In early 2015, I attended a Sacred Esoteric Healing Level 3 workshop presented by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine. I have attended this workshop many times before and every time I gain enormously and learn a lot.
One of the very empowering things that we develop in Sacred Esoteric Healing Level 3, is a deeper connection to our essence, and an understanding of the specific ways we express from our essence.
At one point we looked at how each of us would express “I love you”. It was presented that for many of us it is not a natural thing to express it in the form of only speaking the three words “I love you”, but we do so because we grow up learning this is what is expected and needed from friends and family to say it in that way.
Because it is not our naturally complete form of expression, even when we speak the words our loved ones do not receive all the love and feelings we are wanting to truly communicate to them, the three words are essentially only expressing or capturing a part of what our whole body is otherwise wanting to express from deeper within. In another example, often we can express our love in a gesture or simple action, instead of words, and our partners don’t recognise it, as they are looking to hear it or see it in a way they have been conditioned to receive it, and so, love-expressions can be missed or misunderstood.
It is very joyful to feel and acknowledge the many beautiful ways we can share and receive love with others.
This morning I was on my daily walk with my gorgeous husband Christoph when it started to rain. I was feeling a little tired and not able to walk very fast. As soon as it started to rain he insisted on giving me his hat to protect me. Then when the rain got heavier Christoph took off… ran ahead, went home, got the car and came zooming back to pick me up… even though by then I was only about 3 minutes away from home, enjoying the walk and the rain had stopped!
What I felt was his humongous love and how he wanted to take care of and protect his precious wife. To my ears this was Christoph shouting ‘I LOVE YOU’ from the rooftops with a megaphone. So of course I joyfully got in the car to be with this beautiful loving man.
I then imagined another scenario where I could have responded with anger and said ‘why did you run off?’ I could have said ‘you idiot I am almost home now, I want to keep walking and it is not even raining’. Then I would have missed out big time and he could have felt rejected, then reacted to that hurt and we would have missed that beautiful moment and might even have ended up having a fight.
It also occurred to me that many wars and fights could well (or rather unwell) come out of people not being open to love in its many forms and expressions and how completely crazy that is!
The more I am open to love and allow myself to receive it and express it, the more I see it everywhere… in myself, in others and in nature. I then start to see more clearly how everyone is pure love in essence, and when not expressing in this way it is because they are in reaction and protecting a hurt or imagined hurt – perhaps even from long, long ago.
Love is such a fascinating subject because it is ultimately something we all want but really all already are!
If you are interested in the energetic meaning of love, I highly recommend Unimedpedia Love which contain many beautiful quotes and free audio excerpts and can be accessed by clicking this link.
By Nicola Lessing, Business Woman, Goonellabah and published with permission of my husband, Christoph.
Further Reading:
Expressing Love: I Love You
The Highest Form of Intelligence is Love
Trusting Our True Voice and Expression
Love can’t be captured in any words or form, as it’s endless and doesn’t respond to any picture
Michelle we are not taught the truth of true love, we are immersed instead into an emotional soup of false love and so the cycle repeats, generation after generation, fueled all the while by books, stories, films, songs, poems, a regurgitation of emotions so that is all we know and understand. But it is not the truth. It has taken someone who knows the truth inside out and back to front so there is no wriggle room for excuses to remind humanity what true love is so that at least there is a choice to return to our true nature or to stay in the emotional soup.
Nicola you have said it all with these words
‘Love is such a fascinating subject because it is ultimately something we all want but really all already are!’
And to be honest I have to wonder why it is that I stubbornly refuse to love myself even though I know I am a son of God I can feel there is a part of me that does not want to admit I made a mistake by choosing to enjoin a consciousness that keeps us all in the separation to God this makes no sense at all. But then why we decided in the first place to live in separation to the vibration of God makes no sense either I would say we have invented or created our own hell.
OH SL
“I highly recommend Unimedpedia Love,” because as like all words that empower us “Love” as in the temporal usage has many meanings so it is important to feel the true meaning that serves everyone equally and leaves no one behind, so Unimed Living (as in Unimedpedia) gives us many words that will evolve us when these words are truly used as it is shared on this web site.
So go to, LOVE at;
http://www.unimedliving.com/voice/whats-on-in-the-world/when-you-say-i-love-you-does-it-come-with-love.html
“Love is such a fascinating subject because it is ultimately something we all want but really all already are!”
Yes so true – and when we surrender and feel that love inside we are a love bomb to all we meet.
The only “bomb” that we should be making!
Finding True-Love as opposed to emotionally (E) attached (A) love (L) is universes apart and even having the two in the same sentence can not deliver the vast difference for EAL is slippery and actually has zero, zilch, none and not one iota of True Love!
Love comes from our movements and when you rush off so you can share a ride no amount of energy could take away from this True gesture of Love..
I know, a bit crazy really, we all really want love, and yet we are love, ‘Love is such a fascinating subject because it is ultimately something we all want but really all already are!’
Absolutely Michelle, finding True Love is simply removing what is not Love, so expanding what you have shared, our inner-hearts are full of Love.
“The more I am open to love and allow myself to receive it and express it, the more I see it everywhere… in myself, in others and in nature.” A beautiful invitation to feel the boundless love of the Universe.
Yes and often the most loving act can be in not doing something!
We all express love in different ways, and so it is important to be open to receiving love in whatever way it is shared, ‘The more I am open to love and allow myself to receive it and express it, the more I see it everywhere… in myself, in others and in nature. I then start to see more clearly how everyone is pure love in essence’.
It is strange to think that despite many couples communicating “I love you” to each other many times during their time together even in some cases each and every day, they are most likely still holding back love! Yes that’s right! And this causes a massive tension in the relationship because despite the fact of how much they love each other being known, it is not felt or lived on the level that it otherwise could be.
This is because we hold back on truly loving and appreciating ourselves and receiving love (God) which is an energy that is constant and available to all of us everywhere. We cannot share and express what it is we do not live otherwise it is just empty words.
So beautifully shared Nicola. Love in its true expression is always felt in the quality of movements through the vibration that is impulsing those movements or expression. For as you say the words ‘I love you’ may suggest love but the quality behind these words when expressed is what is truly being communicated and the truth is words are not even needed to express true love.
HI Carola, as you know you are my favourite singer and the quality and vibration of your voice is pure heaven (love) so you are well qualified to say and sing what you have shared.
I loved re-reading this and what occurred to me was that sometimes the words I want to express seem inadequate to what I feel inside about someone.
How lovely to come across your comment and read this blog on 14th August 2018 which is the 25th Anniversary of my marriage to Christoph. You are right there are no words to express the love and appreciation I have for this gorgeous man and what we are able to live and share together not just for us but everyone.
‘Love is such a fascinating subject because it is ultimately something we all want but really all already are!’ It is only when we realise that we are already love and feel that in our bodies that we can start to really let go of the needs and wants around being loved by someone else.
When my husband puts the chair in place for me to sit down for each night time meal, I can feel the love in that simple gesture, words are not necessary for in that loving action love is felt within my body.
The more I connect with the love I am and live it, the more I realise that expressing love is more about the way I live than the words I say.
Yes well said – I agree Joshua. I am also experiencing that the more we live in connection to love the more our everyday living is enriched with many moments of communicating and making love.
Sometimes we can be challenged to accept gestures of love. We become unsettled and look to create issues instead of surrendering and going deeper with what is in front of us and accepting that in full, not needing to dull it or play it down.
Isn’t it strange how abuse has become normalised in our society but we are uncomfortable with true love!!!
Sometimes love can be shared in a way that says “I ain’t going to let you continue to be in a low/grumpy mood” simply by someone saying nothing at all but listening.
That raises a GREAT point in that love has many ways to express including pulling us up when we are not in our fullness. Pulling up in this manner is one of the greatest forms of love and one that all too often is resisted and rejected as being not loving!
Yes, love has many ways of expressing, I witnessed this pulling up yesterday, a strong and very clear delivery.
The message delivered in Unimedpedia is one of clarity and truth and realigns so much of what has been put forward as truth in this world
I really love this, it is the gestures in every day life that are so important. When someone shows an act of love in this way, I am deeply touched by it. I recently came home from a trip and someone had a meal cooked waiting for me, exactly how I liked it, this was everything for me, I was deeply touched by it.
Yes I had exactly the same experience last week when Christoph washed, peeled and stir fried a huge batch of spring onions for me to have in the fridge for the week because he knows my eyes sting when I prepare them. I could feel the immense love in how he did it and it made them taste even more delicious.
My three favourite cooking ingredients are love, chilli and lemongrass – with love being the most delicious and nourishing by a long shot.
Every loving expression is worth appreciating in full and this is made possible when we get our ideals, expectations and beliefs out of the way.
Yes, not only do our ideal, expectations and beliefs get in the way but they are not even ours in the first place!
There are a million ways to say I love you without uttering a word, and there are also a million other ways to express love with the openness of our voice and our full beholding of another.
I completely agree although maybe would change it from a million ways to infinite!!! There is no limit to love.
One of the key parts, I reckon, to any relationship, is knowing how the other person understands love in communication. Because this opens up a whole world of intimacy and grace between you, and the opportunity for a new language to be learnt – the language of love in relationship.
Rain has cleared the decks so the love can rain down on us all, and the love that you have shared has rained upon us all, so what a blessing Nicola.
Love is a fascinating subject, and the true meaning should really be understood. And yes, as Nicola expresses to get to the truth of love ❤️ the energetic meaning should be defined. Love is equally expressed to all blood family or not — if you love your mum more than your neighbour it is not love your referring to. You see how vitally important it is to know what love is and what it is not so a One-Unified truth can be grounded.
Part of my job is to visit people in their homes. A lot of the time I am offered a drink. I feel this is something that is very loving and supportive and a way that people welcome me into their home. It’s a very rare event that I don’t feel welcomed and feel at home. We say “I love you” in many different ways and to many many people not just those who we may happen to be in relationship with.
I have also noticed how people might come up to me and say strange things but really they are just trying to find something to say because they are wanting to connect and say hello. If I connect to the intention and what they are really wanting to say and not the words then there is a potential for a lovely connection whereas if I just focussed on the words there would more likely be a disconnection!
I’m blessed to know Christoph and his ways of expressing love are many and varied. They often don’t fit the picture of what society may have dictated is how to say I love you and that is one of Christoph’s great qualities – he doesn’t buy into anything society dictates. He chooses to express qualities in their true form.
I have found that when there is love, there need not even be any action accompanying that love, just the presence is already very substantial.
Yes the presence of love is very substantial indeed – such a beautiful holding energy.
Beautiful Jill and yes receiving is very important and something many of us have more difficulty with. We can’t really “give” love as we all already are love but we can let it out and in so to speak.
Gorgeous sharing Nicola, love comes in many ways and forms, being open to feeling it and accept it brings great joy both to the giver and receiver. I call it love in action when my husband shows me with his loving ways.
After reading this I am curious about the ways in which love can be expressed beyond my pictures of loving gestures.
It can be a presence – your photo is expressing love, just showing your head and your hat.
We can express love when we look into the eyes of another or into our own eyes when we truly see the reflection of ourselves in a mirror.
Yes it is gorgeous to look in the mirror and see love and joy reflected.
It makes sense that something as big as love cannot be contained fully in or only expressed by the words “I love you”, and is expressed by our whole body in many ways including the way someone does the dishes. Thank you Nicola as this has really expanded the expression of love. And if love is who we are, as we learn to live from this energy all of our everyday activities can be done in the expression of love
Nothing is as sexy as a man doing the dishes 😉
Yeah, I completely get this – the over and above feeling that comes when tenderness and care is shown. When no words needs to be spoken, because it is all being expressed through the actions of another. And taken out to a grander scale, as you have done, how incredible would world relations be if countries and religions communicated with each other through their neighbourly activities much more than the words written, spoken and proclaimed.
Love can be expressed in so many ways but how often do we discount the less obvious gestures and leave the other person feeling crushed. So many misunderstandings could be avoided if we were more open about accepting love in all its many and varied forms.
It can be very hurtful to reject caring gestures, but love when truly expressed is complete and does not need or expect anything and therefore is not crushed.
Love is indeed a full body experience that has nothing to do with our thoughts or our needs
It is in the smallest details that the ripple effect of our love for another can be shared.
Nicola I love this blog and the fact it highlights to us the many different ways in which love can be expressed. Also love love love the link to Unimedpedia – now we are talking the real deal.
I love how you bring a greater depth of understanding of who we are and how we interact with each other. As you have so wisely shared – ‘Love is such a fascinating subject because it is ultimately something we all want but really all already are!’ This is such a valuable message for us all to consider. For our words and movements are the end result of a quality of energy we are aligning to, and so words alone are not what is expressing what we are feeling, it is what we are connecting to. When we know love for ourselves first we can feel whenever we are met with the presence of love.
When we express with love and it is rejected eg. not wanting to hear and understand what has been said it becomes clear there is an underlying hurt and they are in reaction. Observing the hurts that arise within me and dealing with them and observing the behaviours others can go into to protect their hurts when love is expressed is helping me to have understanding and therefore less likely to react. It can be very interesting what can play out to dismiss and avoid love.
The essence of Love is the essence of humanity, and the essence of humanity is Divinity… we are Love … we are Divine
Love is endless, boundless and has no limits, its funny how then we can try and box it, and own it missing out on the true glory or real love.
I like that and it is so true – imagine trying to put the universe in a box!
Our loving actions can on so many levels speak volumes of our love for another and the world around us.
It was as clear as day when my husband was lovingly thinking of me and my food choices when I dismissed the love that was on offer. I could feel the rejection in my body because of how I was feeling from choices well before that moment. What was interesting was I had allowed myself to feel it and it stopped me in my tracks!
“The more I am open to love and allow myself to receive it and express it, the more I see it everywhere… in myself, in others and in nature. .” Beautifully expressed Nicola. Being love ourselves, and thus reflecting this out, enables others to be love with us too.
Great blog on love, thank you Nicola, I know I have lived my life thinking that helping, caring, fixing was the way to show love, I feel now how yucky that was, a perversion of what love truly is, “Love is such a fascinating subject because it is ultimately something we all want but really all already are!” I don’t have to do love, I can be love and bring it out in my expression of truth harmony joy and stillness in my living.
Loved reading this again. It is true just saying the words ‘I love you’ can be coming without true lived love as well as another gesture could be containing so much love even though it is not the ‘famous’ words being expressed.
I do it all – express it in many ways, looks, movements and gestures and also say “I love you” because that often bursts out of me too 🙂
I love that Nicola ‘burst out of me too’, that is how true love is expressed it so deeply felt that it just bursts out!
Love is always . We just have to keep on opening to it and confirming it as you have here Nicola. It is so simple, the more love we allow the more love we feel.
My husband used to buy me flowers often. I didn’t realise it at the time but it was a way of saying ‘I love you’. The flowers got too much and I asked him to stop buying them! Essentially I realise now what I was actually saying was ‘no more expressing love to me… I can’t handle it!’ The many choices I made to push away love which now I am beginning to embrace and re-imprint.
I’m not really a flower in a vase person so I would probably have let him know and feel that I had accepted and appreciated him, his love and his offering but moving forward gently let him know that I didn’t need any more flowers as he was my flower.
Lovely to read this Nicola, and I have been exploring this very subject myself of late and have come to realise the many little ways in which my husband shows his love without saying the words. Having watched videos on Unimed Living presented by Annette and Gabrielle which have been very helpful, here is the link http://www.unimedliving.com/search?keyword=annette
Beautiful sharing Nicola. What are the words of love if not empty if not embodied and lived?
Gorgeous Nicola. People express love in an infinite number of ways and the more open to receiving the love we are the more likely we are to be able to receive these expressions.
“The more I am open to love and allow myself to receive it and express it, the more I see it everywhere… in myself, in others and in nature. I then start to see more clearly how everyone is pure love in essence, and when not expressing in this way it is because they are in reaction and protecting a hurt or imagined hurt – perhaps even from long, long ago.” Such beautiful understanding about love – thank you Nicola.
The beauty about expressing love is that when times are tough or hard, it then becomes much easier to again express love, or even to express love throughout the tough or hard times.
I love you Christoph and would marry you any day and every day if I was not already married to you… and now that I write this I realise I do actually choose to marry and be married to you every day 🙂 and every day it is a joy to be with you <3
“Love is such a fascinating subject because it is ultimately something we all want but really all already are!” So true Nicola. When we connect to our inner-most essence we can feel we are already all that we were seeking.
Absolutely gorgeous blog Nicola, with a message that is very important. I am in a relationship and I know how easy it can be to choose the reaction instead of understanding and love. Ultimately I feel it is about a choice to accept love in our lives and that we are worth it to be joyful and not bitter, hurt and struggling. Also, to make not our own pictures the most important thing but making it about love and what act will lead to this coming together in love. If that is giving up our picture it is well worth it.
In the past I would probably have baulked at a gesture like this in trying to show that I was capable. However, over the past few years my guard has been lowered and I have been met by some very tender and caring men and this has supported me to accept that I deserve this kind of love so now I would absolutely love and enjoy this type of gesture.
Thank you Nicola for presenting and highlighting that there is a greater depth that Love is communicated by us all if we are open to being aware of it, as the expression of our Love goes far beyond the words we speak when we say ‘I love you’. Our movements carry the degree of Love we choose to live and through our movements we communicate this degree of Love in all we do. The more we surrender to being the Love we are the more we see that this quality of Love is in essence who we all are, and that it is in expressing, appreciating and living this Love that truly enriches our lives.
It’s quite amazing how we limit the depth of love when we use the generic words “I love you”. It’s almost like if these are used then that’s enough, they don’t call us to live the words and be the meaning, just tick the box and go back to whatever you’re doing.
Such a powerful realization to appreciate another’s unique way of expressing those three little words ‘I love you’.
Beautifully expressed Nicola, and this line of yours is a lovely reminder to take into my day ‘It is very joyful to feel and acknowledge the many beautiful ways we can share and receive love with others.’ Very true and I notice the more I appreciate my own and another’s qualities the easier it becomes to remain open and to express this love.
Love can be shared and expressed in so many different ways. When we hold love within ourselves, then this is very easily shared with others. Love can be so much more than words or gestures – but also how we are with someone – how we know their potential and pick them up when they are acting less than this.
Thank you Nicola – we all express love in different ways and we have everything to gain when we choose to be open to this.
You nail this Nicola, when we open up to love and its many forms of expression we get presently surprised yet if we hold on to a belief or picture on how love should be we are ultimately setting ourselves up to fail. I love the inspiration you and your husband give, Thank you.
A fascinating read on how and why we can come unstuck on our expression of love; how one man’s meat is another man’s meaning misinterpretation or understatement when we expect those ‘three little words’ to be delivered in a certain way or when we miscalculate the intention behind a gesture because of the different conditioning we’ve grown up with and the pictures we hold of what good I love you’s are meant to look, sound and feel like.
Expressing love can be done in so many ways, and the example you have chosen to tell us about is a perfect example.
I love returning to this blog because it reminds me of times I have dismissed the love that has been on offer as I have judged the other in some way or allowed an ideal or belief to get in the way. Love is simple and as I open to love it presents itself in more and more ordinary, and sometimes extraordinary ways.
Recently I was reflecting on another’s loving gestures and it wasn’t until another had pointed these out to me that I really started to appreciate how differently we each express love.
It is very easy to misinterpret or miss someone else’s expression of love if we have images and expectations of what love needs to look like.
It is very gorgeous to read this again this morning, Nicola. The human gentle touch is such a healing way to express love and to make a deep connection with another. Touch can often cross boundaries that words cannot. This may be in a hug or a gentle touch on the arm or hand. when I am out walking with my husband I often slip my hand into his-no words needed!
Gorgeous Nicola, thank you for sharing such a personal story. Expressing love has to take many and varied ways because it is so multi-dimensional. If we rely on just the words ‘l love you’ to mean somebody loves us, then they will likely feel very flat after a while. Not to say they can’t be said with great meaning, however there is so much to love, how can 3 works capture that every time it is felt. What you describe allows love to deeper and grow, because you recognise more and more of what is love and loving in another. That is profound and important.
Thanks Jenny. Your comment reminded me of a great audio I heard the other day called: Those three little words” ie I love you – and a beautiful quote saying expanding on this. Both can be found here: http://www.unimedliving.com/voice/whats-on-in-the-world/when-you-say-i-love-you-does-it-come-with-love.html
Your story Nicola is very tender and beautiful; such a gorgeous expression of love from your beloved husband.
“What I felt was his humongous love and how he wanted to take care of and protect his precious wife”.
The more I am open to love and allow myself to receive it and express it, the more I see it everywhere… in myself, in others and in nature. So true Nicola, nature has a way of reminding us of our true nature so very beautifully.
Just looking at the two of you and feeling the love and warmth between you is a blessing. Thank you for sharing some of the many ways we can say and receive I love you.
Thank you Nicola, for so beautifully sharing love, to be open to receive it, in its many forms, is a true and expansive gift of feeling it all around us in nature and in the essence of everyone.
With the awareness of love being our essence it is possible to see it in megaphone volume and appreciate it when another expresses their essence with us. This is true connection and in the bare bones, nuts and bolts, that is what love is – the simplicity of our essences connecting so we become one.
Gorgeous Nicola. Its these everyday expressions of love, like the one you shared about Christoph running and getting the car for you, that make our life so wonderful. Love can be found in all movements, gestures and simple words, because love is the feeling of life behind what we say and do, it is the source from which we act. Its also gorgeous to appreciate how sometimes we would react and say something silly which will diminish the loving acts of another, maybe leading them to not trusting the love filled expression. Sometimes we do silly things which are just so loving.
A beautiful, informative and expanding blog. So many arguments could be avoided just by expanding our ability to feel beyond the picture or image we have about what is going on around us. I especially loved your comment – ‘Love is such a fascinating subject because it is ultimately something we all want but really all already are!’. Thanks Nicola.
I agree Christine, in fact if love forms the foundation of a relationship, and hence any departure from holding this love between each other becomes the priority, then it is impossible for an argument to even begin. If we don’t hold this love as our foundation then being right about an issue becomes the focus. Such a beautiful way to conduct any relationship…
“The more I am open to love and allow myself to receive it and express it, the more I see it everywhere… in myself, in others and in nature.” I find this so incredibly true. When I am feeling frustrated, focusing on myself, feeling down, that is what I see in others. I don’t feel the purpose of life, who I truly am deep within, or what I am here to bring. So it makes it really simple. Making the choice to focus on the later, not the former, this does ensure you can see what you feel on the inside is deep within others too. Makes a huge difference.
Re-reading this today really touched my heart and I know I have reacted many times on the beholding love of my husband and other men in my life. Thanks again Nicola for sharing this example. It has connected me with my preciousness.
My parents expressed love through their many generous actions and gestures but I don’t remember them ever saying “I love you”. However, I knew without them saying these words how much love they held for me. Like you say Nicola “love” is expressed in many forms and when we are open; the joy of love is everywhere.
Yes Kathy, my parents were very similar… I knew without question I was loved, but never heard the words ‘I love you’. What I loved about Nicola’s blog is it opens up expression to be about so much more than those 3 words, which often-times and for some people, is not where the expression of love is at. I am beginning to appreciate that for me I need to express so much more of what I see and feel of love in and from others. I can feel my love expand when I do this.. which is beautiful because we both get to benefit from that.
I appreciate the line that love is something we all want but really already are toward the end of the blog. It is something I have also pondered deeply and the dilemma of missing a part of us and seeking it in many ways in our lives, yet all leading nowhere really because what we seek is right here within us. It has been expressed many times, but remains a conundrum of the human condition. One example of a change and acceptance for me came through my experience of hugging. I used to hug, without realising it, in a way where I was wanting something from the other person. I would be feeling as they hugged me, are they giving their all? and measuring myself from it. Absurd really because if two people did this, they are both holding back and reflecting to each other this is not enough. Since my work with Universal Medicine and the quality of love I have claimed within me, it has become clear that when I embrace another, physically or otherwise, it is about sharing all of me with them, and not needing anything from them. Sometimes this has lead to the most awesome feeling of surrender in both people and when this occurs a truth revealed that we all indeed are love and how simple and easy it is to express it.
When I hug I often experience it as a confirmation of the connection and love already felt and experienced between myself and the other.
Yes beautiful Nicola… showing that you are already complete and full in yourself, not needing the hug to validate or fill you up. Hugging you would be a blessing… rather than a drain!
Thank you Jenny, I just received a hug from you which has shown me that even what we write can be a hug.
“The more I am open to love and allow myself to receive it and express it, the more I see it everywhere… in myself, in others and in nature”.
This is such a profound statement, Nicola. In the past I have actually felt my body brace to withstand and stop the love coming in although was not conscious of this at the time. It takes a greater force to stop love than allowing it in but allowing it in exposes all the hurts and sadness which is why I have blocked it in the past. I now see and feel it everywhere and am enjoying love’s multiple expressions!
