis

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FOR THE LOVE OF GOD
by Beca Lewis © 2/2008

When words are spoken some people see pictures.  I am one of those people. When I was a child I was often taken aback by what people said because it translated immediately into a literal visual expression.

Sometimes it was funny, and sometimes it scared me.  The saying, “Catch you later” always invoked the picture of me flying through the air to be caught by the other person - later.  It always gave me a “start” until I collected myself and realized they didn’t mean it literally.

When I was about eleven I was walking through the living room while a TV show played in the background.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone on the TV sneaking around a barrier with a rifle, and the announcer said, “You asked for it!”

“Whoa,” I was stunned. What had I done that meant I had asked to be stalked by a man with a rifle?  Of course I realized in a second or two it was TV and they weren’t talking to me, but it made quite an impression.

Words are what make up our thoughts and we all know the importance of paying attention to what we are thinking. But we often hear words or phrases and don’t really take the time to know what we are hearing or saying.

Sometimes we are misled by our own impulses, like mine to see literal pictures, but often it is because we are so used to hearing something we don’t stop to "see" what it really means.

Which brings me to the phrase, “For The Love Of God.”  This phrase popped into my head as I thought about Valentines Day. I was thinking how we take one day a year to express our love, but wouldn’t it be great if everyday was about Love, for the Love of God.

Yet, as I heard that phrase I realized that it is usually said from one person to another with a phrase following it that says something like, “Why don’t you pay attention,”  “ Can’t you be more like your sister?” “ Don’t you have any sense?” 

But, when we say “For The Love Of God What Is Wrong With You!” aren’t we missing something?  Wouldn’t the Love Of God be more about “ For The Love Of God Do You Know How Wonderful You Are? Or even more accurately said, “As The Love Of God Do You Know That You Are The Loved Of Love?”

The bathroom night-light was not lighting up. Since there was only one outlet in the bathroom I had a plug with six outlets plugged into it, and of course the night-light was taking up one of those outlets.

I removed the six-outlet plug and reset the one outlet.  We checked the fuses, which were fine.  So I plugged the six-outlet plug back in and tested the night light.  Nope didn’t work.  I tried all six outlets, nope didn’t work.

My conclusion?  That the six-outlet plug was broken so I threw it away.  Then I replaced the bulb in the night light for good measure and plugged it back in.  Didn’t work. Tried it in every outlet in the house, and it still didn’t work.

It took me way too long to realize that my original conclusion was wrong.  There was nothing wrong with the six-out plug; it was the night-light itself that was broken.

The phrase, “For The Love Of God” is not broken so there is no need to throw it away. It is the many other phrases that we tack onto it that make it appear to not work.

If we could say to ourselves these words, “With every task I undertake, for the love of God I do this,” and then replaced the word “God” into a quality of God to match the task, then wouldn’t Love be the order of the day?

“For the love of Beauty I clean my house.  For the love of Order I balance my checkbook. For the love of Innocence I protect my children.”

With variations of the phrase, “For The Love of God,” as our mantra, every day would be about and for Love. We could celebrate this fact with hearts, flowers and candy once a year, but every day would be “For The Love Of God.” Imagine where our thoughts would be then, and what a difference that would make.

Shifting With You!

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*Article by Beca Lewis, MA, CFP and author of Living in Grace: The Shift to Spiritual Perception. Visit http://www.theshift.com/ez.html for content on The Shift®. Reprint permission granted with this footer included.

Read Beca's Book: Living in Grace: The Shift to Spiritual Perception