Love Body

by Gregory Allen Butler

Today someone asked me if I knew of a tool that could be used to make it easier to listen to the voice of the heart when the mind talks so incessantly--when guilt and anxiety make it hard to experience satisfaction and peace. Two words immediately formed in my consciousness. "Love Body." This seemed to evoke a positive response. She said, "I like it, tell me more." What follows is my explanation, for the very first time, of these two words that were dropped into my lap, from what physicist David Bohm would call the enfolded universe.

The term "love body" can be looked upon in a similar but opposite way that Eckhart Tolle, in his book, The Power of Now, uses the term "pain body." For those of you not familiar with his use of "pain body" it can bel described as a negative energy field that exists in both the mind and the body. When we experience painful emotions such as grief, sorrow, humiliation, loss, scorn, shame, etc., they become stored in our consciousness and in our physical bodies as well.

Theses experiences may have happened 20 or 30 years ago, perhaps in a previous lifetime. But they are stored and added to previous pain. The pain body can be dormant or active. But when something in the present moment occurs of a similar energy level or resonance or in some way reminds us of the past pain, we are back in the old pain. The same old resentments might resurface, the same old grief, or the same old humiliation. The feelings are the same as when we first experienced them.

Eckhart Tolle described their effects as follows:

Some pain-bodies are obnoxious but relatively harmless, for example like a child who won't stop whining. Others are vicious and destructive monsters, true demons. Some are physically violent; many more are emotionally violent. Some will attack people around you or close to you, while others may attack you, their host.

When the pain body reappears, we have lost control of our thinking. The pain body has taken over. A whole new episode of depression could start over, despite the evidence that everything in life is now perfect. To the casual observer, the emotions of the subject make no sense. But emotionally, to the subject, they feel very real and debilitating.

My use of the term, "love body" works on the premise that our most powerful experiences of love are also stored in our minds and in our physical bodies, but as extremely positive energy fields. But unlike the pain body, which is binding, the love body, the accumulated imprints of past experiences of pure love, is liberating, and leads to experiences of love, joy, and bliss. The love body unties the knots of the binding pain body by bringing our consciousness back into alignment with our higher self. The flashlight of our consciousness is again turned on, which transmutes darkness into light. Unconsciousness is made conscious.

If you ever notice that you are in a mode of thought that is critical or negative, or that you're in a mode of thought that is filling you with stress, anxiety, or guilt, then activating the love body can help you transcend your thoughts, to get you back into the state of being connected to your source of being.

The process of activating the love body is as simple as turning on a light switch. You just have to be conscious enough to do it.

The importance of this process is that it gives the heart a chance to speak-to take control of the lectern back from the mind. And that gives us the opportunity to listen to the voice of the heart. And if we are listening to the voice of the heart, we are free of the voice of the mind, which wavers, and which lead us into doubts and worries. All confusion and stress comes from listening to the voice of the mind.

The mind and it patterns of our negative thinking can become so ingrained that they become addictions. The thoughts become our identity. This is very limiting.

The heart doesn't do this. And when I use the word heart here I'm referring to is the source of our being--the infinite depth of our consciousness that knows no limits, or death, or sorrow. It's life-confirming. It's expansive. It knows no fear. The heart is always there, available for us, but sometime, like the sun, clouds get in the way.

So how do we activate the love body, or get beyond the clouds that obscure it? Unlike our experience with the pain body, where something randomly triggers it, we deliberately activate it. If we can't do it by slowing down our minds and simply feel our inner source, we can do it by recalling memories, events, and stories that have touched us at the core of our being. But don't just recall the incident or story-write it down, or share it out loud with a loved one. Tell the story to your spouse, or your children, or write it in a letter and mail it to a friend. Whomever you share it with, you will be uplifting that person, too. That in itself is an expression of love.

Sometimes I am moved to tears when I tell stories that describe pure love. When that happens, my heart is open. My consciousness is no longer limited to the chatter of my mind. As the lyrics in the song go, "I can see clearly now, the rain is gone." I am back fully in the present moment, connected to the source of my being.

The stories don't even have to be about events that happened to me. They just have to be stories that have touched my heart--stories about love that resonates deeply within me. If you remember a movie that exemplified pure love, that perhaps brought tears to your eyes, watch it again. Life is Beautiful comes to mind for me. El Postino is another one.

When you are in that experience of retelling a story of pure love, your consciousness if affected. Your vibrational energy will calibrate much higher. For instance, if your mind was focused on thoughts of guilt or shame before this process (which calibrate at very low and unhealthy energy levels) you will now most likely be calibrating much higher in the realms of love and joy.

One way of looking at it is that it's an inner form of CPR to get the heart working again. And once it is, we can function as conscious human beings, making conscious choices. We no longer are the slaves to the mind, limited to the past and its phantom projections into the future, which are impossible to deal with. We have lifted our self out of the drainage ditch and can again see the sunshine. We are no longer the drunk staggering down an alleyway, we are the track star sprinting to the finish line.

Unlike the pain body, which is finite and destructible, the love body, because its source is from consciousness itself, exists eternally. The stories and experiences of love that have deep meaning for you have meaning because they are a reflection of the infinite love that pervades all existence. The stories are reflections of eternal truth. They will never lose their power. Even as your body grows old and weakens, the love body (the field of loving energy that pervades your body and your mind) will remain as strong as ever. As time goes on, it transmutes the pain body into itself-darkness into light, the finite into the infinite.

Even after your physical body is no more, it will still exist in your consciousness, which is inextinguishable.