Really beautiful to read Nicola, I really feel the the tender love between you and your husband, very inspiring and a joy to behold. Thank you both.
Reading your words again today Nicola, what is clear is that it is not just in relationships this occurs, the world is actually sharing love with me in a million different ways. When I walk around without appreciating this and letting it in, I absolutely miss out BIG TIME. So I appreciate here that in sharing these words you are also saying clearly “I love you”. Me too.
Thankyou Nicola for sharing, this feels so beautiful and loving.
Gorgeous Gill.
Thank you for sharing this Nicola – I love how you have shown the other ways in which you could have responded to Christoph’s gesture. As I read this I could feel all of the ways I have shut down love from another… rejected their actions because I had a prior agenda / expected things to look a little differently / wanted to enjoy the walk in the rain so to speak!… But underneath my rejecting them, I can actually feel it has nothing to do with ‘wanting to walk in the rain’ at all – it’s really – very intentionally – about saying ‘no’ to love. Thank you for this blog and for sharing so simply the ways in which love can be presented – all we have to do is say yes.
Absolutely beautiful Nicola, I loved reading this blog – a simple yet powerful sharing. Thank you for the gorgeous reminder to not hold back from expressing our love to others – how transforming and supportive for all relationships in our lives.
Yes we can say ‘I love you’ by the way we speak, the way we blink and in our presence.
Nicola, I have just read your blog again, and enjoyed it even more the second time round, I love how you have shared with us your relationship with Christoph and how by making the smallest, or grandest, of loving gestures it is felt more than when the words ‘I love you’ are uttered and not truly meant. I have never really said the words ‘I love you’ to anyone and really, truly felt it, but with my ongoing journey of beginning to love myself more and more I am starting to express my love, not only to myself, but through gestures and support to friends, family and colleagues, and this feels more loving to me than uttering the words ‘I love you’ and not really feeling it.
I do find myself saying the actual words “I love you” to Christoph (and others) a lot as well as saying it in a zillion other words and gestures. Really love is so much grander than words or gestures or any of these things and it is not something directed at an individual person but our very essence and emanation – however none of that stops me from the joy of sharing unrestrictedly in whatever way it wants to express, play, call out or pop out!
Your blog is so very heart warming Nicola. And I agree, the more you deepen your own self love, you start to see it, express it and accept it from others so much more.
Beautiful blog Nicola. In writing this, I can hear you say ‘I love you!’ with megaphone from across the rooftops to all of humanity. So true about love – hurts can prevent us expressing it as well as receiving it. Because we are love in essence we don’t need to receive it per se, but when someone expresses it towards us, not from a need, and instead from their own tenderness, it can be a reflection and a reminder of who we are. Just like this blog.
Love in action, truly beautiful and inspiring blog Nicola, the ways we express love are so diverse. And that what Christoph did for you is way more powerful than just the simple three words “I love You”.
What a great point Deanne – indeed we are far, far more loved than we realise. We actually live within the field of God’s love so are always surrounded by love even at our moments of deepest despair. Even events that we find particularly unpleasant can have love at their roots as they may be lovingly teaching us something or putting a stop to a harmful momentum. If we feel we are not loved it is very empowering to know that is because we are not receiving it and not because there is no love available as love is who we all are at essence and love is in fact everywhere!
Nicola this blog in a simple example, conveys one of the most important teachings about love and relationships with other people. It reveals the possibility that we may be far more loved than we realise and the issue may be one of accepting and receiving love, especially when it does not come in the form and image that we expect it to.
When we need something to look a certain way, it limits the experiences we can have and the allowance that would otherwise naturally be there.
Nicola I have just read your delightful and heart-felt blog which I revisited this morning, the morning of being married for 51 years – and took a moment to remember the ways of expressing love, (and sometimes not so) that I have experienced and expressed as we have rotated round the sun again and again.
I find it refreshing and holds much to share in reflection – thank you.
Sharing this blog Nicola is such a gift that i keep coming back to as it says so much. Saying and receiving i Love you in so many ways is such an important part of our expression and life Thank you again.
This blog is really quite revolutionary in the fact that it asks us to ponder on how we accept and receive Love. To accept and receive Love in all the ways that it is given to us, whether that is through a bird chirping outside our front door in the morning, to a love letter from a child or to a kiss from a friend or partner. There really are a myriad of ways that Love is expressed and it is for us to allow ourselves to receive it all. Thank you Nicola for the inspiration!
This is so very true Nicola. We all express Love in our own way and many times this is not seen or understood as we can have so many different pictures in our head of how we want love to be expressed to us that we miss it being expressed right in front of us. I love the example that you have shared here with your lovely husband Christoph. It is inspiring and a great way to share how he was expressing his love for you in that moment and how you accepting this so readily. This is a testament to your willingness to be open to receiving Love in all ways that it may be offered to you. Very inspiring indeed!
And there are many moments where others express love towards us and it can be that we are unable to accept that for what it is, as we may have feelings that we are not worth it, so reject or dismiss many loving gestures that come our way and then cause a feeling of rejection in the other from this. And this is often heightened by the confusion we have about what love really is, not seeing love in something that doesn’t conform with the picture of what we are fed love is. Fascinating really!
It is as you share Nicola “so very joyful to feel and acknowledge the many beautiful ways we can share and receive love with others” Your sharing is a prime example of that – thank you.
So gorgeous to be reminded after re-visiting this awesome blog again today that for years, I now, recognise in myself just how ‘needy’ I was to hear those words ‘I love you’ from my partner or my children! This is no longer the case – since introducing self love back into my life the impact of this with everyone around me is very evident. Those loving gestures you speak of Nicola (which were once so clearly missed and not recognised) are now abundant, unspoken but truly felt.
It is so true Nicola that all we really want is love but we had forgotten that we are love to begin with. To open up to this and freely express this with others and receive it back is indeed a joyous way of living.
It is beautiful when we let go the expectation for love to always be expressed in a certain way. And is such fun expanding our own expressions of love.
Reading your lovely blog once again Nicola I am reminded to celebrate the many beautiful ways love has been expressed to me today.
How lovely Jane. I feel to do this every evening, to remind myself of every expression of love, how many unspoken I love you’s, come to me every day and to appreciate and celebrate these amazing blessings.
Thank you Nicola for reminding us that simple acts or gestures from others need attention and can mean “I love you”- This may be missed or rejected by another if we have expectations of how “I love you” needs to look like.
From observation I think we live in a world where ‘I love you’ is not said nearly enough, because ‘I love you’ these days is associated with a whole looooad of emotions, beliefs and catches, for example, ‘if I say I love you, you must say it back’. ‘Or, I can only say I love you to a longtime partner’.. ‘You can’t say I love you to a friend because that comes across as clingy or weird’. Amazing how this normal expression of love and appreciation has become so un-normal.
I too have felt all these impositions on saying ‘I Love You’ and have come to a point in my life where I freely expressed these words with all the love that I am feeling in that moment so none of these matter. It is very liberating and the freedom to express without wanting or needing it to be a certain way is revolutionary to say the least.
Such a great point Susie, there are all these rules and guidelines on how to express love, “will they like what I say?’ “will they accept it?”, I know this just leaves me itching for expressing some true love. The world would be so much better if we just said the things which we really mean and didn’t hold back, like “gosh you are gorgeous” and “you make me smile” or “you are a great person to have around” or “you make the world light up”, ” your my best friend” and yet love is so much more, it is in all of our movements and actions as well.
I completely agree Harrison and Susie. It is a really weird world we live in where we often apologise for or feel uncomfortable in expressing love and yet it seems much more acceptable to say non loving things. By the why I think you are both super gorgeous and I love you and your comments!!!
Actions do speak so much more than any words. I light touch of a hand, a loving smile, a small gesture and so on. Love is a connection of hearts, and a dance of joy.
The simplicity of understanding love, understanding the immense love that your husband showed you, understanding this was his way of telling you he loves you dearly.
So many people show their love in so many ways and you right, we can misunderstand or not understand the messages. It is beautiful how you were able to see just how much love Christoph had in his action.
The many different forms and expressions of love ~ it saddens me that we hold back in so many ways with so many people but I feel immense Joy at the new level of love expressed by me after attending all the SEH workshops
They have truly freed me from holding back my love.
A great re -read Nicola – thank you, what you say about being open to love and it’s many forms of expressions is so refreshing to hear. It seems to me as society we have not tapped into this yet and most of us are chasing our tail with our own vision/ ideal of what love should look like. Blogs like this help to blow those ideals out of the water and instead allow us to be free to see the love that is before our very eyes..
I was going to say something similar myself Samantha so I agree with you. I love how Nicola has introduced the idea of seeing the immense love that is on offer in our relationships. Even though the person may not be saying, ‘I love you’ in so many words it is said in so many other ways, and it just takes us to drop any expectations and open our eyes and our hearts to read it.
I personally know Josephine and she always wears the most amazing shoes. Every time I see her I get such a blast of joy looking at her shoes. Love and Joy are members of the one family. I have never particularly looked at shoes before I met Josephine. It feels like such a strange thing to say but there is something very loving about how Josephine dresses and the shoes she wears. It is not done for any recognition or glamour but out of love and therefore I get blessed whenever I meet her. Love is everywhere and very often not as we expect it!
I love your list Gill of expressions of love. It is beautiful to think that love can’t be boxed, it can’t be contained, it can be everywhere and in the little things as well as the big.
What is so gorgeous is that we all have our own ways of expressing love to one another – how full and rich then is love, when there are so many truthful expressions of it.
Rosanna, this makes me smile brightly – love in expression has no boundaries and it never can cease. Once touched and it multiplies itself exponentially.
Expressing love not just with words but with everything that we do and say is so beautiful and inspiring and feels like the most natural thing in world. Strange that we so often resist and hold back from saying what we truly feel.
Hi Michael, yes it is really strange. Once about 30 years ago I did some sort of new age (maybe not so new now) group at a residential course with a lot of people I knew. In one exercise you had to imagine it was your last few hours before you died and what would you do and say to people and also write your last letter. I went around telling everyone how much I loved and appreciated them. The only thing that mattered to me was love. Everything that I had been holding back was expressing my love – how weird is that!!!
This just goes to show how love and appreciation are such our natural way of being, and yet we hold it back so often. Let’s not let it get to this stage where we have ‘regrets’ on our death bed. We have the opportunity in every moment to express love, and feel the love all around us. This will be something I take into my day today.
Nicola thank you for sharing your beautiful story, it made me remember many times when I have had moments like these with members of my family and sometimes without actually clocking it appreciating the moments and other times going into the reactions. But it’s great to reflect that how easily others could feel rejected when they are doing something out of love and we stop them in their tracks by saying why did you, or you shouldn’t have, rather than just appreciating. Something I am going to be more aware of now.
All so True and beautiful Nicola and the divine sentence “To learn to express the love that we are, that’s what we are here for.” really does say it all Janina. I am also feeling so much love around everywhere that I was not so aware of before and realise too that the more love we allow ourselves to express love the more it is everywhere reflected to us in others ,nature and ourselves and is in fact our very essence. The appreciation of this is simply beautiful thank you Nicola I am reminded of this blog every day.
This blog speaks to me of the simplicity and the innocence of love. How it can be cherished and expressed.
“It is very joyful to feel and acknowledge the many beautiful ways we can share and receive love with others”.
I love the way you have highlighted the many different ways to express love and also the need to accept and appreciate these expressions.
Thank you gorgeous Nicola for your expression of love.
Yes Shirl – Accept and appreciate feels key here… as Nicola explained, she could easily have responded differently, but she accepted and appreciated it, and from that choice she was able to deepen and enjoy the love that was there!
Thank you Janina you have so very beautifully distilled it to this one Divine sentence: “To learn to express the love that we are, that’s what we are here for.”
One way that people say I love you is by listening – truly listening. They say it with their whole body without needing to say a word.
This is so true Vicky Geary, their whole body lights up with the love and no words are needed because the feeling from them, says it all.
Very true Vicky… that feels like being wrapped in a big warm hug.
Waiting for words to express a love that someone feels actually feels like an expectation, and an expectation to me feels like I’m putting limits on what is possible.
My dog has never said she loves me but I know to my absolute core that she does 🙂
Haha, Suzanne – too cute!
In opening and accepting more of our own Love, we can let the world in so much more and we get to live the Love that we know within, and it is only through living it that we truly know what Love is. Nicola your blog has inspired me to let the Love that I know out in a deeper way than I have before.
This blog has opened my eyes to be aware of even the simplest of loving gestures and not to dismiss them, as they are like building blocks in the foundation of a greater truer love.
Yes, not to dismiss these gestures of love, these expressions of love but also to own them and accept if the other can’t see them for what they are at that moment. Then it becomes very powerful to express and receive love.
Well said Kevin, ‘building blocks in the foundation of a greater truer love’.
When i lived in England for a while i have experienced that it is quite common within family to tell each other that “i love”. Mother say to their children and children to their mother. In Germany this is not so common. So the expression of love through words differs between nationalities. Today i have experienced the effect to express love to another person through speaking and feeling the other person is very delicate and beautiful. My body started to resonate and expand and the energy in the room changed. To learn to express the love that we are, that’s what we are here for.
I’m feeling the love Nicola. So much love is missed when we are not open to the many ways it is expressed. Something I shall keep in my personal library
‘The more I am open to love and allow myself to receive it and express it, the more I see it everywhere… in myself, in others and in nature.’ I very much agree on this one Nicola, that is what I have been experiencing too.
Great blog, Nicola. It shows me that allowing to teuly and deeply receive love is a step as important as expressing one’s love.
Wow Nicola, you have touched me very deeply this morning. What a beautiful thing to read this on waking. I loved your story of Christoph your husband expressing his love in this way. I too see this enormous love in every day interactions between people and I agree with you that it can be so easy to misinterpret someones actions based on our own hurts or simply just because we choose to blind ourselves to it, and then this can often equate the one expressing feeling rejected. This is why it is so important that we express our love for and with one another without attachment – something I am forever working with and deepening my understanding of. Nicola, I love your divine and playful expression and quirky little ways. You are amazing!
Oh Nicola, I love this and I love you! Your writing just laid it all out…all those scenarios could so easily have happened, I have seen them, heard them even Lived them. When you are not involved and you watch an argument between two people you see the hurt and the response from hurt and far too often you can see the situation escalate to go somewhere it was never meant to go. Since I have become aware of it, I am now far more likely to speak up or catch myself before it takes off. It isn’t hard, it takes making love so important, so central to your relationships that you choose to pay attention to the small stuff and you never let the small stuff get in the way of love.
This blog has helped me to appreciate the many ways that people can express love. It is so easy to react when people try to do things for me. I can think that they are trying to take over or control everything and react to this and possibly go into trying to fight it, or I can observe and appreciate that it is their way of expressing their love. I can then receive it gracefully or gracefully communicate that it’s not needed. So very different!
I often find it difficult to accept the words either said or written in an email but when someone expresses live in a gesture I am deeply touched by this- whether it be a hand in the shoulder, help carrying your bag, etc there is a lot of love that can be expressed in gestures.
I guess that’s were the saying comes in, ‘actions speak louder than words’, if we feel love with our bodies and not use our mind we would know that there is much more love on offer than often we care to feel.
Yes and we can see that in very young children and babies – they feel the love offered without understanding the words, so we are totally capable to express love with our bodies and gestures, often much more powerful than any uttered words.
That is very true Kim which really begs the question why would we NOT want to feel love!
This blog and the comments here have made me wonder how many times I have missed genuine expressions of love from others and how I have not seen the love being expressed towards me in different ways. It really opens up so much for us to ponder on more deeply, doesn’t it?
It’s funny how we seem to be quick to jump to the more negative thinking in certain situations as was my experience just yesterday, where a new neighbour had put up a small barrier right in front of my kitchen window which I took as them wanting to block me out. But then I had a friend come around to fix something and we had to get up on the fence momentarily and the neighbour had actually put it up because he felt that they were encroaching on my privacy because their pergola is higher and they spend a lot of time on it and he felt it might be nice for me to not have them being able to see into my house. Showing me that if I am not present with myself, my head will just jump to conclusions and then I can miss the simplicity and truth of a situation, whatever that may be.
This is so super gorgeous to re-read Nicola and confirms to me that love is everything and is far more powerful than anything that we could imagine. It is forever deepening, it never runs out! I used to think it would but the more love I am open to the more love is there to express with everyone. And it is the most amazing feeling in my body to embrace it and live it all of the time.
Yes I agree Joshua, love feels absolutely gorgeous and yummy in our bodies and the more we let it out, express it and live it the more we feel it.
Reading this blog has given me a new way of observing the small and loving gestures shown to me by others and feeling more appreciative. Thank you.
Thank you Nicola – great blog! I enjoyed this “The more I am open to love and allow myself to receive it and express it, the more I see it everywhere… in myself, in others and in nature”. Love IS everywhere. Everything that happens comes back to that point of Love. Love is in everything. So I am fully with you and forever surrendering to allow that love in if it is always all around us!
This is THE CUTEST story. Your husband is gorgeous. And you are gorgeous for allowing his gorgeousness in.
“The more I am open to love and allow myself to receive it and express it, the more I see it everywhere… ”
Its extraordinary how the more love we allow ourselves to be the more we see, feel and allow it in everything else.
The protection is a mask, a guard that we create from fear of being hurt, remove this and we can finally be who we are , in essence love.
Nicola the photo of you and Christoph at the beginning of this blog is incredibly beautiful. When looking at it I feel the deep love you have for yourselves and each other. You are both truly glowing and alive, and the love that you are, and that you share, is palpable. Thank you for sharing both your beautiful photo and your experiences of love.
I just love reading your blog Nicola, it is so inspiring. There is no need of repeated “I love You’s” or grand gestures and proclamations of love. I can now feel the joy in the fact that love can be expressed in the simplest gesture, loving glance or radiant smile of thanks, and this can be given/shared/or expressed to each and every person in our life.
Reading this blog does make me wonder how much we miss out on when we hold love as an expectation of how it should be, but isn’t it all of the little loving gestures that speak volumes if we take the time to stop and appreciate what another does for us. It could be something very down to earth like, replacing the toilet paper when it runs out or making a pot of tea ready for when a loved one gets in from their walk – anything in fact, but we have to play our part and appreciate these loving gestures and reciprocate in our own way.
I love your blog Nicola. I would say that the simplest way for us humans to connect with love is a genuine smile from heart, and a glow from the eyes, that way you are acknowledging the other and letting them know that they are not alone and there is love in the world.
The less we filter love by putting conditions on it, the more we will realise what an abundance of love is there in ourselves and our lives in each and every moment.
Nicola I really LOVE this blog. It is so true that love is expressed in many ways and if we free ourselves from our ideals and beliefs around how it should look and start connecting to how it feels we will begin to feel it all around us, in everybody, and in our selves and oh what a lovely world it would be if we did.
It is so beautiful that you have shared this for it invites us to ponder on the varying ways that we share and receive love. For some it is speaking special words, for some a look, others a touch or gesture… we all express our love in a way that feels true for us at that moment and yet although we may prefer to receive one over the other…when it comes from love, how could you not honour and appreciate the beauty in what is expressed confirming the connection your share.
This is such a gorgeous story, and one that wakes me up to a deeper understanding of how to appreciate people. Each person shows their love in different ways. If actions speak louder than words, which indeed they do, it is for me to notice when people are expressing their love in ways that I may have previously overlooked. If we can take notice of this and take time to feel and appreciate this our lives could be much richer and would contain more love.
Reading your blog again it came up to me, that this respectful and appreciative attention you describe your husband has expressed towards you – we can deliver to anyone. I have observed many times that expressing or doing something to another would only go up to a certain level, from which on expressing love was capped, because it would only be expressed for “the” partner. Of course, I might not go and kiss a friend like I would express to my partner, but any other expression of love – to me – is universal. No matter if I love my sister, my mom, my partner or a stranger. There is a deep love holding everyone equal in my heart.
Gorgeous Christina – this doesn’t just apply to your partner but to everyone you know, or even don’t know
I had one of these moments for myself yesterday. For the first time, I appreciated the love being shown and offered to me, when previously I would have taken it as a controlling act upon me, and we would have both missed out and no doubt ended up at odds with each other as a result. What became clear was how often this has played out before, and how many missed opportunities there have been to express and confirm love. How cool to have shone a spotlight on this and understood how easily this plays out, and know how simple it is to choose love instead of all the other nonsense.
Thank you Jenny what a gorgeous sharing.
“The more I am open to love and allow myself to receive it and express it, the more I see it everywhere” – same for me Nicola! Love is all around when I took off my blinders and let it into my life. It is just beautiful and enriching.
Yes Sandra, love comes in, fills us up, making it easy to express more love which then comes back to us making it easier to express more love…. Pretty good. Very undramatic as well.
I have been pondering on your blog recently Nicola and love what you have written here, ‘The more I am open to love and allow myself to receive it and express it, the more I see it everywhere… in myself, in others and in nature. I then start to see more clearly how everyone is pure love in essence’, since reading your blog I have been observing how everyone is pure love in essence, previously I was more likely to see what was not love in people and i could be quite critical, but now i have been observing how naturally loving people are and this is very beautiful to notice and feel.
Thank you Rebecca that is a gorgeous sharing. I had a tendency to the opposite in that I would see the love and essence in people and yet not choose to see just how horribly they can choose to express at times. I am learning how important it is to see everything exactly as it is. This means that whilst everyone is pure love at heart the reality is that is not what everyone expresses all the time. So as I observe more and react less I can also see the not love stuff (that they are expressing and which is not who they are) more clearly and have an understanding as to why they are expressing like that – usually a choice they have made in protection of their hurts or more accurately imagined hurts!
Great point Nicola,….learning to see everything exactly as it is . It can be so easy to colour or taint a situation before we have really had time to read what is really going on, it can happen before we know it if we let our hurts and reactions get in the way. This stops us from being open to what is being presented and we can so easily react and be critical instead being loving, and honouring the moment.
The ways that we express love and the ways that we feel loved are very personal. I suspect this is one of the greatest areas of miscommunication and hurts in relationships. Understanding ourselves and other people, what matters to us and how we express love is a beautiful thing to develop and explore together. It is also very freeing to shed the false layers of love that we have had imposed on us throughout life, be that needing the bunch of flowers or needing to provide for a family.
Nicola- your photo says it all- it is so beautiful to feel and see the deep honour, respect , exquisite tenderness and love you share for each other. Your loving account confirms this.
And written by someone who truly knows love and appreciation to the core. Thank you Nicola. Your enthusiasm for life and people always lights up my day.
Nicola, your sharing revolutionizes relationships! True love is not concerned with what I need or want but considering the other as well. If we lived our lives to your example the world would look very different.
This is a fascinating topic that you have opened up here Nicola. To be completely open and transparent and willing to receive another’s love in full without a guard or protection is probably one of the keys to relationships. So often I focus on how I am expressing my love to another but how I receive another is just as important perhaps more so.
It really s a fascinating topic Andrew Mooney, one that has spanned the ages. Everyone looking for love outside themselves, trying to identify and quantify love by actions alone without considering the true energy behind it. Nicola’s blog puts a new slant on an age old quest to understand love – “we are love” and if we connect to our essence we will know and express it. Simply Beautiful.
The other point you make Andrew about being “completely open and transparent and willing to receive another’s love in full without a guard or protection ( being) probably one of the keys to relationships” is deeply and profoundly true. It really could be well worth us all pondering if and how we receive love, what conditions we place upon acknowledging and receiving it, and our mechanisms for ejecting it. There’s a workshop in this for sure!
To receive somebody’s love would mean to let go and surrender. To let go of any control or anxiousness and to surrender to what the other offers you.
This is Golden Andrew “So often I focus on how I am expressing my love to another but how I receive another is just as important perhaps more so.” This should be studied, a study on all the ways we block love and why? When all we want is to be loved why do we have so many protective mechanisms to keep that love out; we judge it, we criticise it and right it off if it does not come how we expect or demand it to. This is a game where no one wins yet there must be an advantage to it otherwise why do so many play?
Nicola, there is such a difference between the love I need from someone else, the love that comes from how I expect someone else to be and the love you are talking about here. There is such a deep level of openness and acceptance in the love you are sharing with us. Thank you for the reminder to be open to it.
Indeed Joel. Very rarely have I accepted the love around me and available to me because it does not come packaged the way I think it should be. In that I have completely missed out and rejected another’s expression. And so, in this, I see how the merry go round of hurts and rejections, ideals and beliefs, become more than the love inside.
Great points Joel and Jenny, there is so much love we miss out on because we have so many pictures of how and where it should come from. I personally have had so many magnificent exchanges of love from complete strangers, in the moment of the exchange a connection has been made that can never be broken and continually confirms that we are all the same. We all want love and to be love and no matter how we may mask it, or pretend otherwise it is the core of all our hurts. And although we can’t wait or expect others to be that love, we can be that for ourselves and others and hence the healing begins.
