To build a kingdom of love ---by Bil Ferguson

To build a kingdom of love ---by Bil Ferguson When you feel loved, life is wonderful! You are happy, alive and free. You feel better about yourself and everything around you… the same thing happens when you give love to someone else. Watch you compliment someone or say how much you appreciate someone. Notice how happy he becomes. Watch as the problem fills with love and returns love to you. If you want to create a life of love, you have to open your heart and give love. As you do this, you automatically receive love in return. Life becomes more enjoyable and you become more effective. Unfortunately, opening your heart and expressing love can be very scary. We are afraid that if we open our hearts and express our love, we’ll get hurt. We’ve been hurt before and it’s no fun. To make sure we don’t get hurt again, we put up our walls of protection. We hold ourselves back and we push people away. We create distance and destroy love. Without ever noticing, we push away the love that we want so much. To see how our walls of protection push away love, notice how you feel when you are around someone whose walls are thick. Notice how uncomfortable you feel. Notice how your walls go up. Now notice how you feel when you are around someone who is open, with little or no walls of protection. Notice how loved and accepted you feel, and this type of person pulls love out of you. Notice how loving you become. We put up walls to protect ourselves from the hurt, but the hurt we are avoiding isn’t outside ourselves, it is inside. So instead of keeping the hurt out, our walls of protection keep the hurt in. Instead of protecting us, our walls destroy love, create opposition and produce more hurt. Your most powerful protection comes when you open your heart and willing to express your love. Love melts opposition, creates harmony and heals hurt. Look in the face of someone who is open, loving and unprotecting. What you see? This type of person is alive. This person has happiness, freedom, inner peace and a joy for living. Now look in the face of someone who is very protective and unwilling to be hurt. What do you see? This type of person is rigid and dead. There is a thick crust of hardness, anger and resentment, and, beyond that, a tremendous amount of fear and suppressed hurt. Which face would you rather have? Which life would you rather live? To open your heart and be an expression of love, you have to be like a young child, you have to be willing to be hurt. Be willing to experience any hurt that may come along. Make peace with your hurt. Cry like a child. Let the hurt come and let it go. The world does not need changing; the world needs loving. There are six billion people on the planet and almost all of them are afraid to open their hearts and express their love. We go through life with our walls up waiting for others to take the first step and express their love. Then if we feel safe enough, we will open our hearts and express our love. Unfortunately, almost everyone is waiting for someone else to take the first step, and few do. As a result, we live in a world where people go around protecting themselves instead of expressing their love. When your life is about opening your heart and taking the first step, you alter the planet. You make it safe for others to open their hearts and express their love. When enough people are willing to open their hearts and express their love, the rest of the world will follow. We will have a planet that is loving and supportive. Remember, the process begins with you!