What is there to speak of but love? You talk enough among yourselves about everything under the sun but not enough about love. No matter how you yearn for love, somehow it is not quite the topic of the day, as if love were surreptitious, something thought of but not to be spoken of in polite society.

Complaints about love seem to be acceptable. Love turned out not quite admirably, and that is considered worthy of discussion. Broken hearts are timely. Pain resulting from love is extolled, as if your great love meant great hurt.

But, beloveds, there is no pain with love. There is no loss of love. There is pain with loss of ego. There is loss of all that you thought a particular love meant to you. You thought you could not live without a particular avenue of love. And yet you do. Withdrawal of love is not love. You are capable of continuing to love regardless of what is accorded to you. Do you begin to see that your impression of love, both pro and con, is not quite what you thought. Or, We can say, it is only what you thought, no more, no less.

Of course, love itself takes precedence over your thoughts but you do not always know that.

Do I love you less when you may have withheld love from Me? What matters to Me is that I love, and I can do nothing else but love. How would I ever increase love by denying it, waiting for a return before I would deign or dare to give it? Love is not a choice for Me. Or, We can say that it is My only choice. There is no other choice on earth or in Heaven.

That is also the case for you. You think love is something for you to decide and where and how much of it should be meted out. Every time you try not to love, you suffer. This suffering tells you that you are contracting love, and that love is not meant to be contracted.

You speak a lot of unconditional love but you are most familiar with part and parceled love. When there are any conditions to love, for instance — that you must be loved equally or first, or that your loved one must give as you give or more perhaps but not less, or that the love must be shown according to your preference or decision, that love must appear as you imagine it must, that love must adhere to your thoughts of it, that love is to be gained, that love is to be proven, that love is to follow your ordained rules, that love is to be counted, or any of your beliefs that love is fleeting, that love comes with a price, that love belongs to the young and illusioned, that love is bartered, that love is assigned, that love is momentous when love is what life is made of right along.

I will tell you what love is. It is a state of consciousness. It is the window you look from. It is your view of life when you let nothing else interfere. But, of course, you let appearances interfere all the time.

You, My beautiful children, wear disguises of non-love all the time. Such studied disguises. Such fronts of uncaringness. Beloveds, you have fooled yourself mightily. Disarm yourself now from anything less than love.

You are capable of loving all of creation. You are capable of loving the oases and deserts. You are capable of loving the dark and the light. You are capable of loving the beasts of the jungle and the pets at your feet. You are capable of loving the lilies of the field, and you are capable of loving Me. You are capable, though rusty, at loving yourself. But the thing is: it matters not whom or what you love. It matters that you allow yourself to love and to love boundlessly. Simply love, and your heart will be open and peace will reign on earth as it is in Heaven.