I love the example you give about how you could have reacted differently to Christoph’s expression of love, and that it could have ended up in a fight, so true and familiar, allowing others to express in their own way without expectation is a key ingredient in relationships.
It feels as the art of life, to observe and understand what is actually the intention behind all behaviour people show to us. Is it from love or not? We can do that if we choose to do so and with that we will indeed improve all our relationships because of the continuous deepening of our understanding of from where people are coming from. Living like this in the unconditionally acceptance of the other, will allow the other to express themselves in their own unique way.
I find that looking for the intention can be incomplete as your perception is limited – you are looking for something. Reading the situation feels different to me – you are simply open to becoming aware of everything that is going on and intention may only be a part of what is there.
I love this too Laura. It’s so important not to misinterpret other people’s ways of expressing love. We can easily reject it by reacting and totally miss out on the love being offered.
True Rebecca – I can hold on to my picture of how love should be offered and then lament on it does never happen as imagined – or I can let go of all my pictures and enjoy what life unrolls for me and what I constellated to get. The latter is more joy but also asking me to take responsibility of my choices, how constellate my life.
Indeed there are multiple ways we show the love we are and the love we feel towards another.
A simple question for us all to ponder Nicola; do we live in this world in love or not.
Simple question but in my experience complexities and expectations creep in
.We certainly have choice; love or hurts!!
It is that simple, we either choose love or we choose our hurts, and having let of my hurts, I find my connection with people effortless which is so lovely to feel especially in the past where I have kept people at a distance, not able to let them in or come close because I was afraid to get hurt.
I love the way you understand how the alternate way your response could have gone with Christoph and the affects this could cause as to me it is rather showing of the fact in that moment you chose love, however in every moment there is of course what could play out if you don’t choose love. This clear distinction has really helped me to look at the way I respond and react to situations and look at whether in these situations am I clearly being love, or am I choosing against and so causing issues that would not otherwise be there
I can still feel some discomfort within myself when somebody tells me that they love me and in that moment, I don’t feel a true impulse to say the same words. Which does not mean that I don’t feel love! I always used to reply with the same words, because I wanted to be nice and polite. Now I don’t do that anymore, even though at times it still feels a bit uncomfortable. But when saying I love you back without a true intention, the words are empty.
Thank you Nicola for writing this beautiful blog. Each time I read it I can feel the love between you and Christoph and I am so inspired. I totally agree that, “the more I am open to love and allow myself to receive it and express it, the more I see it everywhere… in myself, in others and in nature.”
From appreciation and honoring what we are we do develop – not from our missing point.
A choice once again really isn’t it, express from the love that we all are in essence or react from our hurts.
A beautiful sharing Nicola. So beautiful to feel love from that place of connection to the Absolute.
We have all been ‘burned’ by being misunderstood for our loving gestures – those spontaneous things we do as an expression of our essence that may have no sense to them. It is especially hurtful when they are criticised and sometimes even vengefully as if the person is saying, here is an easy chance to put you down in the vulnerability of your innocence. It really is difficult to recover from and makes one think it is dangerous to be sensitive and spontaneous in love. So being understood for these gestures and having it expressed as Nicola has, is hugely encouraging to not give up on such beautiful innocent gestures and also if they go unrecognised, not to take it personally.
We are all love in essence and it is so true that when we aren’t expressing our essence we are using a mighty force to contract what is natural and this is usually from a long held hurt or perceived hurt we carry. Often we can create a story or think we are upset at a person specifically but the truth is that we are directing our hurt at them instead of taking responsibility and looking to ourselves to let go of what is so naturally not us; therefore simply enjoying the love that we are and then the love we can be with all others.
Beautiful sharing on love Nicola thank you .It is so lovely to read in the morning for the start of the day and see the love in everything simply as this and accept it for ourselves . I love your story and all the love it offers us to claim for ourselves too and will take this with me ,simply honouring all we are.
This article is super supportive, I have gone away after first reading it and pondered it and come back to share my appreciation. What particularly resonated is how some times when people are offering love, we do not always perceive it as that because of our own issues or past hurts. This can result in us feeling that there is not love out there for us, how ever there is so much and it is infinite and we get gestures of love all the time, I am becoming more open to feeling the quality of how some one meets me rather than just what they say and do, it may not be perfect, it may challenge me, but the point is what is the quality of it and am I open to feeling love and being cherished?
Yes Samantha, if what people are offering does not fill our need or picture of what love is, then we can react with a hurt and spoil a potentially beautiful moment. We have to let go of our expectations and pictures of how we need love to be expressed, and be open to receiving love in the many different ways it can be.
This is so gorgeous Nicola, I loved coming back to read it again. I so agree that the more we open ourselves to receive love the more we see it everywhere. It has so many different expressions and it also feels so lovely in my body when I express love each time in a different way.
Thank you Nicola for sharing how you could have reacted to Christoph’s loving gesture show fas by do so you show how we need to stay open to receive love. Love can come in all sorts of unexpected ways and if we stay fixed in our own expectations of how things should be we miss the love being offered.
Good point Jonathan! Our expectations do limit our view and awareness! Gosh what we all miss because we constrict ourselves…
Well said Jonathan, expectations make it impossible to receive the love that is all around us if we were just open to it. What Nicola has presented to us in this blog is a way of being that has no expectations, just the simplicity of being ourselves. I love that.
Thank you Nicola for the inspiration to learn to really & truly listen again.
I learned that People say ‘I love you’ in the way they live their lives.
As example: When I see and experience how some people or families live – this is them saying ‘I love you’ to all of us. People who live in Integrity and do what is needed to be done, who live in service for humanity – they say: I Love You! Even they do not know you/me – it is said to us. If we listen.
I agree Sandra, acts of true service do say a universal I Love You. and You and All Humanity equally. Not knowing the person or having any ounce of motivation to prove love is an amazing way to share love and receive love.
It is so true Nicola that – the words ‘I love you’ – can be felt and expressed in different ways .
If we are not open to this or have an expectation of how – “I love you ” looks or needs to be- then the true meaning of it will be misinterpreted and instead of an opportunity for intimacy to occur , separation occurs.
Great reminder.
We put so much importance on the three words ‘I love you’ but through gestures and expression often so much more can be felt.
Thank you Nicola, very potent what you have shared and so relevant to my experience with myself and others. Two things that hit home with me was to see the love expressed in the actions, so beautifully told with you and Christoph’s story. Second, I know with me, has been the not seeing my love expressed in my actions and misinterpreted or not valued. And I can see the foundation of wars take hold from this separation. You have added tremendous depth and understanding to this subject of ways to say and receive “I Love You”.
Nicola you’re so right about how it often goes in a relationship (of any kind), even between people who profess to love each other. I’ve observed it far too often: instead of totally receiving the love given by another person, many people respond with anything from – being oblivious of it, embarrassed or uncomfortable, or even some kind of denigration or dismissal – not loving at all! What you have shared about the simple moments of love with your husband is a wake-up and an inspiration for all.
Absolutely Dianne, we need to wake up to the love that is staring us right in the face, every which way that we look. They say ‘love is blind’… but love can never be blind, it is us that are blind to love until we give ourselves permission to live it once more.
Absolutely Liane, love can never be blind, we are not willing to accept and allow love in our lives. We need to wake up to the fact we are love in essence and will always be.
Great point Liane, Love is never blind. It is the emotional bastardised version of love that is blind, a version of love that says we need another to complete us. True love comes from a completeness that sees all others as equals. Hence it can not be blind for it sees all that is not love and continually offers us to be more.
I totally agree Dianne, reading Nicola’s blog is certainly a wake up call and a tremendous inspiration in seeing the love we are surrounded by, and the many ways to express and this receive love.
When you let someone in, you let them in with your whole body and every cell seems to say I am love, you are love we are equal, we are connected, we are all one. The love feels timeless and forever with no boundaries, where anything is possible.
Oh Nicola that is such a wonderful experience you share with us. I love the way how your gorgeous man Christoph took care of you and you allowed him to do so. We can so easily destroy such precious moments if we are not with ourselves. Following sentence said it all for me: “The more I am open to love and allow myself to receive it and express it, the more I see it everywhere… in myself, in others and in nature.” Imagine we all would live like this constantly – wunderbar.
Thanks for highlighting that sentence Ester – ““The more I am open to love and allow myself to receive it and express it, the more I see it everywhere… in myself, in others and in nature.” It is a great one to take into one’s day every day – what joy to then feel and see love all around us.
I love re-reading this blog, what I particularly love is how Christoph ran back to get the car so you would not get wet and how you fully accepted and let in his love. Can we share him???
Hi Mary-Louise, YES you can certainly share and he is naturally very chivalrous! Since Christoph and my love with ourselves and each other has expanded we have noticed more and more people coming into our life as love naturally shares its expression and truly love is an emanation available to all equally.
It is just wonderful to read Nicola, what you have shared about expressing love. The moment we truly love unconditionally everybody around us can feel this and words are normally not necessary any more – it is very often just a look, a touch, a gesture and everything is expressed and in this moment we confirm each other in our love.
My drawbridge has been up and the portcullis down for so long. The simple act of opening up to life and people has meant that Love has literally flooded in. Ongoing fine tuning is meaning I can come to accept and feel this. Then the cycle expands: more receiving, more expressing, more sharing, more receiving…
An expression of love is also in how responsible we are for our state of being…for example, when we walk in the house from a difficult day at work where we feel frustrated or angry about something, do we offload to our partner or family to feel better (not love), or do we acknowledge what in the day has been difficult and take responsible steps to come back to ourselves and express in very honest and open way to get to the truth of the situation (love)?
I loved what you shared Nicola. The moment Christoph went home and returned with the car could well have been a moment where his expression of love was missed by you. I know I have done that in the past by not recognising that the way someone shows their love for me is different to how I may expect it to be, and it has created conflict. It seems so obvious now and it really is a case of letting go of what love ‘should’ look like and how we want it to come, and just allow other people to express their love in the way they know how.
Sandra I agree, it is so much about being open to whatever form love presents itself and not perceiving love as an ideal that we have grown up to believe is true.
This is a great sharing Nicola, everyone wants love and we all come from love so it is in every cell of our bodies and all that we need to do is to allow ourselves to drop the guards we have built around us and be seen for who we are and express that love without any attachments of the how it needs to look like.
We can be so pre-occupied with ourselves that we miss the most obvious loving gestures. What you have described Nicola is very beautiful and what stands out for me is that we can focus on the negative first before the love. It highlights that a little (or a lot) more self love is required to allow ourselves to see and feel the love first.
I notice daily the difference in the quality of my availability to life. In the past a huge pre-occupation with myself and how I portrayed myself in the world kept me incarcerated and exhausted. Today I find myself really connected and available to people and relationships even in the simplest and/or shortest interactions. It is a quality of presence that cuts through the paraphernalia of expectations and attachment to outcomes.
Nicola, I recognise those times in myself when I have often rejected defensively an expression of love from my partner (by gesture or action rather than words). I am realising recently that it is because I am scared of opening myself up to receive the love he offers. I feel this is because of the tenderness of it that exposes how I am not ever that tender with myself. Once I accept this I can feel a change and open up and receive. This has led to me letting go of us being individuals, but rather that we are Love together, and that Love is always being expressed in so many different ways.
There is an oscillation within me at the moment from the patterns of being an individual, ‘doing it alone’, often proudly so, to a melting openness to tenderness, love and sweetness with another. Old habits or evolution…an every moment choice.
That’s very interesting Joan that maybe we struggle to receive love from others sometimes because it exposes the fact that we have not been very tender or loving with ourselves? Or somehow we don’t feel worthy of that love? This really exposes the ‘going it solo’ game. But as you say ‘no man is an island’ and we are designed to work together and be with each other supporting and holding each other to evolve.
I love the sweetness and tenderness in which this blog was written. It is very healing to read it and have it wash over you like e cleansing shower. Thank you Nicola.
So many relationships could be saved or improved by a deeper appreciation of the many forms and ways in which love is expressed between people, relationships in every shape and form where we have a willingness to see the gestures that clearly express love without ever saying those three words. Just considering this allows us to see how many ways we are loved by so many people and that love is all around us and of course always inside us.
This is so beautiful Nicola. You are so right, it can be easy to miss the way love is expressed if we are not open to it being there for us all the time.
Exactly Lisa, and when we are open to it then we also recognise it being expressed in many varied and wonderful ways.
Words cannot describe the love that I feel when I drop my guard and simply allow myself to be seen for who I am. Meeting another from this place of vulnerability is truly touching, and if I allow myself to see the other person for who they truly are the love magnifies between us. This depth of love has no words.
Beautifully expressed Rebecca, I so agree. So often we think vulnerability as a weakness and so protect ourselves instead of dropping our guard to allow the love to flow both in and out.
True Jane, when we can let ourselves feel and see our own vulnerability and express it, it invites love to be expressed out by us and love in by others.
Nicola whenever I’m out and its starts raining this blog brings a smile to my face. The love, the care and the fact that the words “i love you” are but a tiny spec compared to the expansive way of saying I love you through everything that we do and how we are with ourselves. Thank you.
I loved the example you shared, with Christoph showing how he expressed his love for his precious wife. And as you said, how easily this could have been missed if you were not totally open to accepting the loving gesture on offer. It’s so true Nicola, love can be expressed in so many ways, and can be received deeply if we are open to being loved by another.
So many times in the past I know that I rejected some beautiful simple gestures of love from many of my family members and friends in the past. What you share Nicola is simply beautiful and show these little acts of love need not be spoken but are truly felt deep within. Allowing ‘self love’ back into my life those moments are appreciated in the many ways that they are presented.
Marion, I have done the same many times and I have had my beautiful simple gestures of love rejected. We all had so many hurts that our communication was full of misunderstandings or even just ignoring what was happening.
So true Elizabeth, and a great reminder at the same time. This then makes it easier for us to express our love.
Thank you Nicola for sharing this beautiful example of love being expressed by a loving gesture. These simple stories of different ways we show love are inspiring and heart warming.
I have often rejected gestures of love because I have not had a relationship with myself that was able to hear them, let alone receive them. As I take care of and develop appreciation for and tenderness towards myself these gestures and moments are popping up all over the place and in my being open to accept them there is a whole new level of connection to myself, the other person and life on offer.
I know this to be true for me too Matilda. once I allowed myself to accept that I myself am a big ball of love first and foremost, then I opened myself up to seeing what beauty and love was all around me. Those external things hadn’t changed but my ability to see them and appreciate them for what they are had.
‘I have often rejected gestures of love because I have not had a relationship with myself that was able to hear them, let alone receive them.’ I can relate to this Matilda, and as my relationship with myself evolves and deepens I sometimes get flashes of relationships I had in the past and moments of loving gestures that I did not pick up were even there at the time. The way we are with ourselves is so much more important than we realize and live.
Thank you Nicola, for your sharing full of rhichness and wisdom. Your love to your husband Christoph is deeply felt and inspires me to open up more for true love.
I have read this blog several times and each time I feel how deeply beautifully the love is between you both, Nicola and Christoph. It is a great reminder to see where I am still waiting to hear or say ‘I love you’ instead of seeing all the ways love is either expressed to me, or that I can express to others.
Wow Nicola – I just LOVED reading this article. I am very passionate about love; I love love. I have started to express love openly but to have you so clearly explain that it can be expressed in so many different ways, although it makes so much sense, makes me realise I hadn’t fully received it in all its forms and blessings. What I am finding and you have confirmed, is that we are all of the essence of love and as I have started to express it more – the world is saying back to me ‘please keep saying it.’ People struggle with expressing this innateness of themselves and when not expressed, it hurts deeply. That’s why we can change the world – by us starting to express our love – it ignites another and gives them permission to start exploring how to do this too. Awesome article Nicola. Thank you.
The world is definitely saying ‘please keep saying it’…’even if we are not all ready to hear it, please keep laying the foundation of love expressed’. This makes perfect sense to me and makes every conversation I have purposeful. Playfully so we can consider how many different ways we can say ‘I love you’.
Matilda I saw you a few years ago and was completely blown away by the love I felt you express in the way you moved and worked and I never even heard you speak. Just your very presence touched me a lot so perhaps every step you take is the conversation you refer to?
Nicola thank you for sharing such a gorgeous example of how warming and simple love can be. Its like even though it was raining and probably getting chilli, the warmth of his Love is what shone through. I love how you described the many ways in which you can love and appreciate another; and how we can choose to see the LOVE being displayed or choose to have a fight. This must be the most common reason people do have fights – misunderstandings.
What you expressed was very beautiful, “It is very joyful to feel and acknowledge the many beautiful ways we can share and receive love with others.” So many gems in this article!
I keep coming back to this blog Nicola because I love it so. It must be the open sharing of your appreciation of and love with Christoph, that makes it a delightful read. As you say “Love is such a fascinating subject” and well worth the exploration, because ultimately it leads us back to who we already are.
Thank you Nicola, it is such a joy to come back to your blog again and again – each time finding a new facet of wisdom.
It takes true courage and real trust to work with someone in a relationship to explore how you both give and receive love. For there is nothing more daunting then stepping into a forgotten abyss of claiming the love you are and expressing this outwardly, uncertain of how it will be received by the world. This is a lesson I am learning and highlights the beauty in those that are patiently prepared to support me as I leave this cage.
In my experience Phil if I express the love I am (which is an energy the expression of which does not always look like you or I might imagine) then it always comes back to me even if it is not received by others. In short expressing my love is not in any way dependent upon whether another receives it in a way I might want or perceive as them having received it. In fact it I have any attachment to the receipt then the chances are it was not love!
Your blog made me realise all the energy we waste on what is not love and what is the complete opposite, I got cut up driving three times in a row yesterday by three different people who were very similar, I reacted each time, muttering some pretty unloving words and probably using an unloving hand gesture or two. I suddenly had to ask myself why am I reacting this way and how unloving I had been. All I was doing was adding more that was not love to the world.
Yes I agree Kevin and you might also have missed the love in the magic of God moment that was being presented to you – why was it that you got cut up three times in a row?!
Such a great point Kevin – what really are we adding to the world? Yes it is a pretty ugly place at times, but do we contribute to that ugliness or do we contribute something wholly and soul-ly different?
True love is grand yet can be expressed powerfully in the most simple of ways. When you can feel and see the love in the body and face of someone as I can in you both from the gorgeous photo of you, then everything about that relationship can come from the choice to be love, with yourself and each other. How beautiful for you Nicola to feel Christoph’s love for you in that moment and how beautiful for him to have it received.
Thanks Nicola, your blog has me thinking about how I show my love, instead of just saying the words and also how in the past, I have gone into that reaction you mentioned, missing the lovely moment that was there, not wanting to feel the love that is always available, as my hurts were still where I was living. That has changed a lot and now it is easier to be ware of the hurt that is there without being in it, which allows me to be more of the love that I am.
Coming back to this beautiful blog once again these words really jumped out at me: “Love is such a fascinating subject because it is ultimately something we all want but really all already are!”. Isn’t it crazy that we spend so much time and effort looking for the love that we all want, outside of ourselves, when all the time it has been waiting patiently for us to understand that we naturally are that love. What a wonderful life, and world, changing lesson to present to all children from a very early age.
Gorgeous Nicola. I have always found that ‘I love you’ doesn’t even begin to cover what I want to express to another and this has always left me feeling frustrated. It is wonderful to appreciate all the ways we all express love. It also inspires me to be far more loving with myself as I know that this is he foundation for the love I express to others.
The words ‘I love you’ have often felt empty to me when I’ve said them to another, and when I’ve received them from another…I’ve always been looking for more. The more being the loving gestures that say ‘I love you’ without needing to say the words at all. The same applies to ourselves…telling ourselves we love ourselves isn’t going to cut it either it’s the loving ways we are with ourselves that feeds us back the love we feel inside and enables us to be that with others too.
Your blog Nicola, shows us that when we stay with what is truly there in front of us and not change it in any way, it’s very beauty unfolds right there before us. What a simply gorgeous love you both share together.
How beautiful to share your appreciation for how love is Nicola, that is your awareness to let it in as expressed from another. All too often love can be rejected because it doesn’t fit an ideal image of the romanticized word.
So true Nicola, when we don’t judge and allow everyone to have their own expression of love, life becomes so love-ly. Like we also allow a flower to express in its natural way to then receive a loving moment with a flower or in nature, just receiving and marveling not judging it, we can be with people too. How beautiful to receive the uniqueness of someones love in expression.
One of my all time favourite things to do at the moment is to come up with ways I can express love to people without actually using words. Considering someone else’s feelings and what I can do to show them just how much I love them, is also changing my old behaviours and patterns of lack of self worth, insecurity and destruction. And you know there are SO many little ways you can show someone how much you cherish them being in your life.
When we live true to ourselves it is remarakable what amazing fetes we are capable of doing, like running to collect the car when you wife is walking in the rain.
It is a shame we currently live in times where men are criticized for such loving acts, whereas there once was a time when chivalry was the norm. I say bring back those days when women where women and men where men. I love a man to open a door for me or lift a heavy box, that does not make me weak, it honours me to the bone.
I agree Caroline, men can be criticised for loving acts, whereas they actually deeply adore to express their love in myriad ways. Where does the criticism stem from – jealousy perhaps? I feel deeply honoured when a man does something for me like lift a box that I find heavy, but it is easy for them. I say chivalry is not dead, it just needs a bit of re-invigoration!
Yes i so agree Caroline, I always feel really honoured when a man behaves chivalrous in this way, so gentle-man like.
Reading this blog again I feel so much joy in the possibilities of how many ways there are to express our love. Thank you so much for writing this Nicola.
Abby, me too – so many ways Nicola says to me ‘I love you’.
This is a great case study for relationships. Thank you Christoph and Nicola for sharing such intimate details of your life for the benefit of everyone’s learning.
The smallest gestures of love are no less potent than the grand acts of love, either way I have come to realise that if I hold myself as being less than worthy of any such gesture (at any level), I will not willingly see it or let it in for what it is. So Nicola what is very lovely in your appreciation for Christoph’s act of love (that could have been otherwise interpreted!) was your self appreciation of your own worthiness to be adored 🙂 and thus able to receive Christoph’s loving gesture.
That is an EXCELLENT point Rosanna. Christoph and I loved each other from day 1 and had a strong connection, but years ago we also used to have a lot of hurts and issues and therefore a lot of misunderstandings and reactions. Since meeting Serge Benhayon and receiving so much healing and support from Universal Medicine we have healed these hurts and transformed. Yesterday I was looking at Christoph and he looked and felt so completely utterly gorgeous, open and joyful in a way that he never expressed when I first met him 22 years ago. It occurred to me that if I had met the man who was before me in that moment 22 years earlier I might not have been able to get together with him as I would have felt unworthy and not been able to handle that level of love. Instead we have grown and developed together and our love just keeps on expanding and ever delighting us and others!
So true Elizabeth
Elizabeth that is beautiful, ….I am learning this daily and how different my day is when I make that choice.
As you point out beautifully Nicola, ‘love’ can be expressed many ways but the key ingredients are to be open to both giving and receiving it. If it’s one sided, we will never feel like our needs are met, but open up to both and love will be there in abundance.
Very true Helen, it is just as gorgeous expressing love out as it is to accept love in. An equal balance of love that completes us in every way.
Beautifully expressed and absolutely true Helen, there is a never ending flow of love when we are open equally to both giving and receiving.
It is great to challenge the ideals we have around love and what it is meant to look like – when we feel what it is in truth for each of us we can as you say build an appreciation for when others show it to us in the many ways.
Nicola this is living with me since reading it and realising that the more we express love the easier it gets and that we can do this all the time in everything in just our being and the joy it brings to our whole body as this is who we naturally are. What is far harder I am beginning to feel is not expressing this love and holding it back ,that is holding back all of our very essence and being. Receiving love is the same effect also. Thank you for your beautiful sharing.
What a gorgeous expression of love your husband offered you that day, Nicola, and how lovely that you were able both to read his intention to express his loving care for you and to accept it, even though it did not come packaged with the ‘3 little words,’ the bouquet of flowers or any of those socially prescribed signs of love that we are lead to believe are “it” when it comes to the expression of love between a man and a woman. Surely God would not restrict Himself exclusively to a bouquet, a box of chocolates, a bottle of champagne and a sparkly ring as an expression of his love? Then why would we?
The most significant thing I got from your blog was that Love is everywhere for us to feel and within inside for us to express. Pretty cool: thank you!
This is beautiful Nicola. I remember when I used to say that I didn’t want anyone to take care of me. I felt I had to be self sufficient and not needy of anyone else. Now I realise how mixed up I was. This blog is a gorgeous example of the depth of care of your husband and the loving appreciation of yourself. Thank you for sharing this.
Very true Toni. Nicola’s point holds a lot of wisdom. When we are open we feel the love and care shown in so many areas. I find when I do make a point of noticing and acknowledging it, not only does it make a difference to my own experience, but often the other person blossoms up and walks away with a spring in their step.
Again Nicola, this is an amazing story and one that shows a true relationship. You have value in Christoph and he values you, for the amazing qualities which you bring to the relationship.
And so the ‘loved ones’ bounce around on the surface of love not having developed themselves or committed to unearthing the depth of love we all crave. What better way to circumnavigate the work that needs to be done to start to live all that we are – true love – than to place 3 little words that can literally fall from anyone’s mouth with no true meaning behind them out there in to every opportune moment.
We even start to believe it when we start to negate the feelings we don’t want to feel. And yet here presented is a wonderful simple moment that rings with all loving truth and depth that in an instant we could write off as pedestrian or simply crazy – I love that love is this playful, supportive and grand. It tells me that we are all so awesome that we can love each other to bits without speaking a single word.
What seems to be an every day little gesture can speak volumes and since I first read your blog, I am more observant and playful with the little expressions of love within my own family and work colleagues.
Love is indeed a fascinating subject and I have observed that life itself becomes fascinating and magical the more I express love and the more I can receive love, the more I can allow my love out.
Thank you Nicola for sharing the simplicity of sharing love in the many ways precious to who we are and our quality of expression that is unique to every person and at that particular moment and person we are presented with.
There are indeed so many ways to express I love you with. And there are many ways how to embrace it too. I can relate to what you write that our beloved ones do something out of pure love for us. It is up to us, if we lovingly recognize and embrace it OR, other scenario, not feel/see it and reject it. There is so much love around and in us. Do we express and embrace it in full?
A huge wake-up call to not demand or even just expect love in the way we have been conditioned to, based on our hurts and unfulfilled expectations; it gets very, very messy then.
I love this statement, Gabriele! It’s not a oneway road to look at expressing love. It is truly also what we have based our “demands” on we have on others about how we want to be addressed how love “should be expressed”.
thankyou Nicola. love should be our first and foremost connection, and it should be the pulse that we express everything with and from. too often do I separate from love, when it is the one thing I want most.
Since reading the first time, I have begun to explore all the little ways I express love! Wow I am blowing myself away!
That is so gorgeous Simon!
I remember an old saying that actions speak louder than words. I can feel now how this is not true, because what speaks loudly is the quality of energy that a word is said with and equally, the quality of energy that an action is done with. Rather than simply looking at the action or hearing the word, what you have shared here Nicola about being open to truly receiving messages by simply feeling, is what is important.
Well said, Simone. This is a great reminder to always be feeling what energy a word or deed is said and done in. Some of the greatest deeds in history have been done for self rather than for the benefit of humanity. When we are discerning, love is easily recognisable because it is something we connect to deep inside.
Beautifully said Simone and Janet – it ALWAYS is about ENERGY first – exactly the same thing can be done or said in love or in not-love and there is a billion miles of difference between the two!
This blog makes me stop and look at the different ways that I and my family express our love to each other, it’s like a whole other language running throughout our lives together. But I can’t stop there and I can’t leave anyone out, when I consider the love I feel for my family, this love is instantly cast out like a huge net and I want it to cover the world.
Thank you Nicola. It’s a beautiful story you share about Christoph. Sometimes we really do reject a gesture of love or judge it to not be enough or that it should have been another way. I am reminded that the other person is trying their best to express love, that the expression doesn’t need to be perfect – it can still be appreciated, especially if I can connect to their intention.
We do do that, hey, Annie? If it doesn’t come packaged the way we have assumed Love should be packaged, we refuse to accept it as love. Pretty crazy, really. The homogenisation of Love ….yeuk! I shall definitely be on the lookout for any mental constrictions I have taken on around this word. I know within me that it is natural to be completely open to Love’s expression in an infinitesimal number of ways….how wondrous to start to accept that expression. I was just outside looking at the early morning starry sky. I had to open my arms to share my love and to accept the love I feel emanating from all those stars….it’s all Love…I felt their intention, too.
Yep, there could be lots of packages of love we are dismissing or rejecting… or at least opportunities for us to express love back.
I feel that a lot of relationship issues and problems are because we have so many interpretations and expectations on how love should be expressed. I am learning that how I express love is different from somebody else and mine is not better or less, it is just different. If we bring in more understanding, then I feel there would be less fighting and issues.
It is amazing when you can find so many different ways to express to someone, in words or in actions, just how much you love them.
It is amazing Rebecca! There is so much love and it can be said in so many ways.
Nicola thank you for sharing your truly beautiful experience with us all. I know I will take away from your shared experience a fresh look at what true Love looks like and be more open to give and receive a divine Love such as you describe.
“What you share here is powerful and stopped me in my tracks when I read it…all those moments or least some of those moment when I would have acted with anger or defence when a gesture of love was shared. “It also occurred to me that many wars and fights could well (or rather unwell) come out of people not being open to love in its many forms and expressions and how completely crazy that is!” Very interesting to ponder, I know I am still learning to be open to love, even though as you say it is all around and within us in all moments. Being willing to let go of those hurts enables us to feel the love that is always present. Thank you for sharing.”
What you share here is powerful and stopped me in my tracks when I read it…all those moments or least some of those moment when I would have acted with anger or defence when a gesture of love was shared. “It also occurred to me that many wars and fights could well (or rather unwell) come out of people not being open to love in its many forms and expressions and how completely crazy that is!” Very interesting to ponder, I know I am still learning to be open to love, even though as you say it is all around and within us in all moments. Being willing to let go of those hurts enables us to feel the love that is always present. Thank you for sharing.
Although this blogs is sweet and simple the message is magnificent. How many relationships are fractured and bruised because we don’t allow the grace and space to understand each other? It is not quite the same as how we can express and show love differently but it is one of the most significant and memorable teachings about all kinds of relationships I have heard, it was given by Natalie Benhayon just over five years ago and there was not much said – just a few lines but I have often referred back to it. The main gist of it was to stop expecting others to understand what we understand, so it might be the other person understands things we don’t and vice versa. The point being to stop expecting people to be at the same understanding as us or to grow and develop at the pace we want them to. Behind this expectation the motive is usually selfish – ‘it would make things easier for me if you understood it my way’.
There are just so many ways to express love for another. After reading this I am going to enjoy sharing love in as many ways as I can and not hold it back when I feel I have it all to express.
Nicola I felt the love you have not only for Christoph but all of us through your writing. You have supported us to see so much more than the three words “I Love You’.
This is beautiful Nicola… as I sit here considering my dying Mum I know that we are just starting a long overdue education in telling each other how much we love each other. Because we are not used to it, it comes out a bit awkward, and by no means fully. But there is such an intense opportunity, and I can feel the love welling up in me so that the only thing to do is express it. And with practice, more and more is felt, and we go further each time in being able to tell each other how we really feel.
Ah wow this is awesome Nicola, and a real wake call for me to acknowledge there are many things my partner does that do not fit my ideal picture of what love is meant to look like and wow yes now I understand how I am actually not letting the love be felt in those moments that he is uniquely expressing. Awesome blog and one I will ponder deeply on. Thank you Nicola.
Yes Samantha it was the same wake call for me as well. It is a bit crazy what I all do to avoid Love. All the wonderful and lovely things my partner did to me and I did not acknowledge as such! It is time to open up more to love to myself so that I can more accept the love my partner, family, friends and colleagues or others have for me.
…allways in service to offer us more grace, Nicola – Thank you. Yes you are a ‘precious wife’ – good to have you! Christoph knows. And we know.
‘Love is such a fascinating subject because it is ultimately something we all want but really all already are!’ It would be amazing if there was a remake of the film ‘Love Story’ that explores the unfolding relationship a man or woman has with themselves, from seeking love outside, to finding love within.
Reading you blog again today Nicola I just want to say that, where you shared: – “What I felt was his humongous love and how he wanted to take care of and protect his precious wife. To my ears this was Christoph shouting ‘I LOVE YOU’ from the rooftops with a megaphone. So of course I joyfully got in the car to be with this beautiful loving man.” – I felt such joy in your written expression here, thank you for keeping this beautiful joy alive in your blog, it transfers to everyone who reads your expression I am sure, and how awesome is that!
Nicola I love what you have shared, what struck me from reading your blog, was looking at it from another’s point of view, how you did, to know that was Christoph’s way of saying “I love you”. If we drop into reaction we can miss so much.
Nicola, since reading this blog I have become so much more aware of how people express their love in just so many different ways. The smallest of gestures now feel so huge. Thank you for inviting us all to be open to receiving and accepting even more love.
Vicky I agree – I too have become very aware of how people express their love and I am noticing that there may even have been things I have taken for granted before, whereas now it brings a deep appreciation. It is true, the smallest of gestures now feel huge.
My sentiments exactly Eva Rygg. the smallest of gestures now feel huge. For example, I am going home next week-end for my mother’s 80th birthday, and my daughter texted me a menu she has prepared for me knowing I am gluten/sugar and dairy free, knowing I would not be able to eat the food at the party…. she has also ordered a cake that I can eat with nut cream, which was her way of showing me how much she loved me. I felt her love and was deeply touched.
I completely agree, Vicky. The gesture may be a small physical activity, but done in Love, it brings a humongous amount of universal energy with it. This is a fact I am currently exploring myself – it’s an amazing exploration and experience..
Nicola your love and joy expressed are a delight to read and feel, you have an ability to bring that joy, love and quirky of humour to us all naturally and your relationship is testament to your understanding of the many ways to say I Love You and live that not only in your relationship but with us all.
The interpretation of love takes it from being a feeling that we have in our body into a concept that we hold in our minds. Once we do that, we no longer are able to perceive the truth of love that is, as you say, Katie, right in front of us.
This is gold Nicola. You write in such a clear way it is so easy to see how we can miss out if we are not open to love in every form of expression it can come in.
Hello Nicola Lessing and this paragraph say’s it all to me, almost a how to live life, “The more I am open to love and allow myself to receive it and express it, the more I see it everywhere… in myself, in others and in nature. I then start to see more clearly how everyone is pure love in essence, and when not expressing in this way it is because they are in reaction and protecting a hurt or imagined hurt – perhaps even from long, long ago.” Seeing life through these eyes is a huge support to everyone around you, thank you.
I agree Doug – there is great joy in love and there is also a stillness in love and it can’t be true if it does not contain love – Love, Joy, Stillness, Truth and Harmony are the five members of the Soul family and they always travel together. There is also a Unimedpedia Soul: http://www.unimedliving.com/unimedpedia/word-index/unimedpedia-soul.html
“Love is such a fascinating subject because it is ultimately something we all want but really all already are!” This is a phenomenal statement and something that would change the world if but we were to grow through childhood being confirmed that we ARE Love.
Good point, Rosanna. Why it this not the first and last thing we learn at school and from our parents growing up – that we are love and all we need to do is be ourselves no matter what? In generations to come, this is surely the way to go with education.
Nicola – I had a big smile on my face when I read ’this is Christoph shouting I LOVE YOU from the rooftops with a megaphone’ – Go Christoph!
A super inspiring blog Nicola – thanks for sharing your lovely experience. Such a great reminder for us all to remember that communication can come in different layouts, key is for us to feel into what is on offer and not fall for the disturbance of what we may have expected in the situation.
I have retold this story several times since I read it because it was such an inspiration to read and such a great real life example. People totally get that there is a moment when we can accept more love or stay with a niggle and pull a relationship back.
It’s true. This is such a heart warming account, full of humour too. Put so clearly with such a great example, one cannot help but laugh at how preposterous it would be to not accept this huge loving gesture. Yet the reality is we all know how easy it would be to turn this into something else and shy away from all that is on offer.
Exactly Nicole – there is that specific moment where we can decide to go with love and with God, or we can go against it and try to control the situation and miss out on the opportunity of the magic at play.
This is so true Nicola. There have been many times in the past when I have seen a loving gesture crushed because of an old hurt or a bad mood. How beautiful it is to be open to that loving gesture and not in that old controlling energy. It seems it just takes us to be aware of what is truly going on and not just in our own bubble of frustration and impatience. Life is so sweet if we allow others to express their love and joy.
Amanda you have used a gorgeous word here to describe life as being sweet. What amazes me is how we miss so many of the sweet moments and times because of our hurts as moods as you have described.
Nicola I so love your account of the rain and Christoph getting the car for you and how we can interpret a loving gestures all the wrong way. I so would have done that in the past .Such a great blog which I will read again many times as it is so heart warming and humorous.
The love is so evident in the small details, a gesture here, a hat there… taking the time to really appreciate another person and care for them. The little story in the rain really brings it home.
Reading your blog is leaving a warm and surrendered feeling behind in my body. To truly let myself get involved with love is the key in the revelation for me. To absolutely let go of control and protection habits, to just let happen what love carries it’s way.
Such a beautiful and revealing blog, thank you Nicola. I find it so interesting that we are affected by ‘looking to hear it or see it in a way they have been conditioned to receive it, and so, love-expressions can be missed or misunderstood.’ And this feels huge! How much are we misinterpreting or missing because of our previous conditioning – I know I’ll be pondering on this.
This is so true; we can easily ignore opportunities of love coming our way because of our long held beliefs and ideals of what love should be and our unwillingness to be open to love. Not only I am learning to express love in my life but also when another rejects love, to remain open and to keep expressing love no matter what; something I have found most challenging in the past.
Nicola I really enjoyed your post, the deep care and love that comes across in the examples you’ve shared is self evident yet the fact is there are many times that I or people I know would take those the wrong way. It’s also interesting to think we grow up being taught that love is there when someone says “I Love You” when in-fact the very opposite is often true and that we miss out on the real breadth, width and depth of love that we can live for ourselves and express with others every day.
Like your ‘imagine another scenario’ Nicola – we always have so many ways to act, it is our choice in which way we choose to express. Our expression is based on our foundation and our purpose – are looking for ‘right & wrong’ and so to win/control or are we looking for truth and love? One is based on and leads us into deeper separation and the other is about connection. Our choice. Good to be aware off!
Hi Sandra, yes I agree in the end it all comes down to our CHOICES. The current Unimed Living audio is all about choices and how our choices can be freeing or imprisoning: http://www.unimedliving.com/voice/audio-of-the-month/the-deepest-form-of-prison-2015-09.html
Nicola, I love your writing and your absolute expression of love. This blog is a real gem and should be published in magazines for relationship advice. It is such a loving call for being responsible to be and express the love we already are leaving no space for expectations of believes about how the other has to love you. The world is set up to make us belief that love is something to receive and give and not something we are and your blog brings it right back to truth and into the body and the deep stillness and joy that love is. This is true love!
I wonder what has happened to me that the most I wanted as a young woman to be shown love in this kind as Nicola described it – I have lost to do it by my own with others. That is a big ouch. Retrospectively there were loving gestures like this but I did not value them for what they were. This means that there has to be an openness not only in those who express love but also in those who receive. Otherwise love stays unrecognised and not able to grow.
I can feel how this expectation to express ‘I love you’ from young is there and how capping this has felt to me. I can feel now how I know how to express love in many ways, and that I am already so amazing to have around without even doing anything. This blog is amazing as it brings back this feeling of being able to express my love in so many ways. Thank you Nicola.
On pondering on this blog I realised how meaningless the three words I love you can mean or how beautiful they can be. Words are nothing without the energy behind them and the same with gestures. Simple gestures with pure love behind them or one done with self gain in mind, once again down to energy.
When someone is being love, everything they say, everything they touch in and through their action offers a certain quality that makes me feel being held in forever expansion. It is absolutely gorgeous to recognise it, and expressing that appreciation in confirmation is very powerful in multifold.
Great post Nicola, what resonated with me was your line here: “often we can express our love in a gesture or simple action, instead of words, and our partners don’t recognise it, as they are looking to hear it or see it in a way they have been conditioned to receive it, and so, love-expressions can be missed or misunderstood” – yes it’s the re-conditioning of the actual word ‘LOVE’ and its meaning that has created the love today as it’s popular barter-system, of exchange, something to aspire towards having, idealised and not love at all. When you love truly, there are no words. And if there are no words, then to say ‘i love you’ is but a minute fraction of love’s hugest (yet to be be tapped) depth.
Nicola I love how you have shared that we are all love but what stops us from connecting to this love is our hurts but more powerful is our “imagined hurt”. In many cases we play ball to a feeling that is not true but is often feed to make us feel we are less than what we are.
One of the most important findings I had was to see the intent and the delight of part of me in these imagined hurts that was magnified in the ‘justified’ hurts and that is still going on. It is very addictive.
I agree Elizabeth, love radiates from the photo and indeed says it all.
Thank you Nicola for sharing this gorgeous example from your relationship of being open to love and how the expression of love can be without words. I am touched by the love that is between you and your husband and find this sharing very inspiring.
Thank you Nicola for sharing, sharing and showing our love for one another is so important.
Allowing each other to be is such an important expression of love. How much we have been tricked in what expressing and receiving love looks and feels like!
Nicola, I absolutely love reading your writing. I love what you pointed out about how you could have reacted to Christoph running home to get the car. It points out just how silly we can be in our relationships if we allow things like that to ‘run’. Instead we could be feeling and deepening the quality of love we have, by appreciating the love that is around us, and inside us equally always. Thank you Nicola for your expression and never holding back in Love.
I agree Amelia,
When we are not loving ourselves, we become so conditioned to expect, and demand love to look a certain way from others that we react and become hurt when it is not delivered or presented in the package we want. This can completely control and undo our relationships unnecessarily and diminishes any appreciation for the true expressions of love.
I agree Amelia,
When we are not loving ourselves, we expect, and demand love to look a certain way from others that we react and become hurt when it is not delivered or presented in the package we want. This can completely control and undo our relationships unnecessarily and diminishes any appreciation for the true expressions of love.
Amelia’s comment deepens my awareness into the power of choice. It comes down to the fact that in every moment we have a choice to choose love or not.
Great point. We can choose to ‘run’ with it (a situation), far away from true love and into reaction and hurts, or step into the depth and holding of all the love that we are and that is there on offer for us all, all around us.
Yes Amelia, it requires a lot of commitment to love and to ourselves to read what is happening rather than to react to what we think is happening. Once done, even if done very imperfectly, this makes a huge difference to our relationships.
Reading these words it is clear this is your way to say ‘I love you’ to us all here. Thank you for expressing your care Nicola and assisting us to see that when we live with a box we think love has to fit into, we miss out on the full beauty.
That is so true Joseph Barker, we do miss out on the full beauty of a moment when we hold onto an ideal or belief around what love should be or look like. Better to let it express itself in its own unique and gorgeous way just as Christoph did so very beautifully.
Beautifully said Joseph.
So true Joseph, it is easy to tend to loose sight of the magical moments that are presented to us and are just pure expressions of love, it is usually simple things in life but if we stop and feel in detail is another’s expression of their innermost.
In the past I was so hooked on hearing the words “I love you” believing I or the relationship would get somewhere only once those words were said, that I missed all the amazing expressions of love that had had already been delivered along the way. I am now learning just how gorgeous it is to receive love in its many different forms and to feel all the different ways I too can express love.
I too craved the words ”I love you” to be said to me and once they were said I was happy! How we are so conditioned into believing that when another says ”I love you”, they love us. How ridiculous is that! Love is far greater than these 3 words and this is what I am beginning to re-ignite and open up to within me and all around me.
” love-expressions can be missed or misunderstood” This is so true Nicola. My husband often washes my car and irons my work shirts without any fuss or expectation but I can really feel the caring and love behind these “love-expressions” and always appreciate them. There was a time when I wanted him to say “I love you” and needed that for confirmation of my own value but I don’t need that anymore and can feel his love in so many other things he does in a day.
Beautiful Anne, it is learning to appreciate the loving expressions of others that create more intimate loving relationships.
On of my favorite way’s of saying I love you is smiling with all my heart at people. Not just my children, friends or family, but to anyone I meet I can express my love to in this way.
Another way I have discovered of expressing my love is to be truthful. This means quite often saying things that are true and hold people in a loving respect, but may not be what they want to hear or would recognise as love in that moment. It can also take the form of not smiling if that is not a truthful response or thing for me to do in that moment.
Great point, Nicola. Smiles are awesome but if they are not true, they they are not love: Love is always true. As you say, delivering truth, even if it may be uncomfortable for the listener, is always a way to express Love and is an effect of feeling Love: how could we not address something that is inhibiting ourself or another from expressing and living our natural way – the way of Love?
A Joy to read Nicola. It is such a practical sharing of how it works when we open up to love.
“The more I am open to love and allow myself to receive it and express it, the more I see it everywhere…” this is so true Nicola. Isn’t it absurd that we all are longing for love not realising that we only would have to open up to see the tons of love that are there in and around us?
This is so true Michael, ‘Isn’t it absurd that we all are longing for love not realising that we only would have to open up to see the tons of love that are there in and around us?’, having read this blog a couple of times I have become more open to seeing and feeling love around me, and feeling how friends, family and people that I met are expressing love, it made me realise how easy it is to have a certain expectation and to reject love because it does not look exactly like the picture we have.
Dooh… Now I understand it! Looking for love in all the wrong places. It was always there in me and others . Sometimes It could be standing right in front of me and hit me in the face but I would have missed it because I was more interested in protecting myself from the possibility of being hurt.
I love this question, Michael! “Isn’t it absurd that we all are longing for love not realising that we only would have to open up to see the tons of love that are there in and around us?” If I only open up for my own heart, my love to be expressed in which way or form so ever, then the “longing for love” appears. Cause that is what is truly missing. The greatest gift to me was to find it in my own heart. The key to receive love is to open up to express and allow myself to feel what immense love is already there!
Thank you Nicola for writing a blog on the topic of true love for us all. This is so needed in our world.
Reading this blog again I am really enjoying feeling the simple and very playful message it delivers. What I realise too is that every day I receive the choice to express the loving gestures I feel or not. Plus it feels so much easier to embrace expressing love in a way that feels natural to me opposed to feeling as though I need to express love in a certain way.
I love how profound this article is yet at the same time how simple it actually is. Sometimes I can find myself saying the words “I love you” when I know very well that there is far more that I want to express and just don’t let myself do so. Saying the words “I love you” is one thing, acting on what you feel is an entirely different thing and Christoph’s action of running off to get the car just shows the beauty of love in action.
I agree Elizabeth seeing Love in action is truly beautiful and Christoff did that without a moment’s hesitation. Lovely article to read Nicola, I too attended this SEH3 course earlier this year and gained more understanding of why I hold back from saying the three little words and how what you have described shows me right there what Love is, thank you for sharing.
Love what you say here Elizabeth, “the beauty of love in action” and the profoundness and simplicity that love is. I can feel the denseness we put ourselves into by making life always complicated and full of issues when who we are is light and love and just being it.
Yes to saying the words, and absolutely yes that the love then needs to be put into action. But there is a third element that I feel is equally important and comes through so clearly in Nicola’s blog… and that is in receiving that love. Clocking what is going on and that the small gesture is acknowledged… maybe not verbally but in the heart, as a reminder of how cherished we are.
I agree Elizabeth saying ‘I love you’ can certainly feel empty at times just as receiving it by another can also feel very empty.
Conversely, ‘I love you’ can feel very beautiful, even joyful, to say and to receive.
I can recall being told “I love you” and knowing that it was both untrue and a means of attaining something from me. The very touching example with the rainy walk is much more to my liking, Nothing speaks louder than a simple act of love does to me. Of course verbal appreciation without an agenda is also gorgeous to receive, and to share.
This brought a smile to my face and warmed my heart Nicola – lovely to read about Christoph showing his love in the way he cares for his lady…very sweet.
Thank you Nicola, What a truly lovely blog
How often do we misinterpret another’s gesture from our own protected walls? This point that you have raised is well worth studying for days on end, for in it is all the relationship advice that one ever needs.
Absolutely agree Adam. Nicola’s blog holds it all and is the best relationship advice you can get. We love to complicate things and make it all about analyzing the other and looking for the best ways to get along, when all what we need to do is express the love that is already there and not hold back in our expression in the false belief that we need to protect ourselves.
Hello Adam Warburton and this is also a great point, “How often do we misinterpret another’s gesture from our own protected walls?” So who do we turn to or turn on if ‘our’ life isn’t going that great? Usually the blame goes out into the world we can see isn’t ‘right’. This is a wake up call to the true responsibility of our life and what we see around us. You can change the world you see by first taking a look within your 4 walls. Thank you Adam.
I love what you have said here Adam – ‘This point that you have raised is well worth studying for days on end, for in it is all the relationship advice that one ever needs.’ – Very true.
I was also at this workshop Nicola and found it incredibly healing to gain an understanding that love is expressed in many different ways and when I open up to love being expressed not in the way I think it should be, but be open to it being expressed in many different ways, that indeed love is all around us.
Nicola I absolutely loved reading about how you accepted the love that was given to you, because you recognise it in your own body.
Last week I was folding the washing for my husband and I. In the past I would fold other people’s washing more carefully than my own, expecting them to notice and praise me for the level of care I had shown. But this is not love one bit! So as I folded our washing last week and did it equally, I could feel the love I was putting into both our clothing, and it brought me such joy. It is these little things and the care we take with our partners and ourselves equally that say ‘I love you’ without the investment.
It seems a natural part of how we are together because the love we feel is there to be expressed.
Ah wow Hannah I can so relate to this. I love folding clothes but I can feel the just putting the extra effort and care in for other members of my family than with my own clothes. I can sense from your comment that if I put more care and love into folding my own clothes the love will truly be felt in the folded clothes for my family. And this applies to so many areas in life!
That’s a lovely observation Amina “leaving another to just be themselves is definitely the way to truly enjoy another”. It’s lovely to experience from afar as well, like noticing those moments when another is with themselves and focused on what they are doing, no drive, just enjoying the process, it’s very endearing to behold.
‘At one point we looked at how each of us would express “I love you”. ‘ It is great to really stop and feel this, the words come automatic for so many of us and even come with an emptiness. That is what I really love about Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine’s workshops, courses and presentations they make us really stop and feel what is going on like no one else ever does.
Thank you Nicola for sharing so much truth about love and what it really is, and how we could choose to not accept it also. Beautiful sharing and beautiful comments as a reflection confirming the love we all are and know.
Nicola, it has been very supportive reading your blog because I can feel how easy it is for me to reject when people are being loving. I loved your example of accepting the lift even though you were nearly home and it had stopped raining. It has made me aware of appreciating love in its many forms and not rejecting and reacting, but instead staying open to love.
Such a beautiful sharing Nicola and its so beautiful that you appreciate such a simple act of love. It feels so full.
This is such a beautiful story Nicola, so simple yet so powerful.
I can feel Christoph emanating his love for you through a thoughtful gesture and you, Nicole, being open and present to receiving that love. Awesome symmetry
This blog is such a sharing of love and a real inspiration to let love in. Thank you Nicola.
My family didn’t say to each other i love you. Thats why i never had to use these words. Also in relationships except one where i did say i love you, but really only to please the other person. Not because i really felt expressing it. As i was so protected that i did not allow myself to feel the love that i am and to love other people. This is changing. Today i feel how much i love my friends and than i just tell them in emails. This is amazing. Writing this i still feel that i avoid saying it to people personally.
Reading this is like a couple counseling session. Thank you for sharing how you live your relationship, Nicola and Christoph. How much beauty lies in opening myself to the many different ways of telling and being told “I love you.” It is actually written in every second of my life, signed by God.
Our mouths can easily shape the word love, but for our bodies to express it we have to let go of all that we have allowed to shape us that is not love. This is why we are quick to speak what we are yet to live.
So very true Liane, and so beautifully stated.
For years i have been very protected and mistrusting of these 3 words. The pressure to use them felt immense, yet I could no shake my discomfort at saying it to someone when i barely knew what it meant for myself. Enter Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine and my eyes were opened, of course, how could I know love without truly loving myself first. To my amazement this was harder than I expected, it takes dedication, responsibility, commitment and heaps of honesty. Today when I choose it, Love is an emanation, it flows through my fingertips as I touch, my eyes as I observe, my feet as i walk, my voice as I speak and my whole body as I express. As you have shared Nicola, the beauty of love is allowing ourselves to see the myriad of ways in which it can be expressed.
Soooo beautiful Nicola!
Nicola I love your message and I understand it’s a willingness to be open to let love present itself even when logically our brain says it doesn’t make sense.
Thank you Nicola for sharing your story, your love and ‘elder’ wisdom with us all.
I agree. The love Nicola and Christoph are is so beautiful. I loved reading about it and feeling it here today too.
Yes Amelia – it is precious to feel how they share their love with everyone equally by sharing this profound, loving and yet so natural experience and not holding it as something exclusive.
Nicola what you share here is so beautiful, in how love is lived, the movement of love, not just something held locked in a few words, but in movement, action, a dance! Chris’ expression of his deep love for you was love in movement and all embracing…I could actually feel it and your quality of preciousness that he so honoured.
Thank you Karoline – I love how you have described it as the “movement” of love. It is beautiful to connect to the movement and flow of life. Even in stillness there is still always movement. Stillness like Love is a quality of the Soul and described beautifully at Unimedpedia Stillness: http://www.unimedliving.com/unimedpedia/word-index/unimedpedia-stillness.html
I truly enjoyed reading this and the way love has been taken deeper and more expansive in how the sharing of love can be expressed way beyond the 3 words ‘I love you’, and in so many ways. As was shared in the blog, we can miss this if we are set on a very limited definition of how love ‘should’ be expressed. How limiting, to narrow love down to 3 words, when love is so much more, it is grand, and expansive. The picture of you and Christoph emanates pure love and joy and it is felt, it brings a warm smile to my face…even in a photo love can be felt and expressed.
Limiting ourselves in our expressions of love, and how we see/perceive them opens us up for all sorts of troubles in relationships. We need to know that we are love innately, so any action or movement has the potential to be an expression of love.
I agree Willem…there is so much joy in being open to giving and receiving love in every moment, and the magic that comes with being open is amazing.
This is gorgeous Nicola. I just loved the story about Christoph going to pick you up from your walk and the gesture of love that you felt. This just goes to show that the way we see and perceive things can be interpreted or re-interpreted through many lenses, depending on where we are at within ourselves.
Absolutely Vicky. Because Nicola was connected to her own love from within, she could easily appreciate and feel it in how Christoph showed her his love for her.
As we embody our own love it naturally flows through all our expressions and often communicates more than words may ever convey. I love reading life’s bountiful messages of love.
This is so true Victoria. Our love is indeed bountiful!
There are so many ideals and beliefs around love, and we each create our own unique picture of how we expect love to be, and when that is not met we react. But if each picture is different then another will never completely meet that expectation – we set ourselves up for failure. Whereas the truth of love is the same for everyone…bringing harmony, equality and joy for all.
This is so lovely, Nicola, and it has made me stop to ponder on how I say I love you without saying the words. I had never considered how much more there is in the expression of love than just saying ‘I love you’. The phrase is beautiful to say, but feeling my whole body express it with a body of love expanding the love in the world, is something else!
Thank you Nicola, I was at this level 3 course and I had a sense of relief and greater understanding as for me, saying I love you has not ever been my way of expressing love yet I felt I had to. I love how you explained it so simply and easy for anyone to understand with your sweet story. I could just imagine Christoph running off to get the car for you. I could also really easily see how I could be the one saying, why did you do that, I am almost home and how crushing that could be.
Yes often what doesn’t make sense with the head, makes absolute sense from the heart.
Reading this blog and the comments is like a celebration of love in its deliciously varied forms of expression. Thank you, Nicola for inspiring us with your ode to love.
I can only add my deepest appreciation and agreeing to your words, Janet! An ode to love** That’s what the world needs*
It is beautiful to feel your love in expression here Nicola, and to feel your love for each other. What you say is very true, love expresses in many unique ways and if we have a certain expectation we need to hear it in a certain way we sure do miss out. I have felt the emptiness in the words ‘I love you’, when they have been said from a place of disconnection and also felt the enormous love in a gesture or a simple smile. As we all live in a body of love we have a choice to either let that love in or not. What truly hurts is when we do not let love in or express love out.
Absolutely gorgeous blog Nicola, a heartwarming read. Expressing and receiving love can indeed come in many forms as you’ve so beautifully shared. It is so true, when someone is deeply hurt and is choosing to hold onto their hurts, they tend to be very closed in receiving love. I have experienced this myself, at times when I feel deeply hurt and allowing it to fester, I have then created an invisible wall that nothing is allowed in, not even love, a highly protective shield. The other experience is feeling a deep hurt, acknowledging it, then choosing to surrender, allowing myself to feel tenderness, delicate and vulnerable without any protection or judgment. In this instance I am open to receiving love even though I felt hurt, it is realised and no longer held in my body, therefore creating a space for love. In the past 4 years, I have been attending Universal Medicine courses to release and heal my hurts. This has created an enormous clearing, allow space in my body to fully express from my essence, it’s like de-cluttering my body to allow the space for LOVE. This de-cluttering is a continuous process that is clearing and making more and more space. It has allowed me to express and receive love openly.
Gorgeously said Chan. I too have had very similar experiences and with the support of the amazing healing that I have received from Universal Medicine courses and sessions, have been able to let go of more and more that is not love, which has cleared more and more space for the love that is always there both within and without to be received and expressed.
It was this comment…”Love is such a fascinating subject because it is ultimately something we all want but really all already are!” that stood out for me. It is a great trick of life the set-up to seek love, to think that it is outside of us when in fact it is within us all along just waiting for us to re-connect to. How amazing would it be for our children to be taught this from very young – a whole lot of angst would be avoided and the positive impact on the world would be enormous!
Absolutely Paula, if as a children we were confirmed in the love that we already are, the world may not even be here for the purpose of this planet is here for us all to return to love.
Our children are being taught this since they were born and it is extraordinary to watch them grow up expressing the Love they have in their hearts. The impact on our family is enormous as well as on those who are a part of our family in some way. Everyone receives the Love, no one is left out. This way of parenting will eventually change the world.
For me to say the words, ‘I love you’, is much easier than expressing from the depth or enormous love I feel; by saying only -’ I love you’- feels safe, and what other people expect. When I express how I see all the things I love about another it feels more complete, thank you Nicola for raising this important subject about the way we express love.
For me Thomas, when I express everything I love about another, it fills me up like a well, but the filling up is coming from myself, from my own source of love. That’s the beautiful thing about true love…we’re already connected to it, we just have to turn on our own tap of love.
I love the analogy of the tap of love here Elizabeth, I experience it in my own body like this. Unless I am connected to my own essence I will not recognise love from another in its true form.
Being truthful is one of the strongest possible ways to say “I love you”. It says “I love you” and “I trust you” and “I feel you are amazing!” and much more.
That is very true Christoph, truth is a rarely appreciated expression of love, yet it is complete love. To love someone fully it is illogical to consider lying to them.
You hit the nail on the head, so to speak, with your insight-full comment about many wars or fights by people not being open to love in its many forms and expressions. Often we can do something for our partner or friend that we would love ourselves so we naturally expect they too would love it, but for them it’s not what they want at all! I feel that by feeling the intention of the other person who is showing their love, we become more understanding and appreciative of their particular expression of love, thank you Nicola for your beautiful sharing.
Excellent point Thomas – that is why it is always so important to be honest with ourselves and also to discern and feel the energy before listening to words or judging the action. We can only do that if we let go of the “little self” which can be so caught up in non-existent issues and old stuff that it does not get to see the riches or even poison on offer. So then we accept the gesture of a nice person saying good things with no love whatsoever and reject the absolute love of someone who is sharing something that is true that we don’t want to hear!
That is a really good point Thomas. If we take time to appreciate what another person might be doing for us, to understand that it is their expression of love, then we will see love in so many different places. If we are constantly looking for love to look a particular way, we will miss gems and our lives will remain small.
Absolutely true- actions mean often so much more than any spoken words…
Nicola- this blog is beautiful!!! A agree 100% it starts with ourself- how much love we accept and have the ability to see the love that is around us in effect. One sentence I love – Love… it is ultimately something we all want but really all already are!
To embody that we are all love already will change everything in us and around us.
That’s great Steffi ” how much love we accept and have the ability to see the love that is around us in effect”. It definitely requires an awareness of the love in ourselves to be able to appreciate the love around us in so many details. Nature delivers so many divine messages when we take a moment to appreciate and it is easier to say… I love the sunset, the glory is magnificent, but when it comes to equally appreciating our washing being folded for us we can easily overlook the love in that gesture.
“…. I then start to see more clearly how everyone is pure love in essence..” I am feeling the truth of this on a daily basis lately. My job requires me to speak with people on the phone fairly constantly and I love connecting to each person that calls and feeling this essence of love in them no matter how hard or protected they may appear on the surface. This perspective changes everything, with true love there can be no war.
I love the thought of you on the phone, Leonne, offering little reminders and the opportunity to connect back to love. We can all do this no matter what our jobs are, as we come across people every day, just by being ourselves.
What a big truth, the more I am open to love and to expressing and receiving it the more I see it everywhere and in everyone. It is a confirmation that we just need to connect and bring it out, and then everything does reflect it. It is not about being dependant on others loving us or not, it is about ourselves and how by allowing that love to be there, we see it everywhere. I have noticed the same, and when I don´t, I go into the victim mentality that other people don´t love me. Your blog also reminds me to be open to listening to other people´s way of expressing love. Beautiful.
Beautifully said Julia and it’s a great point you make that it’s not about whether or not others love us but that we love ourselves enough that we then emanate that love.
Love is jumping of this page while reading it, I love your simple light and o so beautiful expression Nicola, delicious what a treat are you giving us. Thank you from my heart.
Most of us are so focused on getting some form of love or whatever we consider love to be, that we have become blind to see the many ways love is expressed; but the expression at times is somehow a bit distorted by our restraint to express freely and hence clearly due to hurts of our love being rejected in the past.
It is very beautiful to feel your deep appreciation for the love expressed by Christoph and not falling for any illusionary imperfections that would have been anyway just tainted by hurt, judgement and expectation. We need to recognise love in all its forms wherever it is expressed and look through the veil of imperfection.
Nicola I am deeply touched by your blog. There is much to be learned from the way you and Christoph interact. Looking forward to SEH3 in November.
I agree, this is a true romantic story with no soppy parts, but just the true love that they have for each other.
I really loved what you have shared here Nicola because it takes a hose pipe to what we believe ‘I love you’ means, freshening it all up for the whole world to see.
What Christoph did was a beautiful expression of his deep love for you. His actions conveyed much more than the words “I love you” could ever do.
Yes Peter, Christoph’s love in expression is deeply felt and shows how magnificent true love is when we actually live it and not just talk about it…love in movement!
Agree Peter. How incredibly caring and loving his action was!!
Its true Peter, acting in and with Love is a win win for everyone. To know that another cherishes you brings out the best in us – as long as we allow ourselves to be loved that is. To express love is the most confirming thing we can do for ourselves. Sometimes I am a little bit taken aback at the enormity of the love that I am. I’m going to put expressing it into practise more.
Hear hear – exactly so. And all we have to do is feel that love in expression.
This blog highlights how much we are conditioned to keep our expression of love small and contracted. It is so true, if everyone is expressing love only through “I Love You” then our world would be a very boring one in many ways because the love we can live with each other is far far grander than just three words alone.
oh thank you Joshua I love your comment – yes LOVE is so huge it can never be contained in three words and it can never be directed – it is an energy and emanation that is there for all equally and yet we can have so much fun in the expression of it. It is one of those magical things that just keeps growing the more we express and live it in a constant glorious expansion – way beyond human language!
Thank you Nicola and Christoph. This is what I would call a true love story as it very clearly tells the story of what love is.
Yes, love and joy.
That’s it Ariana – ‘I just melted’ – that’s exactly how I felt but couldn’t quite find the right words to express it. Truly gorgeous.
Nicola Lessing this is one beautiful blog! Thank you for sharing such a gorgeous moment, the absolute love and understanding between yourself and Christoph can be felt so strongly.
Profoundly beautiful Nicola – thank you so much. I am so deeply touched and inspired by your sharing – it brought to mind the natural love and joy of a young child – how they light up every time they see their mother or a puppy or a butterfly.
A beautiful description of the restrictiveness we hold ourselves in by only using “I love you” as our reference for love. If we are conditioned to respond only to the utterings of these three words we can miss out on so much love that is shown in so many ways. I had a friend who drove me to the airport a few weeks ago, actually a number of friends as I got picked or dropped off 4 times in total, and the love that was there in the gestures was clear for me to see but never more apparent than now after reading this article. Thanks Nicola.
Thank you, Nicola, I really enjoyed this discussion and will continue to contemplate on and observe the many ways people say, ‘I love you’ to each other, even with work colleagues’ behaviour too.
Wow what if we took this approach in relationships as a lesson. “what if flights or arguments started from reacting to loving gestures.” It sounds crazy. Love can sometime make someone feel very red and raw because it is something they haven’t chosen in a long long time (in some cases). To be reminded of this fact can be very confronting.
I love reading your blog Nicola and was crying…
Yes I was one of the people who was not open for love for a long time and instead rather fighting or arguing than loving. This has changed enormously. What is most important is that we don’t accept the old ways and pattern of non love and nominate them as soon as they want to sneak in.
What an absolutely endearing example of ‘actions speak louder than words’ and how beautiful they were so appreciated for the love that they held. Gorgeous.
This is so beautiful Nicola, I so agree that it is so important to look for all expressions of love and that can take many forms. I love what you shared about how love s expressed between you and your husband. Also your willingness to be be open to how he expresses, so very important!
Nicola you have shared such a beautiful example of celebrating the everydayness of love and it’s expression in it’s unlimited ways. The way you and Christoph are with each other is very inspiring for anyone wanting to bring a more loving way to their relationship.
Beautiful Nicola. I can absolutely appreciate all that Christoph did for you, and also the two contrasting ways of choosing how to deal with this that you presented. The fallout, or ripples of both are so evident, which as you say could explain very easily the state of affairs across the world. If we are open to it love can be seen and felt everywhere, for it is indeed all that we truly are.
Yes, Nicola had a choice but it was also the way Nicola chose to see the love was really important. I also noticed the rain had stopped and Nicola was perfectly comfortable and there was only the downhill part of the walk to come so I could have gone into blaming myself but her response made it really easy and at the time I forgot about it quickly – it was just a normal thing I would do and that was it. I also enjoyed the run.
Dear Nicola I love this blog – it is showing me how many times I have reacted and mostly because of ideals or as you write having forgotten that love expresses in different forms or ways and also because I did not feel love for myself – now I feel that I take more care and I am starting to let love in again and appreciate my babysteps and know that the only way first is selflove and that it takes some time of healing and is a process to feel that again and I am willing to go this way. Now I am willing to feel again now and I know the key is the connection and care for my body and learning the unique expression of Nadine and remembering what my trueself is under all the protection and ideals – discovering it back step by step in a unfolding, gentle and loving way. Thank You for sharing this with us, this is an amazing example of love in expression and a deep understanding. With love Nadine
Nicola I loved reading this joyful rendering of love and particularly what you say at the end that the more open you are to love, expressing it, receiving it the more you see love everywhere. Simply Loveelee.
Whilst our words are very important, sometimes it is our actions that do speak a lot louder and have more meaning.
Yes Nicola, allowing ourselves to receive the love, and feel worthy of the love, is very key.
True Michelle. I can absolutely imagine myself shutting the other person down because logically it wouldn’t make sense to me to get in a car 20 meteres from my house. And what an opportunity I would have missed in doing that. This story has definitely opened me up to seeing beyond the ‘logical’.
I just scrolled through the comments and your quote struck me Michelle; ‘…allowing ourselves to receive the love, and feel worthy of the love, is very key.’ This is big, as I only can speak of me, but think that a lot more people have this. Sometimes it is hard to believe that we are loved just for being us. And it is hard to accept. So to truly let love unfold, there is always the part of expressing love and the part of receiving it.
Ah Nicola, this blog was lovely to read. We do get fixated on the words ‘I love you’ and as you explain, often miss when its been shouted from the mountain tops in a gesture or action. How absolutely gorgeous that your husband ran back to the house to get the car for you.
Nicola such a beautiful sharing. Realising that until I started to self-love again I had shut off from any gesture of love getting past a very closed door within me. Now, a completely different picture like you share Nicola I too now “start to see more clearly how everyone is pure love in essence”.
Observing and feeling others in this way first – it gives such a clear indication of ‘what is not love’ in the various behaviours we adopt to cover up old hurts.
Nicola it is very easy to miss love and be caught up in detail rather than feeling what is there to be felt. We miss the love inside another when we focus on the what is not loving, or the ‘issue’. I love your example and how it could have been quite different outcome, rather you stayed open to the generous nature of your husband. I will definitely check out the unimedpedia of Love.
Nicola- this is simply gorgeous. I can feel the immense love and total adoration between the both of you. Thank you for sharing this.
Hi Nicola, I love how the profound is present in the simplicity and yet I can complicate it so! I could so feel the loving intention in Christoph’s gestures and your choice to feel that instead of making up other meanings is so beautiful! Thank you and I’m off to Unimedpedia!
So divinely gorgeous Nicola, I was so looking forward to reading your blog from the time it came into my inbox. I could already feel how light, beautiful and play-full it would be and I was not wrong. Your love for life and everyone in it is so deeply inspiring. Thank you for sharing your love with us. You didn’t need to say it, your blog says I love you to the world.
This is simple example of real love in action, which we can all can all feel if we don’t hold onto the romantic ideals and beliefs we have been fed from a young age. It is these lovely acts that say so much more than words can ever express, they are given without the need of anything in return, but because you care deeply for another and it is the love you feel within your own essence expressing out.
I love what you’ve written Nicola, though I do cringe at all those times I rejected loving communications from family especially growing up. I see so often people saying I love you through what they do but it being missed. I see it with myself and my relationship with God, not always open to the loving communications I’m receiving. Could I even say I see it with myself? Me rejecting my own love as not good enough? How crazy is that?!!
The way I say ‘I love you’ might not be “i love you’ but its more like “you mean so much to me’ ” you are amazing”It is absolutely amazing to be with you”you are a star” you love lights up the world’ and simply being surrendered and feeling the complete love of another is a very loving in itself. One thing I am learning is to let love in completely, it is so much more embracing and absolute when I do that, love can’t be denied and it feels like the whole world is celebrating.
Nicola, your blog is a lovely reminder to offer love in my actions for others without needing any sort of recognition or acknowledement in return, knowing that the very act of doing something with my loving presence is complete in itself and feeds me back love.
Well put Emma, it is lovely to just be love in expression without any expectation. Very freeing and empowering living in that way.
Beautiful reminder Emma that loving presence is more than enough and that it feeds me back love.. pure gold.
The Unimedpedia quote about Love being spherical: ‘that we cannot love one and not another, for if you think you can and or believe that you do, it is not love that you are and therefore, the one you claim to have love for is nothing more than the object of an emotional attachment’. This is a very powerful revelation. It has caused me to pause and ponder on those relationships where I still feel a hurt that I have not yet let go of and a reminder to do so. It also asks me to reflect on my immediate relationships and see where I am coming from my own need (emotional attachment) and releasing this to make way for the light of love to burn brightly.
Thank you for the link across to the quotes on Unimedpedia. They have brought a deeper quality of reflection to my morning. We all want love and seek it in our behaviours, yet Love is what we are and so, we are all ultimately seeking to know ourselves. When I ponder on this, so much makes sense, so much drops away making the purpose of life very clear.
What a gorgeous blog to read and feel Nicola, thank you. I love how you shared..”being open to love in its many forms and expressions”… and have discovered this to be true. It is amazing that, when we open up to love, you do see and discover that love is abundant, that it is everywhere in people, in nature and it is the essence and foundation of life. We just have to choose it.
Nicola thank you for sharing this beautiful blog. Everyone expresses their love for others in different ways and it is for us to be open to the glory of the gesture shared and embrace it in full. When we close ourselves off to this, we not only harm ourselves but also the other. We are all tender, loving beings who are all made of the same stuff and that mighty stuff is Love.
Thank you Nicola for this very beautiful sharing how being open to receiving love allows our relationships to deepen in true love. That when we understand that we are love already, all of us, we can begin to express our love with others, and we can then appreciate loving gestures we receive from others, as you have shared. Rather than missing these gestures or mistaking them for a senseless (or that it is not enough) act due to our emotional needs, we instead are able to appreciate, confirm and deepen the love that is already naturally there, being expressed, being shared.
Waiting or wanting to hear I love you or something along these lines you miss out on the BIGGER picture, your most likely being expressed this the whole time… Pretty sweet really, takes the pressure of thinking you have to say it but it’s not to say you cant say I love you either.
Lovely to read your story and insights Nicola. I can feel the tenderness, appreciation and care you have built in your relationship with yourself and also with Christoph. How true, that if we allow ourselves to feel and express the love that we so naturally are, we are so much more open to receiving it. The possible alternative scenario that you describe feels uncomfortably familiar and it feels entirely due to whether we ourselves are choosing a tender connection and appreciation within ourselves, or not.
Emma, I was drawn to your comment to Nicola’s beautiful blog, and the words that stood out for me were “…if we allow ourselves to feel and express the love that we so naturally are, we are so much more open to receiving it.” The word ‘receiving’ is what caught my attention. This is something that I have found a challenge throughout my life – to give, give, give was easy – no holding back – but to ‘receive’ I had found had sometimes been tinged with ‘unworthiness’. What a big fat lie that ‘unworthiness’ is, and one has to wonder why – where does that come from for it is not who we naturally are. Time to cast loose the shackles of past belief systems, live and share love in the quality of e-quality – true brotherhood.
I enjoyed how simple this article was to read and a great example of how love can be expressed in many ways. It reminded me that the impulse of love and its expression may not necessarily have reason to it but instead be spontaneous and an act of great care for another person. There are so many beautiful expressions between myself and my wife which can be honoured when we make life about love first, before all the things we are choosing to do.
Often an expression of love is rejected or goes unseen because it’s very basic or humble compared to the grandiose pictures we carry of what feeling loved truly means. When I consider that the essence of us all is love then really everything can be an expression of love, including unpacking the dishwasher. I can certainly feel that in my life my simple expressions of love have at times gone unnoticed, been dismissed or openly rejected. This blog has really confirmed to me how simple and humble love is.
Beautifully said Melinda, love is not about getting attention, it does not come with drums and bells announcing it, it often is in the small things that touch our hearts and make such a difference, like a smile or a gesture.
Yes Melinda, this is important. Being able to recognise a loving gesture or even not to misunderstand a gesture as something negative when it was never meant to be negative is one of the keys to transforming a relationship.
What a beautiful way to express & also receive love! I love your simple example on how you accepted your husbands love for & could feel how cherished you would’ve felt. Love is in every little thing & people around us if we are open to see & feel. Also, when you share that you could’ve easily reacted & rejected the loving gesture & the outcome would’ve been quite different. It is so simple to express, accept love & be loved in so many ways than just words.<3
You are so super sweet Nicola…as is Christoph. I love that he ran to get the car to pick you up. It’s so true, there are so many ways to say ‘I love you’ that mean so much more than the words themselves.
This is true and it makes me ask, just how many moments do we miss where love is forever being expressed. Appreciation and presence feels key here.
I love it too Sara. This is so beautiful. I feel as women we can learn to appreciate and accept the care and love men offer us. How beautiful and honouring for both.
So true Sara, it is the super sweetness of feeling both Nicola and Christoph that makes me warm and inspires my super sweetness.
‘….everyone is pure love in essence, and when not expressing in this way it is because they are in reaction and protecting a hurt or imagined hurt’. If everyone understood this simple truth, we would not have war, terrorism, abuse and all the other manner of malignancies befalling our world.
So true Cathy Hackett, connecting to our essence, which is love…, and living that love changes everything.
Gold Cathy, we have the greatest responsibility to live from our essence and be the walking, talking expression of truth on earth.
Thank you Nicola for a truly beautiful (and LOVE-ly) blog. I came from a family that just did not use the word LOVE that I can remember. Sadly, I cannot ever remember my mother telling me that she loved me until the last several times I was with her before she died at almost 103 when she became more open about expressing her feelings. It was not that she did not love me, but she was never able to actually express this. I particularly love what you say here “The more I am open to love and allow myself to receive it and express it, the more I see it everywhere… in myself, in others and in nature. I then start to see more clearly how everyone is pure love in essence, and when not expressing in this way it is because they are in reaction and protecting a hurt or imagined hurt – perhaps even from long, long ago.” I agree with that, beautifully expressed, yes, the more I am open to love, the more I can see that my Mum did truly love me, she just did not know how to express this to me. It would have been quite foreign to her to actually say it, again, this barrier would probably have come from hurts in her own upbringing.
Nicola so much I love of what you have shared but what particularly struck me today is in my experience the actual hollowness of the words ‘I love you’ can have. People say it so much that it almost becomes rote like and yes it is true that they love them but it is like we need to continually say it to prove it – make it ok – but do we actually allow ourselves to feel it and let it in – and also let it out?
Great question Sarah. I know for me it is obvious when something is done in love and with out the words I feel ‘I love you’ just as when someone says it from habit but there is a hallow feeling with it.
I have felt this too Sarah, the hollowness of those words when not expressed from love. At times ‘I Love you’ has actually felt more like a ‘curse’ which has come loaded with expectations and a need that you respond in kind. It is like a desperate call for another to fill us with the love we so dearly miss in ourselves. At times we may forget that we are that love, it is our pure essence.
Yes I agree Sarah, it is so easy to say “I love you” but if there is no action or realness behind them then they feel empty and we need to hear it more to believe it.
I love the gesture of Christoph giving you his hat Nicola – I never tire of chivalry and I make sure I let the man know that it is very much appreciated.
Gorgeous point Marika, in the fight for equal rights woman (not all) have forgotten how to allow a man to take care of them, this does not make us weak, it makes us adored. A man loves nothing more to care for and adore a woman but when that is rejected more than once (such as how Nicola so clearly pointed out how easy it is to do) they shut down and stop showing their adoration and care, then we end up living with the man that we created and worse blame them for it.
Ouch! I know I have turned such gestures away in the past, feeling that I didn’t need someone to help me and that I could do it on my own….. not once did I see how clearly that could have been taken for rejection!
What you share is beautiful, Nicola, and so true. People are looking for love and to be loved, yet miss it because of the ideals and beliefs we have around what love is. If we are able to let these ‘pictures’ go, love is plain to see and feel, within and all around us.
Absolutely Carmin. We might be missing out on so much love because we have an ideal of what love is. Love indeed is already within us and all around us.
Yes, so many ideals and beliefs around love. I was at a school play recently and listening to the children sing a love song and the lyrics made me see that from such a young age we are bombarded with what love is and to me it was all quite the opposite of what true love is.
Thank you Nicola for this beautiful article. It shows how simple it is once we are open and letting people in. Love is what we all want and what we really all already are.
Beautifully said Monika, love is also letting people in and not having preconceived ideas of what love is, and if it does not fit our idea then it is not love and before we know it, we could miss love walking straight past us…how often has this happened, the thing we want the most in our lives, love…we miss because we are stuck in some idea…this was so well shown Nicola in your blog…but even greater you have shared, the simplicity and naturalness of true love and letting your man in!
What you have shared Nicola really spoke to me as I realised there are many times I don’t see the love being expressed by my husband and maybe he does not see mine. This is the call to be more open so thank you!
I too have experienced this in my relationship. In many instances I have been closed in receiving love because I was still holding onto my hurts and not willing to be open. I am learning to appreciate and to see when love is being expressed, stay open and allow it in.
For me, I can feel the emptiness in ‘I love you’ when I use the phrase to express how I feel about my partner. It feels more true and full for me to go into the details of what I love and admire about this man. Like how he looks at me, holds me, cares for his work, is open to learning and greatly open to communication and evolution with me. I could go on!
Beautifully Said Rachael Evans, Appreciation is a part of true love.
I can sense what you mean… It is more specific and the other person can get touched in a deeper way of its being..
I agree Steffi, what Racheal shares feels more intimate and personal.
I feel that truly too Rachael – it is so honouring of another when we express in full.
I so often can speak the words I love you to another, or many others however if I were to turn to the mirror and say those words to me, I notice they don’t always roll off the tongue like they do with other people. This exposes for me the love I may feel and wish to express to another can only ever be received to the point they can feel it, therefore if I am not fully able to love me and claim that, it doesn’t matter how many times I may say it to another, they will only ever be able to feel it to a point.
Hi Giselle, I don’t generally say the 3 words “I love you” to myself, but what I do say is “wow you are sooooooooo gorgeous” as I dance and sing to myself in the bathroom mirror after my shower.
A great discussion to bring forth Nicola – we totally cap ourselves and others expression of love by holding onto an ideal of how to share our love. ‘I love you’ can be said when we don’t really mean it and comes loaded with hurts from the past – to actually claim the love we are then live from here (like you husband), you cannot help but be love in all you do. I absolutely enjoyed the example you gave with the car ride home – totally gorgeous and hilarious!
Yes, I loved that example too Rachel, truly appreciating the many ways ‘I love you’ can be delivered.
What a beautiful husband and wife. This shows to me that love is immortal, that it has no limits and no subscriptions. It comes with an enormous openness and fun. Love is more then these 3 words, as receiving the actually love itself is even better then to hear those 3 words. I love what you share here Nicola, very inspirational, and I am so glad you received it!
“Love is more then these 3 words, as receiving the actually love itself is even better then to hear those 3 words”. That feels true Danna. To express love and receive love in this way feels so gorgeous and we can miss these true gestures that Nicola describes all too easily. Because of this blog I will always have my radar more clearly on.
I love the story you have offered Nicola. Your article provides such a delightful insight in how different people can have their own flavour of expressing the same quality and if we are waiting for the cliché representation of that quality we will miss the blessings that are staring us in the face. I was touched by the gorgeous, loving and caring expression from Christoph and your graceful acceptance and deep appreciation of him and his expression which is itself a gorgeous expression of love.
Love your comment Golnaz, particularly, the last bit ……is itself a gorgeous expression of love.
There are so many ways we can say I LOVE YOU and show others that we love them also. But so often it goes unheard or unappreciated because we are waiting for the 3 words.
Perhaps it is time we stop and feel what’s truly going on and begin to understand and appreciate each other. That way receiving love becomes easy.
Thank you Nicola for this jam packed blog of love.
Hearing that ‘I love you’ can limit the ways that we can express love is very liberating. I often feel it falls short for me – it’s a bit like turning up with a box of chocolates on Valentines day. Being open to expressing love in a variety of other ways means that there are so many times in a day when I can express love. It keeps me on the lookout for the qualities that make another person unique and can be used at work, even with strangers to confirm the love I feel and know them to be.
This is so gorgeous Nicola and makes me realise how much love there actually is in the world and how much we can appreciate if we stop and feel in so many moments. I have a friend who enjoys to open the door for me at work and I have been really appreciating how these gestures are deeply loving and precious. Its lovely when we can deeply reflect and appreciate the simplicity of actions.
I love your blog Nicola especially the line “Love is such a fascinating subject because it is ultimately something we all want but really all already are”. Some of us just need to express it more often.
Beautiful blog Nicola. How often do we miss out on love because we want or expect love to be a certain way? Love can come in all kinds of ways and some of them may seem to be coated strangely. Being open to love, and how others may choose to express it opens us up to something magical.
This is so true Nikki. I have definitely missed out on receiving love because I have had expectations of what love should be. Letting go of these expectations, staying open and appreciating that we all express love in different forms. It’s crazy to look back on how I have created rules around what love is, whereas true love has no rules.
Great point Nikki. Most people have a certain expectation of what they think love is and how it will appear to them, but by having this one track mind we may actually be missing out on love from others… ‘Being open to love, and how others may choose to express it opens us up to something magical’ – Gorgeous!
Yes Jane, that’s a great reminder, to take all the opportunities each day to express the love with everyone we meet. This doesn’t mean I have to tell everybody “I love you”, but it’s more in how I am and respond to them, appreciating everybody for who they are.
Being me and being open with people is loving.
This is a great reminder of how in every moment we have a choice to be the love we are or go down the road of emotional reaction and identify ourselves with struggle. Life can be so simple and gorgeous once we realize we can live it in a way that honors ourselves and everyone we are in relationship with. The way Christoph responded to help you get out of the rain, Nicola, is such a nurturing example of this way of living, as well as your response of appreciation for him.
Nicola, this is a beautiful sharing, of how sharing love is a two way street. Each responds with love to the other, deeply beholding and caring, and expresses that love, as you both so beautifully do.
How delicious to be met in the rain with a ride home in the car Nicola, this feels like true romance and true love in action. Your response showed me how accepting and appreciating is the way to express your love back.
Yes Bernadette, beautiful ‘….true love in action.’ There is a such a sense of sweetness and quality of preciousness that Nicola has expressed, why, because she is sharing about true love.
The love for another can be expressed in so many ways, and I love your example, showing love from the deepest of our harts doesn’t have to be only in the three words I love You, but is in everything you do and are.
Such a simple sharing that touches deeply. Thank you Nicola for opening up the subject of being, receiving and seeing love.
That is it isn’t it Marcia – ‘being, receiving and seeing love’. This has also taken me quite some time to become aware of over the years, and it feels awesome when we can truly appreciate another expressing love in their way and feeling that expression of love in truth.
I really like the fact that you have shared that there are different ways we can express love. It’s really helped me see this more clearly, as I’d never considered it before beyond someone saying “I love you” or another buying gifts!
Thanks for this wonderful sharing Nicola. It can be very beautiful and evolving as a couple if there is a willingness to receive love (without expectations), so that the many smaller gestures of love can be truly appreciated.
So simple thank you Nicola it made me realise how I love to do those little things but don’t always give myself credit for how loving I naturally am.
I found it interesting to feel how the three words “I love you’ can feel so different from various people expressing that. When one friend tells me she love me I can feel what she says and I feel held in it and when another friend says those same 3 words I love you it feels completely different. And not because she doesn’t love me, but because her way of expressing that she loves me has a different form, with different words.
Me too Monika. ‘I love you’ can mean thousands of different things, and can be said in thousands of different ways… It’s pretty devastating that we live in an age that even when someone says, ‘I love you’, we have to read and evaluate whether they mean it, what their intentions are and how they’re saying it. We all have the power to change this though!
Thank you Nicola, what a great reminder that love can be seen everywhere and is so much greater than words we just have to be open to it.
A beautiful blog Nicola. It’s actually made me realise that if we are love, which we are, and we are living the love that we are, then anything we do is an expression of love and a way of saying ‘I love you’. A look, a touch, a gesture. The word ‘love’ does not need to be spoken for it to be expressed, and on the flipside it could be said a hundred times without any true love in it.
I love what you have shared here Nicola.
You are so right -when we come from our hurts we miss beautiful opportunities to express and feel love. Expressing and receiving love is a simple expression of who we are -so simple that we often don’t recognise or value it.
Love when expressed freely to another is sometimes difficult for the recipient to accept and will often reject, deny or respond with anger. Only with self love can we give and receive love in equal amounts.
Nicola I had a big smile on my face while reading your blog and it is so true how often do we misinterpret an expression of love because it does not look like we expect or want it to be or because we are too protected to allow ourselves to feel what is really being expressed.
Nicola your appreciation of Christoph, and his open expression of love as it happened, is wonderful. It reminds me of the way children sometimes express from the heart when they sense a need: perhaps rush to fetch a pillow to rest your head on, gently stroke your face or ask if they can help? When we don’t love ourselves enough or place too much emphasis on hearing the words ‘I love you’, we risk missing true expressions of Love.
Kehinde you are spot on – we are very playful with each other like two big kids.
Great that you have brought this back to kids – theirs is a natural and unpretentious love, just immediate and on all manner of different magnitudes. To simply wanting to touch your face, to the words, and to little acts here and there that pepper their day. Its unencumbered, simple and just happens minute by minute with no question of ‘how’ to do it. Natural.
Great blog Nicola, thank you for sharing.
I love what you have written Nicola. It is so true, we have such unique ways to express our love and sometimes are so very blinded for not seeing it. The appreciation you have for each other is inspiring.
Gorgeous to read this Nicola and to note now through people’s gestures when they are saying I love you. You’re beautiful response to Christoph for one. The complete respect and honour you’ve shown here that you have for each other whatever is presented is inspiring. Taking yourself and what you may have wanted and looking at the bigger picture at play is key. There is much for me to be aware of from reading this, thank you.
A very beautiful blog to read Nicola. Love does come in many forms and one such form is the messages and signs that confirm divinity. There are so many shapes and sizes of this love, from the things people say and do to the reflections of nature. By the way, it is a great photo of you both.
i love your honesty in retelling this story, this is a great example of the many opportunities we have daily to connect and appreciate what someone else brings or react and go into judgement and criticism because it is not ideal.
Yes Nicole, when we are ready and able to read the full situation, things change quite a bit for the better in our life.
Christoph, how gorgeous what you did for your wife here. As I was reading I could totally visualise this whole experience and the love from you – amazing and so beautiful – thank you. I am sure this is a daily experience between the two of you. Super inspiring couple.
Wow Nicola, that is so true, when someone does something for us we can ruin the moment with our stuff instead of just surrendering to the love which, you did when Christoph went and got the car. A beautiful insight, thank you
Saying “I love you” can come from deep within us, or just be a set phrase and we will instantly feel if what is said is true.
Radiating “I love you” by living it is an incredible gift we can offer each other.
Love in what we do and not just what we say, love in what we accept and not just what we expect… Great insights Nicola thank you so much for this.
Beautifully said Joel. I love it!
Great points to emphasise here Joel, thank you.
That is so beautiful. Your husband clearly adores you and clearly doesn’t hold back expressing it. Thank you for sharing that intimate moment with us.
We are always surrounded by the same amount of love but our ability to feel it will depend on the amount of love we are able to express. Thus, it is not the lack of love ‘out there’ that hurts us, but the lack of love we live. Love never hurts, but holding back our expression of it is sure does.
Absolutely spot on Liane and so wise and true. Every word of your comment is a gem. “We are always surrounded by the same amount of love but our ability to feel it will depend on the amount of love we are able to express” . . .I suggest all read the above comment as it is gold. . . “Love never hurts, but holding back our expression of it is sure does”.
Absolutely Liane, Love is something we are and we live. I’ve always reacted to the world as being loveless because I haven’t felt the love come pouring in from it. I was simply living in a way that wasn’t love and so holding this love back for myself, for others, for humanity was naturally going to hurt.
Wow Liane, this is one for the fridge! It is most definitely the holding back of the expression of love that hurts…not love itself. How often do we hear that ‘love hurts’ like it’s the most normal thing. Not being the love that we already are is what is excruciating. But love only loves and is forever expanding.
Wow yet another revelation and a part of your up and coming blog, our true hurt is not whether another loves us, it is whether we live the love that we are and be all that love for another. What a vicious cycle, waiting to be loved by another, which is not possible till they love themselves but they won’t do that because they are waiting for you to do it first. Phew thank Goodness for Serge Benhayon who didn’t wait and was prepared to do it first and now with so many following in not waiting we finally have a way to break this strong hold and inspire another way.
So true and beautifully expressed Liane, we can only feel the amount of love we express. This cuts with the consciousness of that others are responsible to give us love and puts it right back into our own hands. If there is not enough love in your life, start expressing the amazing love you are and it will reflect back. We are love we don’t give love! Serge’s teachings are true gold and the Way forward!
Wow Liane that is something very important you share with us in your amazing command. This is also something to swallow because it means that we can not blame the outside world for not getting enough love! To begin to love ourself first is the secret – as you so wonderful wrote: “Love never hurts, but holding back our expression of it is sure does.”
Absolutely agree Liane, from my experience, holding back from expressing our own love is our greatest hurt – that will always see us unable to let love in.
My gosh this was so beautiful to read. We can say I love you in the most caring of ways. Everyone does it so differently. It was also beautiful to read about how you accepted it Nicola and that you both are able to cherish each other so. Absolutely love it x
Thankyou Nicola for helping to break the spell that we are all under “…often we can express our love in a gesture or simple action, instead of words, and our partners don’t recognise it, as they are looking to hear it or see it in a way they have been conditioned to receive it, and so, love-expressions can be missed or misunderstood.” – this is so true. We are quite literally looking for love in all the ‘wrong’ places. There are many veils of illusion here. Firstly we separate from the love we are. Sensing a ‘loss’, we begin to look outward for something that lies within. Next we expect others to give us the love that we have walked away from. Then comes the blindness that is part and parcel of this pseudo quest in that we don’t see love if it doesn’t come wrapped in the package we expect and so on and so on…
When viewed from above our situation looks most absurd – for here we stand, fashioned from love with a myriad of ‘love packages’ unopened at our feet, yet blindly we stumble past them with eyes wide open, desperately searching for something we already are yet haven’t expressed. The tragedy of this is that by not expressing our love, we forget what it looks like and fall for the imitation we are sold via the media, music, musings, writings etc. that are more often than not written from a point of pain and NOT from an all encompassing and emanating love. This is the ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’, an imposter disguised and it is why we can’t see the love that is loving us, right here. By falling for this imposter, we become disheartened when it cannot love like the love we truly know and thus our trust is lost. Disheartened we continue our quest. But all is not lost – live love, and you will see and feel the love that lives all around you. For the more love we live, the more love is ‘revealed’ simply because we have a much clearer picture of what we are looking at. If we know what is love, we cannot be seduced by what is not.
‘For the more love we live, the more love is ‘revealed’ simply because we have a much clearer picture of what we are looking at.’ Thank you Liane for exposing the veils of illusion that we get caught in which prevent us from seeing Love. Letting go of past hurts and building a body of love opens us up to receiving love in a myriad of ways such as Nicola’s tender example.
Beautifully said Liane. Once we know love, the ‘love imposter’ is exposed for what it is. I love this ~ ‘live love, and you will see and feel the love that lives all around you’
This is gorgeous Liane and deserves to be a blog in its own right and posted all over the internet for the world to enjoy?
Liane; what you have described here is humanities biggest fall from grace, reinterpreting love and accepting the impostor. “If we know what is love, we cannot be seduced by what is not.”
Well said Liane. Funny, I saw this as I was sweeping my way to the bottom of the blog to leave a comment and then found it again when I was sweeping back up to have another read!! I clearly had to top and read. It is so true, we must look absurd from above, all blindly looking for something that is already inside us, and stumbling blindly over all the parcels of truth at our feet that will guide us home. Bonkers, truly bonkers!
I was really struck by the notion that many of the ‘wars’ we fight each other over start through misunderstanding and misinterpreting expressions of love. This has given me a whole new perspective on conflict in relationships.
These wars and conflicts in relationship seem not necessary. If we come from knowing the love we are, the potential of our shared love then address any issues from there whilst holding others in love first, then I feel more relationships would be truer and not simply comfortable arrangements.
Nicola I love the simplicity and exquisite tenderness of the love that you and Christoph share. Graciously receiving love is important, and as you also mention, often missed and not appreciated. We can all feel when we are loved, whether or not those 3 little words are said.
Truly exquisite. I felt my body met as I read this blog.
I loved reading this Nicola. The wisdom you have offered us all is so real and practical and telling of the many ways that love is there in our lives. It only needs us to open our hearts to see them.
Open our hearts indeed Leigh. Love is in all of us, it is surrounding us and in everything but how open are we to this truth? Opening our hearts to receive the love in every way is magical and a blessing.
Thank you for sharing this Nicola, it is very gorgeous and I love how you explain how we all express love differently and if we don’t stop to connect to the quality of the gesture or if we have a picture of how we need to receive love then we can often miss these moments and then they become a fight or we carry them as a hurt. Really shows the importance of expression and understanding each other.
Nicola is an absolute expert at seeing these moments for what they truly are and understands men extremely well, which is a huge bonus for her husband – me. Moments like these where you look a little silly but your intent is truly understood and received make a huge difference in a relationship.
Most (all?) pain in a loving relationship is based on a misunderstanding somewhere, sometimes this misunderstanding can be very hidden and the trust gained through the above makes the more hidden misunderstandings so much more accessible as there is so much less need for me to protect myself.
‘Most (all?) pain in a loving relationship is based on a misunderstanding somewhere’ – Totally agree Christoph. Loving friendships are the same; I notice with a lot of my friends from school we only get into disagreements when we don’t feel we are being understood, at this age everyone is trying different things and heading different ways so the most important thing to have is understanding!
So very wise Susie and as I was reading what you wrote I thought how the words “understanding” itself gives a clue if you look at it as under-standing or standing-under meaning that understanding provides a solid foundation – a great basis for love.
…and here speaks my loving husband again, always melting my heart. The love in our relationship expresses in many ways including and especially in our equal commitment to truth and calling out what is not of love or harmony.
So true Christoph and hence why it is so important to always express and question, never assume you know the answer, many a fight, argument and war was born out of misunderstandings. I have lost count how many times I “thought” I knew the answer or why someone did what they did, but when I take the time to ask I am always humbled by the response I get. We are so used to being on the defense that we read everything through our shields, which clouds everything and stops us from seeing and feeling the truth.
Super well said Caroline!
Awesome Caroline. Sometimes I forget expressing can also take the form of asking a question, even if just stating from the heart, “I don’t understand what is going on here, please explain?” I might get caught in thinking it has to be elaborate or always being able to understand. So it gets back to how respecting ourselves and others is the simple communication and expression to allow the love to naturally flow.
Very well said, Caroline. All the assumptions we make are a source for misunderstanding. With asking we get the opportunity to express our love and get the truth.
Christoph, people might look a little ‘silly’ sometimes when they are expressing love, but this makes me expand with love even more, because they are making love fun, frivolous, care-free, joyful and real. I love what you did for Nicola. You’re a beautiful man and it’s written all over your face. Your love touches my heart and ignites my nadis : ))
I love how you accepted his expression of love, he dearly treasures you all the way to heaven and back, and I love how you do the same with him, in his full beauty as a man. Thank you for deepening my understanding of how important it is to understand what another is doing, so simply.
Indeed, love comes from our whole body. Expressing love from our body has a very fulfilling feeling and its what we were made for.
When I was growing up Josephine, no-one ever said directly, “I love you” in our family or to friends. Of course, as you say, the love was shown through many other means, but interestingly, from my mother who was under big pressure, with anxiety for our well-being, or when supporting us in a crisis. So we were unused to saying the actual words, and left to glean fragments of the romanticised love expression on films. Nowadays I am aware that the words “I love you” are used indiscriminately, almost like a backlash to the times when they were not frequently used, I have observed how many people use the words quite forcibly when they are encouraging others who are very ill or dying, as if trying to impress something on them. This often seems to be because of being at a loss about what needs to be more deeply expressed, and more about themselves. The true “I love yous'” comes out of the depth of a relationship of deep understanding and love, such as yours. They are very precious words not to be used in a cursory way.
Whilst reading your comment Joan, I was reminded of when I was first dating and I had a real aversion to saying to someone I love you, and at the time I told myself it was because I didn’t know what true love was, so I wasn’t going to be frivolous with the words. But I have come to realise that I have always known what true love is, but was getting it mixed up with the movie star version and could feel the falseness, along with not wanted to be rejected if they didn’t feel the same way.
Growing up there was also an absence of saying the words ‘I love you’, especially as we got older. What would have been great is having discussions like this where we can appreciate and identify those moments of loving gestures without dismissing them.
Nicola, reading this I pondered on how often someone expresses their love in a way that is very specific — and indeed beautiful –to them, but that if we do not have enough love within ourselves, it is so easy to miss it. So easy to turn around and say “you idiot, why did you do that?’. And how much this hurts and floors the other, who will then shut down their heart.
It reveals the enormous responsibility we all have to build our own self-love. When we love ourselves, truly, we are naturally more loving with others, and more receptive to others. And we get to feel so much more easily the loving gestures people want to make, which sometimes may not be quite what we would do, and may also be muffled under a shyness or timidity, but the love can still be felt by us, because we have opened up to the person.
Self-love is not selfish. It is foundational for loving the whole of humanity.
That is a fantastic point Katerina, we have a responsibility to love ourselves as it is incredibly selfish to not love ourselves for in rejecting ourselves we reject everyone else!
I love this point you’ve made Katerina, and it’s so important to understand it – “often someone expresses their love in a way that is very specific — and indeed beautiful –to them”. For many years I was confused with what love looked like, mainly because I wasn’t connected to the love within myself and so couldn’t feel when someone was expressing love in their own way. I rejected many simply beautiful expressions of love which, if I had appreciated each one for what they were, would have built more love in those relationships.
That is so true Nicola, Love is what we all want but we have these many versions of what love is and we never go all the way and express everything our body is wanting to communicate.. true love. This blog was so fantastic! It was a pure joy to read how Christoph your husband did that for you, as a sign of his enormous love. It’s so fantastic also that you mentioned that we don’t always appreciate that love when we receive it and instead react with confusion, anger, frustration etc. In my experience when I go over the top with love and express it like a nuclear explosion it just melts someone and they can’t help but feel how powerful love is.
I’ve noticed this too Harrison, ‘we don’t always appreciate that love when we receive it and instead react with confusion, anger, frustration etc.’, I’ve definitely done this myself too – not necessarily in relationships, but in friendships sometimes when someone is super loving towards me I contract because, ‘I’m not worth it’, ‘they’ll just hurt me’, ‘I can’t trust them’ etc…. All reasons totally made up in my head!! I’m working on doing this less, and expressing love back to these people.
I absolutely LOVE your blog. I am one of those people who does not say ‘I love you’ a lot because for me this does not come naturally with my expression. I have said it many times from a belief that ‘I had to’ because I felt that otherwise I was not showing my love. These words however are then empty. I have learned that my expression is unique and that I have, just like everybody else, my own way of expressing my love.
Yes this blog is absolutely gorgeous and holds such a deep wisdom. I can very much relate to what you say Mariette, when I grew up “I love you” was never said and I felt it was the proof of the massive lack of love in our family and till today its not the line I choose to say easily, but I very often feel the love I am and express it in very different forms, gestures and also sometimes words. What you share here Nicola is a wonderful reminder of appreciating the different expressions of love and reading your blog I could immediately connect to the massive love that was/is always expressed in my family. I also realized how judgmental we can get about people’s expression of love, because we have a certain expectation of how love should be expressed instead of just feeling the love that comes through whatever way of living it. This love brings also an enormous understanding for other people and therefore an enormous love. Very beautiful!
Oh I love this Nicola – “It is very joyful to feel and acknowledge the many beautiful ways we can share and receive love with others.” It truly touched me deeply …
It is so beautiful this expression of love from Christoph that you write about here Nicola, and great that you chose to share it as it shows a simply beautiful way that love can be shared and that if we don’t get in the way, so many more moments can be just as loving.
Thank you for sharing your true love story Nicola. This is beautiful.
Nicola when we consider the fact that love is fundamentally who we are then we get to glimpse the enormous amount of hurt and protection that is being constantly manufactured in order for us to constantly forget en masse the truth who we are. We have to work day and night to NOT know who we are, it’s a commitment !
You are so right Alexis – no wonder people are exhausted these days. All this work we put into not being the love we are (which is impossible)… but we can choose to not express it and to reject the love that surrounds us. It is the weirdest thing ever to consider that we are held within the field of love that is God and it is within that body of love that all the horrendous abuse and violence that we witness occurs and it is carried out by people who are at essence divine and pure love!
What a beautiful and tender illustration of how to say ‘I love you’ without using words. actions speak so loudly.
I am learning this too, not to fight the love that is on offer, that is ever present, that is for us to share, or in truth, just for us to be and live.
It’s in so many details indeed that we can show our love! Beautiful example of the innocence and simplicity how love can be expressed. How often the words ‘I love you’ are being spoken, leaving the receiver of the words with an often unfulfilled expectation. It is in how we live it, that we truly feel those words, even if they are not said out loud.
Thank you Nicola for this beautiful sharing of love and such a very real experience of everyday occurrences and opportunities to express love and receive it .What a joy we can share if we allow ourselves the opportunity and I love how you share how this gets more and more as we open to the love we naturally are. A very expansive and simple way to live.
Really beautiful sharing and something we can all learn from. I am currently observing in others how not saying yes to love harms our health and relationships and it is not nice to see or feel. Thank you for reminding me to always be open and say yes to love.
I agree Vicky and one way to say yes to love is to say no to what is not love 😉
OH YES! That is so true.
Nicola, your blog helped me to get a sense of how hard I can make life by fighting love, and strangling its natural expression in me. I could think of may scenarios where that sense of strangling the flow of love, and instead bustling through stopped me and others that I relate with from seeing and appreciating loving gestures, and how this can build, one not quite fully expressed gesture of love being missed, leading to frustration and rejection, and yet another attempted and yet not full expression of love, each building on the other, until it becomes quite a contorted mess. In contrast, the flow of love feels so much simpler and easier.
Thank you Nicola for a playful, exquisitely gorgeous sharing on Love.
It reminded me well that if we attempt to label something, confine it and assign rules to what it is, it will inevitably go pear shaped and no longer be the joyful sphere it is, encompassing all aspects and beholding of all and then we all miss out along the way.
Applying rules…. well said Deborah. The moment we go into should’s and shouldn’t we’ve cut down the love that is there. There are no should’s and shouldn’ts in love — there is simply love, never-ending, forever expanding and always holding us in the truth of who we are.
This is totally gorgeous Nicola. ‘I love you’ is to me something that has been twisted, turned, bastardised and stretched to mean a huge string of different things, and everyone seems to have their own kind of ‘I love you’ they want to hear, or see. Some expect grand gestures of care, and many just want to hear the 3 words, but I love what you’ve shared about how it can be all of these things, but love can only fully be expressed if it’s from our whole body – there is no love in saying ‘I love you’ if you are only saying it to please another, or fulfil a need or expectation.
Awesomely said Susie, ‘love can only fully be expressed if it’s from our whole body’. So often I have heard the words ‘I love you’ but they have felt cold and empty – it is such a vast difference when they are truly meant – it is like being embraced by the warmth of love of the person and not simply an audio thing that their lips are muttering!
So ture Susie, and it is with all these expectations and demands that people turn sour for not receiving the love they feel they need. When it is truly from a hurt that they are needing their perception of love. For true love is grand and all encompassing and as you say come from the body as posed to being emotional or just words.
I agree with you Susie (and Nicola) ‘I love you’ are words that have been so bastardised and misused. People can use these words to get their way with others, to seduce another etc. and so often there is no TRUTH in the way they are used. There is seldom a true meaning when these words are used. For these words to really be true, they must be accompanied by expression from the whole body, or there is no true love being expressed.
‘I love you’ to me used to sound so flat, those three words can be loaded so much because there is this perception that this is the only way to express our love to another. Even our actions can build that loading onto the ‘I love you’. But what I have recently learnt and as you’ve shared here Nicola is that love can be expressed in some many different ways it makes it fun! Learning how to express love is so much more enjoyable when not holding out for the ‘I love you’ and instead finding out how many different ways it can be expressed.
Nicola, I really enjoyed your blog and when you said……………”I then imagined another scenario where I could have responded with anger and said ‘why did you run off?’ I could have said ‘you idiot I am almost home now, I want to keep walking and it is not even raining’. Then I would have missed out big time and he could have felt rejected, then reacted to that hurt and we would have missed that beautiful moment and might even have ended up having a fight.”……… it just reminded me that, in my opinion, this is the version that most writers of TV soaps would have plumped for, because in their jaundiced view of the world, it would have been more representative of how we are. It is therefore such a pleasure to read that old-fashioned chivalrous gestures by well-brought-up men are still understood and appreciated in the minefield of modern relationships.
That’s is really lovely Nicola. What a wonderful gesture of love from Christoph to you and from you to him by receiving his gesture with such grace. However, it would be fun to drive past someone’s house and hear their husband shouting from the rooftops through a megaphone how much they loved their wife!?
How beautiful Nicola, and how true, that we can either get caught up in our past hurts and react to another’s gesture of love, or we can be open and understand the ways love can present itself to us. I’m recognising this more and more, it’s uncomfortable to feel the self protection, where we starve ourselves of the love that is there, but it is at the same time amazing to feel the love that’s there to be shared. The hyperlinks are great, I listened to the recording by Serge Benhayon on letting love in – the loving moment you shared with Christoph puts this into practice and is a beautiful example to help us spot those moments where we have a choice: to react or to accept the love.
Is it not love in action when we listen to our bodies and choose not the old reactions but to let those guards and protections down and let the love in from others.
Thank you for sharing how you were able to accept your husband’s beautiful expression of love because of your willingness to open up to love. When we have an expectation about how we will receive love we are constantly disappointed and communication breaks down on the personal and wider level. Thanks also for the link Nicola and the inspiration to explore this further.
What a gorgeous story so simple, Love in action. It is so true Nicola how easily it would have been to dismiss Christoph’s love by saying that was not necessary or by diminishing or berating what he did, but you took the moment to appreciate his humongous love for you. Beautiful.
Indeed it is beautiful, by Nicola not reacting with ,why did you run off etc, it allowed Christoph and Nicola to both feel the love that they had for each other.
Yes when relationships are made about love to the best of our abilities, you are open in every moment to see and receive that love as to be in that love together is the most loveliest thing in all relationships.
I agree with you Alison, such a beautiful sharing of the simplicity of love in action. The key is to be open to love, then the misunderstandings are far less likely to occur in a relationship.
I love the reminder here that the expression of love always comes from our body, and that this can vary depending on the mode of expression. How great to be reminded that often our bodies speak far more loudly than words and that when it comes to love, it simply requires being open to feeling and appreciating these many ways.
Love springs up naturally from within us, when we are not burdened with our own (self-created) struggles in life. If we look closely, there are spontaneous gestures of love happening all around us, and it is worth appreciating this fact rather than seeing only the wrongs in the world. I love your sharing, Nicola, as a celebration of having so much love in your life.
This is so beautiful Nicola. I can feel how we have been conditioned into thinking that hearing those words “I love you” is everything, as if it takes us to an end point, somewhere we have arrived at in a relationship. By doing this we can miss seeing all the other ways love is continually being expressed to us.
Nicola, this is a delightful example of the expression of love that we are free to receive or not. You are right, if we choose to not see it we miss out big time.
Yes I agree Rebecca and we miss out even bigger time if we don’t express the love that we are!
I love that xX
This is very beautiful Nicola, ‘The more I am open to love and allow myself to receive it and express it, the more I see it everywhere… in myself, in others and in nature. I then start to see more clearly how everyone is pure love in essence’. When I was in relationships growing up I was always wanting to hear the words’ i love you’ like i had seen in the movies, i did not appreciate the small gestures of love and to some extent still don’t now, so it is wonderful to read your article and know that love can be expressed anywhere, in any form and does not have to only be spoken words.
Thank you Nicola for sharing a personal, and practical way of expressing ‘I love you’. In the past it has been easy for me to not see these kinds of gestures as loving and instead, as you describe, go into feeling cross or frustrated that another would act as they did. Not for one moment connecting to the quality of what’s been offered and appreciating this is another way of expressing love just because I have had a picture of what ‘love is’ or that ‘I love you’ is more important. This was lovely to read and your expression of love can be felt – thank you.
I felt I was walking along the road with you both and the love I could feel was extraordinary, not just in the beautiful way that Christoph protected and cared for you, but I felt the deep love in your gracious receiving and acceptance of his love.
The love that you each are reflects to each other, and continues the love to grow. Thank you Nicola for sharing your understanding of love.
I agree Rosemary and having seen the changes individually within Nicola and Christoph, there is no denying the love that is between them and ever growing to be shared with all of us.
Nicola, that’s such a beautiful sharing. You are so right when you say that we can miss expressions of love from others because they don’t come in an expected form. It’s gorgeous that you could feel in that moment the love Christoph was sharing with you…. and it’s gorgeous to then share it all with us! I feel very touched.
It really is that simple that the more we are love, the more we become of it everywhere.
The more we are, the more we see
love it!
Gorgeous Liane, I love that – “the more we are, the more we see”!
This is so touching. Gestures of love speak a thousand words and can be felt deeply if we allow ourselves to receive them. Three little words are only three little words.
Yes, the more love we are, the more love we see. The more we express love, the more love we are.
Yes and the more we are the more we see and can receive.
Yep … it really is that simple Steve! I am being reminded of this more and more each day. There is much to appreciate in our unique expressions.
It is totally true that often times, the way love is expressed and received do not match. Not always what someone expresses (verbally, or otherwise) is what the other person receive. The example of the car is perfect. It could have turned into a fight easily if the person ‘left behind’ would have read this from a hurt of ‘having being left’. In that case, the one that rushed away to get the car, would have remained in disbelief and hurt for not being understood, for the other not getting it, for having to explain what it was, for having to justify itself, and for the rejection of the love offered. Would this second scenario occurred, next time, he would not probably rush again; it would be the other person’s problem. Totally absurd, isn’t it?
I really enjoyed reading about your experiences with love and can feel the appreciation for the little gestures which at times may seem to go unnoticed but speak volumes.
Thank you Nicola for expressing love in every word and not confined to the three words ‘I love you’. I can feel the inspiration of your words where you say: “The more I am open to love and allow myself to receive it and express it, the more I see it everywhere… in myself, in others and in nature.”
I have this experience as well, not as a consistancy but in moments, the more open and receptive I am the more I am open to see love everywhere. Thank you Nicola, for your inspiration to bring this into a consistant way to express my love.
Thank you Nicola for writing this, this is huge. I love to feel what you shared, that love can be expressed in so many more ways than only in the words ‘I love you’. It is true I have in the past been looking for those three words and I can see that always expecting to hear these is so limiting in feeling the love the other person holds for you. I am now in a relationship where I do not have this need and I can just feel in everything how much he loves me, as the love is deeply felt in all that he does and says, I only have to choose to feel it and allow it. As I cannot help but feel enormously beautiful with feeling the love he shares with me. Accepting that I deserve it is for me key.
I can relate to everything you share here Lieke. I am in a relationship too and would find it rather difficult to be in if the only words she says to me to share her love was “I Love You”. I can feel her love deep in her holding of me and seeing of me for who I truly am and what is gorgeous is that there is never a limit to what you can share to express your love for the other person, it is almost an ever evolving science! One that is gorgeous to share with her each and every day.
Yes – that is the key to love, that we are accepting that we are deserving it and being worth it for ourselves, than the love is there from every angle.
I can feel how love is there, coming towards us from every angle, if we choose to accept it. I have spent so long deflecting it from all those angles, with incredible coordination and precision! from this Blog and these comments I can see how much love there is to be accepted and expressed.
This is so beautiful Lieke. I can feel that it is possible to be this way with everyone equally when I read your words.
Yes I agree Leonne, to feel this is possible with everyone is just gorgeous.
Lieke and Joshua you have expressed love in a way that is so much more than ‘I love you”. I love you’ is only just the beginning of a loving relationship and as you say it can be expressed in so many ways…..a gesture, a touch, a smile even taking the bins out…….it is limitless and does not need to be left to those 3 tiny words to do all the work.
Nicola, what a beautiful and worthy appreciation of the daily ways we express love and allow love. It will support me to see and appreciate where others are expressing their love, but also it will support me to appreciate the many ways I express my love without even fully being aware of the beauty I am expressing.
Each of us being able to connect to our essence and express the love we are is the thing that is going to bring about the big change that humanity needs. The simplest gesture can mean so much more than those three words but as you say Nicole, they are sometimes easily missed.
Yes I love how this blog takes a moment in time and exposes what it can bring. To be open to what is truly being presented (i.e.. Christoph’s love for his wife) and not what we want to see (i.e. I want to keep walking) can bring us so much.
A true gesture of love, in the most simplest of ways, can change someone’s life…and yes, this is what will change the world. Love is simple, sometimes so simple that we let it pass by.
Jane, I’ve found this to be true also when working with clients, often the deepest connection is made through the eyes.
This is so true Sara and so beautiful. From there wouldn’t it make sense to be taught about what love truly is and its power from day one?
It is so easy to miss the loving gestures of others, even in the workplace. Is it possible that a work colleague helping another is an expression of love? Today as my colleagues left for the day one of them said “its a pleasure working with you”, to which I replied, one day you will understand how important those words are. He was expressing love that is often forbidden at work, and so is “joked about”, but nevertheless very real.
I love how you bring in ‘I love you’ at work, where it certainly is not done to say that to a colleague. And yet it is there in gestures, in how people look at each other, get tea for another and support in different ways. I discovered that even in people asking me to do things just before I go away for a week, was a ‘I don’t want you to go, I will miss you’ and an ‘I love you’.
Great point Heather, there are so many loving gestures that can get lost in the workplace… even small and seemingly basic things like filling the photocopier or tidying the filing cabinet because you know the next person who uses it will feel what you have left there.
This is true Kevin, ‘The simplest gesture can mean so much more than those three words’, I have been discovering this with my partner recently, I was inspired by reading this blog to express love in different ways to him, I made my partner a lovely lunch because he was going to be home late from work and I knew he would be tired and not want to cook, he deeply appreciated the way I had lovingly made the salad for him with the things he likes, I can feel how important these little loving gestures are and how supportive they are for each other.
Beautiful Rebecca, what stood out for me here is how you made the salad for your partner with things he liked, and not what you liked or thought he should eat. My partner and I eat different foods at times and I always feel the love in what he prepares for me because it never has anything else in it that he knows I do not eat.
When the Love we express gets rejected and is not received, we can choose to react and also step away from the Love that we are. Or we can choose to stay with ourselves and observe how this is an opportunity for us to express even deeper the Love for ourselves. The deepening of Love for ourselves naturally opens the deepening of Love for others, and how Love then gets expressed in a myriad of ways can be understood and received, like never before. In Love there are no hurts and no rejection, just Love!
This is powerful Adele – if we start going into hurt or rejection it is no longer love. Love has been blamed for so much hurt, in fact even likened to war (all’s fair) but this is a huge bastardisation of what love is.
That is very beautiful Adele; if you are full of love it means you are the love you have for yourself you share equally with all others. If one person on the planet rejects your love, it cannot hurt because you are left with the love that you are.
An article full of love Nicola.
You have touched on an interesting subject of how we interpret love. I see many examples of love around the home such as the way meals are lovingly prepared or how washing is gently taken off the line and folded or how the dishes are washed and dried.
Yet those gestures, even when delivered with love, can often be ignored by a partner or taken for granted, so in affect they choose not to see or feel love. And so the other gradually withdraws their love. And that is a shame.
We also see love (or the lack of) it in conversations between couples, particularly with the tone that people use when speaking to each other.
Love can be subtle and at the same time extraordinarily powerful. Let’s heed your advice and make the choice to remain open and vigilant to the Magic of Love.
Beautiful Rod. It is in those small things that great love can be felt.
I agree Nikki, Rod has described those small things where love can be expressed so eloquently, but can often be taken for granted. How often to we withdraw love in expression when this happens? YES Rod, “Let’s heed Nicola’s advice and make the choice to remain open and vigilant to the Magic of Love.”
Oh Rod you have touched on something there – tone. We are so very sensitive to all sorts of subtleties right down an edge in persons voice. We can cut each other as though with knives with our tone, be it dismissive, curt, sarcastic or contemptuous. We can also behold people with our voices, envelop them in warmth and safety.
A small thing? Not at all.
I am reminded of Serge’s words: nothing is nothing and everything is everything. There is not one thing to ignore in our relationships, openness and joyful attentiveness are the key.
Ahh Rachel, your gorgeous observation really touched me – it is so very true that ‘There is not one thing to ignore in our relationships, openness and joyful attentiveness are the key.’.
Ahhh well said Rachel! What I have noticed with tone over time is that we are actually very aware of how we are using it. With the slightest tweak, we can cut… or behold… it can be ever so slight… but oh so powerful.
Rod I have been in a situation where folding the washing lovingly was ignored only to find it on the floor days later… I remember feeling hurt and deciding that I would no longer bother, being ignored or taken for granted was so harming to the relationship. Now with a deeper appreciation for the subtleties of love and a deeper appreciation of myself I would have read that situation with the laundry and addressed it, that would have offered an opening to the Magic of Love, not a closing of another door.
When an expression of our love is disregarded, we can instantly be crushed and hurt, and it can be so easy to ‘turn your back’ so to speak… and yes, I agree Merrilee, every unloving moment is an opportunity to deepen our love, on both sides.
Rod it is true there is a myriad ways one can express love as you describe in a home setting. But if these are never appreciated at their true value love eventually dies or is withdrawn and replaced by resentment. Let’s stay open to the ways love can be expressed in so many and unexpected fashion.
Beautiful points you have raised here Rod, bringing our attention to the importance of bringing awareness to and appreciating the many ways love is expressed in our days. Without this awareness and appreciation, love tends to become more of a struggle, like a beautiful plant we forget to water.
This is beautiful Rod and so true.
When we Love and receive Love there is only joy! Any other emotion is an indicator that we are not freely being Love and receiving the Love from the world, which is a natural expression from our hearts.
Nicola I did go and read the Unimedpedia site on the word Love, and while I understand the beautiful gesture you described from Christoph as the activity of love… and deeply touching, I also felt the ‘beholding light’ spoken of in your words. I felt embraced by the end of your blog… thank you for an all encompassing experience and understanding of what love is.
Yes Jenny I completely agree – true love does not have one once of emotion in it and is not at all what we think it is. It is as you say a beholding light, a quality of the Soul and something that I am still learning to embody. As Serge Benhayon wrote in his book Esoteric & Exoteric Philosophy: “Love is love and the livingness of that must be known before any word can be used to describe it, for the true emanation of love is word-less.”
Thank you Nicola – you keep pouring out more truth about love and it is so easily understood and felt all over.
Beautiful expressed Jenny. This situation reminds me of being with my mum; every time when I left her house she tells me to be careful to not fall down the stairs. Now I understand what she is really saying is – I love you. It is her way to expresses it this way. As a little girl I always told her in reaction that I am able to go down the stairs without falling. Today I understand and feel the love she has for me, n total appreciation.
What a beautiful realisation Monika. It helps us understand that expressions of love happen all the time and it can come through anyone at all and sometimes we get to witness these gifts, which is equally beautiful to receive.
This is gorgeous Nicola, both how Christoph showed his love for you through going and getting the car and how you accepted his loving gesture which equally was saying I love you back. This has been a great reminder for me and to see where I am still waiting for those three words instead of seeing all the ways love is expressed.
Nicola- what beautiful sharing about the many ways to express love. I was touched and felt the deep love expressed by Christoph’s gesture of wanting to protect you from the rain by running off and getting the car.
It reminds me of how quickly we can judge another’s behaviour as being wrong or unnecessary and then miss the deeper expression of love that they are trying to show us.
Yes I agree Loretta, reading your comment reminded me of seeing a man lovingly open a car door for a woman in a respectful and caring gesture and seeing the woman snap “I can do it myself” as if he was somehow making her less. I notice quite often how we can do that as women, perhaps sometimes because we do not honour and love ourselves enough and so misread the offering. Meanwhile men are very sensitive to rejection so here we get another world war instead of a glorious sharing of love.
Yes, men are very sensitive to rejection. I have seen men being hurt by women laughing off a compliment. This is not only dishonouring of herself, but disregarding of the man, and all because they are not choosing to love and appreciate themselves. I know because, in the past I have been guilty of this myself.
I have also witnessed those scenarios…a woman snapping at and offered open door, or dismissing a compliment or making a self deprecating joke. I have seen men be dismissive of thoughtful gestures.
What are we to do when this occurs.? Nicola, you offered the perfect example of escalation that can devastate a relationship…or we can open our eyes and ears and beings to love, really open. That means we have to understand what love is. So thank you for the UM-pedia links…the words greatest encyclopaedia.
Beautifully said Nicola, I have seen people behave in this way and it just means they are not choosing love for themselves first but instead misery. If we do not care and love ourselves first then how can we ever truly care and love another? I have learnt, and continue to learn, so much from Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine with what is presented and how they live. One thing that stands out here is how it was presented that Love does not have one ounce of emotion in it; I could feel the truth and relief of this in my body because in the past I made love about an ’emotion’ and it took me further away from who I am but I ‘thought’ that was what I was supposed to do and that I was expressing love! I know so much more now but it is definitely still work in progress and not about perfection.
Nicola, I once was this woman refusing offers from men to open doors to let me pass through first. How confused was I? And how confusing for men when women openly reject expressions of care and love.
Yes, I have said that ”I can do it myself” in reaction to love being offered. When we are hurt we can do and say the most peculiar, hurtful things that are so not true of who we are. When a man opens a car door for me now, I welcome it and it feels yummy!
Yes, and opening the car door feels special and caring and… it is fun!
I know Loretta, how many times do we not stop to feel deeper into what someone is showing us before reacting out of looking at it mentally and not feeling it from our bodies? I’m going to start looking at where I do this after reading this.
Aimee, in my experience there are tons and tons of misunderstandings, especially with those we are closest to. There can even be layers of misunderstanding – a simple misunderstanding and when that is resolved a deeper misunderstanding may show itself and it can go several times like that. Each time, the gain in freed up love and energy and the reduction in waste and guardedness and feeling hurt can be large. Cumulatively, it can transform us resolving our misunderstandings.
The willingness to work through the layers and expose what is not love is the commitment to the relationship and the commitment to love. I had another opportunity to experience this yesterday, where a friend said something and I felt hurt by what was said. We chatted about it and revealed a layer of misunderstanding that I had and the tension that I was feeling quickly shifted. I am finding the more I commit to love within myself the more I am able to express so that these layers can be peeled back, the misunderstandings cleared up and for us to feel a deeper level of love.
Thank you both Christoph and Donna, your comments about peeling back the layers of misunderstanding are very supportive in deepening my commitment to work through the layers to expose what is not love.
Christoph this is amazing wisdom “There can even be layers of misunderstanding – a simple misunderstanding and when that is resolved a deeper misunderstanding may show itself and it can go several times like that.” These can be misunderstandings between families, countries, cultures, and misunderstandings of ourselves and then those misunderstandings taint how we see everything and everyone else. Powerful stuff Christoph, thank you!
Indeed I was touched by your expression about love Nicola. It feels that the energy behind words and actions are often more telling of whether it comes from true love or not.
Thank you Nicola for this joyful blog. We all are fascinated by love and from there exploring the depths of the love we all come from and actually are. We are amazed by its grandness and ways of expressions when we allow this love to be lived in all parts of our lives and our life becomes a life of joy and continuous evolvement as the ways love expresses in life is beyond our imagination and forever expanding and therefore surprising us.
You said it Nico, in a simple way. The ways love expresses is beyond our imagination and forever expanding if we allow it and if we are open for love.
Yes, well said Nico & Monika the expressions of love are endless if we allow ourselves to be open to it.
Well said Nico.
I just so enjoy how love is expressed here and is possible in so many forms. We can easily think love is saying ‘I love you’, adoring someone, not being able to live without someone – but it is so much more; in the gentleness we hold for each other, the honesty we communicate with and the way we allow love to keep deepening and evolving. Love is so powerful and is everywhere we look, it is simply our choice to allow this to be a constant deepening.
Nicola, thank you for your beautiful story and expose of how we can express ‘I love you’ without the words but in loving actions. As a child I cannot remember these words ever spoken to me or anyone else but I do know how much I was loved by my family in the way they cared for me and did special things that made me feel valued and appreciated.
Susan Wilson, I’m absolutely with you on that. Didn’t we used to say something like…”Actions speak louder than words”?
Yes absolutely and it is made so simple here, the situation could have been missunderstood but because they were both open to love, they create such a beautiful moment together.
So true Jonathan – it does not matter what loving words come out of our mouths, if the actions (tender touch, a warm glance, playfulness, deep eye contact etc) are not there confirming the words, the love is emotional or empty.
The fullness of love in expression you bring to this blog Nicola and Christoph is beautiful and a great marker for us all to be inspired by.
The fullness of love in expression is undeniable when expressed with absolute quality and tenderness of heart. Awesome Stephanie thank you.
That’s a good way of summing it up Jonathan, ”Actions speak louder than words”. It’s beautiful to read how the action of Nicola and Christoph showed their love in expression. How gorgeous that Nicola was able to understand the action of Christoph for the love that it was and receive it with the same equal-ness.
The words ‘i love you’ can also become an ideal, spoken flippantly and contrary to unloving gestures.
It is beautiful to appreciate that each of us will express love in different ways and that we each know Love to our core – it is a choice as to whether we let Love in and express it forth.
I agreed Deborah, the words ‘I love you’, can sometimes just trip off the lips and not be genuine. I would much rather have someone look at me with love in their eyes than tell me ‘I love you’ and not truly mean it because there is a huge difference to be felt there.
Agree Sandra Henden, a person’s expressing of love comes from their whole body expression, and not the usage of the words themselves. To me the words are not required when in their place is a body that is joyed with truth to encapsulate a person.
I have heard the words “I love you” many times with nothing behind them. It was confusing as I knew in my body there was no love being expressed but I was so conditioned into thinking that that was how love was expressed. But the body can’t be fooled, only if the head overrides it and only for a given period. In some cases I went with the head and chose to accept this version of (not) love. But the body never waivered in knowing that was not love. I was at the same course where we talked about how we express love and suddenly so much made sense.
Yes the ‘I love yous’ we say can often feel empty to both give and receive. It is wonderful to express how we feel in full. I am still working out how to express love, sometimes I feel so much, it is hard to know how to share it. Lately I am feeling that I can express my love for another through the way I cherish and honour myself. This is a new concept for me but I feel I am on the right track.
Agreed Michelle love is in everything that we do. Every gesture matters.
‘The small things can say it all!’ True Michelle, very often when it comes to love, small is beautiful.
We pay a costly price for going against what we feel. Your comment Richard has made me remember when I met a particular man who I knew and felt straight away was ‘bad news.’ I ignored a very clear signal that I felt in my whole body, and embarked on a relationship with him. It resulted in much mess, complication and ended horribly, causing my family and me a lot of stress.
Very true Nikki McKee, the emptiness can be detected and also via an equally felt emotional tug too – ‘i love you’ often said in or with a level of desperation or to convince. Love needs no convincing or drama, it just is. Pure. Complete. Total care. Never from a mental head, but from the whole body and being.
I agree there are so many ways we can use the word love carelessly. It reminds me of a partner I had years ago, where we would end our phone call with a really quick automatic “ok love you bye” like some sort of obligatory signing off. It always felt awful and had nothing to do with love!
And sadly this is so common in many relationship from the immediate family as we grow up to the ones we end up choosing in our adult lives. If we learnt and felt the power and quality of true love as children, our relationships would reflect this in our adult years.
I have something similar – it was a choice between saying something empty or feeling weird when not saying it or feeling the urge to say something ‘true’ every time. When words are mandatory it gets messy.
That is all too common, Nicola. The phrase ‘I love you’ is one that has become bastardised or used as a manipulative tool in many a relationship. It is a far far cry from the heartfelt expression of love that is truly felt and expressed as love rather than the way it is often said much more out of obligation rather than lived truth.
Yes Deborah, the words ‘I love you’ roll off the tongue as a habit and can be contrary to unloving gestures in the same moment. It feels like the easy way out, just speaking from the mind and from a contracted version of ourselves, looking for a certain response in the other to confirm ourselves. It is not fully claiming our loving presence when there is so much more appreciation and care that could be expressed in that moment.
The appreciation of others expressions towards us, how loving they can be, even without the words “I love you” is a revelation for me, and I am sure also for many. The world has become entrenched in the expectations of those 3 words. My mother has never told me she loves me, and yet she shows me every day.
How beautiful Heather, what you share about your mother is the essence of true love. Thank you.
This is so true Heather- such a huge expectation insisted upon with the words ‘I Love You’ yet we don’t equally insist on these words being genuine, nor always discern the energy in which they are being expressed.
That is beautiful Heather and yes it is often the world on its head when it comes to using the word love. We say it without feeling it and we can not feel it while it is there but not being said. I love the example of your mother. I feel my life has been enriched immensely by being able to feel what is love and what is not. I never thought there was that much love in the world!
Wow Heather…great to read your comment. I thought about all of those movies with parent/child relationships where there is so much hurt because “you never said you loved me” “you never said you were proud of me” etc…. and really we live in such a narrow way that we think we can only get that love/pride from those few words but in reality they could be showing it (and most likely are) in dozens if not hundreds of different ways. Well done for seeing through that.
Absolutely beautiful Heather. I love what you share about your mother, it made me realize how little I appreciate my mothers’ expression of love and how judgmental I have been about her expressions, because they don’t come in the way I expect love to be. How unloving is that! I can also feel by not appreciating my mothers’ expression of love how I don’t appreciate my own expressions of love. Wow this is huge thank you for sharing.
Great point Rachel…my mum demonstrates constantly to me and the rest of the family that she loves us all deeply, and yet it isn’t fully appreciated, and I can see how as you’ve said, it is because we don’t appreciate our own expressions of love…something here for me to look at.
Wow Rachel, thank you for openness and complete honesty, it made me stop and ponder deeply on how unloving I have been in not accepting my mothers’ expressions of love, “because she didn’t love me in the way I wanted her to.” So harming all round!
This is so true Heather – I remember once my mother telling me ‘You are loved’ which was the nearest she could come to ‘I love You’ but I was so locked up in my anger at her that I couldn’t see the many ways she showed her love.
My mother has never told me she loves me, and yet she shows me every day. That is truly love given and love felt. Thank you for sharing Heather, it touched me deeply.
Great point you make here Heather. We can be attached to hearing those 3 words, and in doing so may miss the many other ‘I Love yous’ that can come in so many different forms.
Heather I have to come back to what you share here as it is quite revealing. My mother never told me she loves me, but she is expressing it to me in her very own way constantly. What I realized is that I also never told my mother that I love her and it is something very strange for me to express in words. I also express my love in very different ways, but I am absolutely holding back on its full expression and appreciation. It is very easy to blame the family constellation of not having had the loving expression as a way to live, but why did I never expressed it myself? We all are love, so there is nothing to learn there is only to express.
Spot on Heather, we have become “entrenched” in the picture that we need to hear the words “I love you” to feel it, rather than seeing that the way someone acts with us can be expressing the same three words without the need to say anything
You raise a great point Deborah, are we willing to let love in because it is very easy to let the words I love You bounce right off but to surrender to someone expressing love for us from the depth of their being is completely different.
Yes Deborah, relationships can be built off the words “I love you” and made up from fights with the same words. Personally I have been one who was a part of that, but have to come to realize the way I move and allow myself to be and feel if there is something coming up is my responsibility first, is love for myself and therefore my wife or whoever it maybe.
Susan, I read your comment with interest and wondered at my own perception of my childhood – and the words “I love you” that were never actually spoken. I am not sure that my experience of loving expressions was not really appreciated due to the overwhelming sense of ‘duty’ that seemed to abound. I see now that love was expressed by working hard, growing the vegetables and putting food on the table, clothes being sewn, and shoes on our feet.
Susan, how beautiful that you could experience this as a child, to be held in love by your family and being shown that you are loved. This is the best soil for a child to grow and unfold and become the loving and caring adult it really is. It is not about the materialistic things we provide our children, it is the love we hold them in which can change our society to a truer place to be.
Susan I find this to be true about being a child as well. No one went around saying ‘I love you’ or constantly give me gifts and flowers when I was a child, but I could feel being very much cared for and valued. Somehow the expectation of the ‘I love you’ and flowers and so forth creeps in as we get older, especially in sexual relationships. And when we rely on our thoughts and expectations, instead of our heart and feeling the situation, it seems we keep falling for the empty words and token gestures, whilst we miss the real loving and caring expressions because they do not match our expectation. This is great reminder Nicola for us to pay more attention, feel and appreciate the love that we are offered in our lives in whatever shape of form they arrive.
So true, Susan, it can be very little gestures that let us feel the love of someone else deeply. And I agree, with Nicola that it would be worth it to gather such little love stories to be inspirational for everyone. I surely would love to read such a book or blog! and would love to contribute to it.
When we hold back our full expression of Love in the body, however way it has felt to be expressed, we know how much tension we feel. When we stop expressing Love because it has been misunderstood before and we feel rejected; or we stop receiving Love because we have an expectation or picture of what Love looks like, it creates huge tension in our bodies also. Putting it this way, it is crazy—because we are naturally all Love and we have made it so complicated to not be who we are in essence! No wonder all this tension leads to all the wars, illness and disease, corruption, unnatural events, natural disasters in the whole world. Nicola, thank you for your blog, you have made it so simple and allowed me to return to this simplicity.
Yes, and when we do not hold back from ‘our full expression of Love in the body’ it is like our body sings as there is no tension, just harmony.
Yes Jonathan, this is a great feeling!
So beautifully expressed Jonathon. Thank you.
Spot on Jonathan, let us sing together and celebrate us for what we really are – love.
So beautifully expressed Jonathan, and I am sure that Nicola’s body was singing very loudly as a result of the divine expression of love from Christoph.
Adele, you’ve expressed this so clearly, and it is crazy what we do to ourselves. We all know love, we love being loved and love is what we seek above all else, but we can become frozen by a hurtful moment where the love we wanted didn’t come our way. Our bodies fill up with the tension and the poison of not expressing love, and the result is the illness and disease, the corruption, that we see on a large and small scale today.
Adele holding back our love would have to be the single most harming thing we can do to ourselves. The world will indeed be a different place when we all begin to truly express from love.
Yes Adele, it’s a big one Tension. We all feel it. We do anything to not feel it – eat more, move in a way that counter attacks the tension (double force back on our body), live with it, check out in the mind, numb ourselves – we know exactly what to do. Tension is holding back our love as Adele has expressed. For instance my wife and I experienced a lot of tension in our bodies last night cooking dinner – it was more extreme than it normally was! We realized we were being asked to go deeper and surrender more to our feelings in relation to cooking and eating, but also throughout the day. Tension is a good sign to show you there is more love that needs to be expressed, and a reminder life is evolving as there is always more.
The misunderstandings and expectations that we have around love are truly staggering when we start to really feel what love is and what it can be.
I know what you are saying Adele, I have held back from saying ‘I love you’ because it somehow didn’t feel the right way for me to express love and yet I wanted to express love so it built up a tension in my body because it was not expressed. I felt a great release of tension at this workshop when I heard Serge demonstrating different ways to express love. I felt I had permission to be more me. It was my attachment to the notion that one had to express in a certain way that held me back from giving myself this permission. I can see too how this tension could lead to arguments and wars if it were allowed to build up.
Adele – it is true that we have complicated something so simple. Love – true love – has no barriers or reservations – it is a gift and it is in us all equally. I am so fortunate to now know the true meaning of the world love after so many years thinking that love was emotional and for me, one sided. We can very easily make our hurts and our issues the focus rather than saying ‘you know what – if I shut down people get a shut down version of me – but if I am open and I don’t let a bad experience own me, if I let go of this and let love in, then isn’t that a gift for every single person we meet?
It is often the most practical and simplest of stories that I get the most out of Nicola, this is certainly one of them 🙂 Relationships every where will benefit from reading this and taking on board such a respectful way of appreciating the different ways we all express love.
I couldn’t agree more Suzanne. Thank you Nicola for taking the time to write this heartfelt blog.
Just have to add I really appreciate the infectious joy you have written this blog in Nicola, I feel uplifted everytime I read it.
True Suzanne, this sharing from Nicola is so relatable, and a great example of how we can always choose how we respond or react to any given situation, coming from love, or not.
Definitely something for me to ponder on further Esther – “Do I come from love or not?” in any situation. This is much better than looking at it as “Was I right or wrong?”
Love that reminder Shevon, right, wrong, or instead from love? Something to continually be asking ourselves in all interactions. What is love, is true and truth.
Another simple reminder that is a simple circuit breaker Shevon, thank you! I love these sharings and as Suzanne said it is in the most practical and simplest of stories that the message is clearest!
Yes, I love how simple it is Shevon, making sure everything comes from love, “Do I come from love or not?”
This is great Shevon to consider not whether I am right or wrong but rather did it come from love or not. This takes all the blame out of it and offers me the opportunity to choose to come from love in the next moment.
I agree Shevon, another thing I would ask myself when a situation arises is ‘does this truly support me in this moment’, that way I have to answer honestly as anything else would be disregarding to myself. I am by no means perfect, but it is a great stop moment to do this and not just carry on regardless and then have to live with the consequences of not making a loving choice!
Awesome!. what a gorgeously freeing way to look at it, “do I come from love or not?” The answer is clear. Was I right or wrong connotes many variations of right, wrong, a little bit wrong etc, a very mental exercise which can tie one in knots.
Beautifully said Shevon. Making Love our marker keeps things very simple
Considering not whether I am right or wrong but rather did it come from love, removes all blame comparison and judgement upon ourselves as well as the other. Thank you Shevon.
So true Shevon. The difference between reflecting on whether I came from love when I did or said something and whether I was right is world’s apart. The latter separates me from love and the former leaves me open to being love now and in the next moment.
Great point Karin, being ‘right’ compared to truly reflecting are polar opposites, and to recognise when we do this is a way to improve our expression and communication
“Do I come from love or not?” Such a simple question, but the answer can be world changing when it’s ‘yes’. On the other hand ‘right’ really doesn’t change or shift anything.
Thanks Shevon. Looking at it this way feels so much more gentle on my body and offers me an opportunity to choose more love.
I agree – “Do I come from love or not?” and the follow-up, especially when things look like they are going wrong “Do I choose love or do I blame or try to manage or try to be nice”?
Christoph yes the follow-up when things look like they are going wrong “Do I choose love or do I blame or try to manage to be nicer?” I have done all of that in the past, get caught in that pattern, It is a horrible feeling. But now having the awareness that it all comes from me and what I choose, it’s great to reflection on “Do I come from love or not?”
I agree Esther – the article is so relevant to all relationships and love how it exposes that Love is just a choice in each moment that we can choose to come from and express or go the other way and cause an argument. I love the simplicity and matter of fact way in which Nicola writes – its so relatable.
Thank you Esther for a very loving gentle deepening of awareness “…any situation, coming from love, or not”. This can be applied to absolutely everything. I have been pondering something within myself and this is exactly the question I need to ask myself before another second is given to thinking.
Interesting to ask yourself that question – did that come from love or not? And if not, why not and then where did it come from? But also asking that second round from a place of love and with a curiosity I find is the trick – not asking it from a place of giving yourself a hard time.
So simply put Esther.
To Love or to not Love.
I agree with your comment here Suzanne in reference to Nicola’s beautiful blog and to repeat your words “Relationships everywhere will benefit from reading this and taking on board such a respectful way of appreciating the different ways we all express love.” I am witnessing constantly, and learning always that there are many ways of expressing love – to the best of the ability and awareness of the one so expressing, and also accepting that not everyone has the same awareness of how deeply and simply an expression of true love may be.
Roberta we often think that the expression of love is a directed action from one person to another but I am coming to feel that if something is done with love e.g. if I hand money over in a shop lovingly then my action may possibly contain more actual love then a person who says ‘i love you’ to another out of habit. Love is a felt substance and although it can be felt in words, the words themselves do not guarantee the love.
So true Alexis. I know I can feel the difference between something done with love and something done without, everyone can, though they might not know it. Even the word ‘no’ said with love can be a blessing to another.
So true Mary, it is my experience that we often override what we feel with the pictures and words that we want to see and hear that fit our ideals and beliefs about what romantic love should be. Anything that does not match that needs to be overlooked or denied.
I agree Alexis love in expression or activity is truly felt.
It is an important point that all relationships benefit not just those with our loved ones when we become aware that love is a lived quality not just an expression in words.
So true Suzanne – when a story is presented with this sort of simplicity it can go straight to the heart, because there is no opportunity for misunderstanding the beauty and clarity of Nicola’s expression. We need more simple love stories to tell our children so that they learn from the beginning that love does not need to be complicated.
Yes Susan, what I took from this blog is that love is not complicated, we are love and that it is all about expressing that love we are in whichever way we are naturally able to express, not ever holding back what is in our body to be said, gestured and felt.
I agree Stephen, love is not complicated. We only complicate love when we hold back and don’t express our truth, which would in fact be a non loving gesture to ourselves as well as our partner, and this causes tension which takes us further away from love.
Agree Sandra, and to add to that – love is deeply surrendering to know ourselves in essence and allow what it is there to be.
I agree love is not complicated, it is us who complicates love and life through the choices we make. We hold back in expressing the love and truth we are for ourselves and others. Which takes us away from our true essences.
Yes true Susan, instead of allowing the simple but enormous variety in expressing truly love from our hearts – we tend to make love so complicated, emotional and even painful.
If it is complicated, painful and emotional I’ve been developing a deeper understanding that this isn’t love. Love is the sense that we are precious and divine in our connection with ourselves and another. It requires no doing but an openness to be and share our true essence with another without imposing conditions.
Yes I too am coming to realise this Sandra. If there is any emotion, complication or pain in a relationship then this is not true love. As you so rightly say love just is, there is no imposition and no expectation needed, just a simple allowing of another to be where they are and to give them the space to come to their own understanding if they so choose.
This resonates in me, Amina, ” we need more simple love stories to tell our children…”. Interestingly children are not complicated in living and expressing love. Why we as adults have seperated ourselves so far from simple and true love and now have to relearn this?
So true Susan, more true loves stories for our children rather than the fairytale ideals that often come with some children’s stories is greatly needed.
I agree Susan, true Love is a simple expression which is everywhere if we are open to it..
Yes Susan, it would be great to replace the romantic ideals with some simple stories of real love to provide a true reflection of love for our children.
I couldn’t agree more Suzanne. A simply beautiful gesture from the heart to inspire all.
I feel the same Suzanne, there is much to be gained from the wisdom of a simple and and heartfelt practical story.
I agree Suzanne and thank you Nicola for this beautiful sharing from your heart. We do need these simple stories to remember the simplicity of love and need to tell that to our children too – great point Susan! As love has become such a seemingly complicated affair.
Yes Jane I agree. Love is indeed very natural for us all and it is there to share with everyone. But even though it is the thing that we all want most of all, when we are shown true love, more often than not, we tend to run a mile. These simple little gestures of love are what can bring us back to know that innate love that we all have within us. A beautiful example Nicola of how this is possible.
I so agree Suzanne, this blog is heartfelt, real and so beautiful to read. It reminded me too it is the simplest of acts that speak with the loudest love. Time to appreciate the love that so clearly surrounds us all.
Totally agree Suzanne – keeping it real and relatable we all can get the divine message in this story.
Absolutely Suzanne, my daughter rang me today to share with me something that had happened, I knew while listening to her talk through what had happened and how she was feeling that she loved me deeply because she trusted me enough to be honest about a situation. She did not need to say I love you mum.
I agree Sally, being truthful is one of the most loving things we can do.
Beautiful Sally & Christoph. There is nothing more that really ignites my heart when I hear and feel truth. And, it feels ever-so-joy-full when I’m in the activity of my truth!
Indeed Christoph and Sally for another to share what they honestly feel is a loving gift.
I love this too, Suzanne. Love is illustrated in its simplicity and it makes me shiver.
I particularly love this- “The more I am open to love and allow myself to receive it and express it, the more I see it everywhere… in myself, in others and in nature”. Such beautiful sharing, Nicola.
I agree Suzanne to a deeply touching story with a simple but profound message. Love is so deep and forever there. It holds another in honorary respect always. I love to talk about it; it should be talked about and totally understood and claimed by each of us how we bring it in everything that we do. You cannot argue its strength as Nicola experienced. It is for all of us and the only thing that can move through the most dense points in ourselves, others or on earth. When will it be recognized again as the wisdom to our problems!
I can totally see how this could be turned into a fight, but also how it is exactly how to tell someone ‘I love you’ without saying those specific words. You are right Suzanne, this is a very practical and simple story of how we can all develop our relationships.
I must say, I can’t believe how much this blog has changed perception of me. It actually brings tears to my eyes.
I agree Suzanne, it highlights how easy it is for us to choose complication and argument when love is just there on offer. How crazy this is when we look at it, but it so easily can be the norm if we continue to choose it.