Angelic Love

To love for the sake of being loved is human,
but to love for the sake of loving is angelic.
--Alphonse de Lamartine

I like to ask people what our main reason for being here is. Most say that our existence has something to do with love. Although not a new thought, it is something we need to remember from time to time: Love is truly the most precious quality we have. At the end of our lives, we will not be asked how much money we made, how many things we acquired, how far up the ladder of success we got. The question that will matter is: How well did you love?

Deep within the dimensions of our heart is a capacity for higher love. A love that is so pure it makes the angels shudder with joy. This innate ability can be a guiding force in our lives; when it is, the angels usher us into situations where the love we generate creates miracles right before our eyes. It is never too late to embark on a journey of higher love because with the angels lighting the way transformation can happen in an instant.

The angels connect with us by way of our heart. They read our heart and see what we may be blocking and what might be causing us pain. Lessons in love involve pain, that is part of the bargain. The pain of a "broken heart" is not due to the fact that it is broken; the pain is from a building up of pressure created by fear, doubt, and anger. If we are willing to fully experience and honor the pain connected to love, then our heart breaks open, the pressure is released and we find ourselves in the territory of grace where fear is replaced with comfort, doubt with hope, and anger with forgiveness. Joy bursts forth.

It takes courage to love until your heart breaks open. The word "courage" comes by way of the Latin word cor, which means heart. The angels encourage us to love more and more. Each time we do, we get closer to a place of higher love. When I say "higher love," I am using the term as a metaphor for divine love. The angels represent the divine nature of love; to connect with the angels means raising our vibration to a higher plane. We may think that this is out of our reach, but it is very simple. We only need to do our best and love with the purest intent. The vibration we give off is directly related to our intention in matters of love. If we intend to love because we want to be worshipped or to possess someone, then the vibration is heavy because so much fear goes with this game. Love is expansive it needs breathing room. In a relationship loves needs space as Kahlil Gibran says to "let the winds of heavens dance between you."

The angels don’t judge us, they respond to us, and interact with us based on the qualities we energize. The frequencies of the angels are in accordance with the divine. So if we are generating the lower vibrations of fear and anger regarding a love situation, the angels cannot respond to this. When we shift the energy by facing the fear and dealing with the anger, the angels move in to help lift us up.

Because the angels are very highly attuned, to have a relationship with them we need to "tune-up" our own personal love vibration. The best way to do this is with a mindfulness practice. Take a moment and reflect on where you are in your quest to love well. Close your eyes and let your awareness go to your heart. Take a deep breath and let some feelings emerge. Make a mental note of the mixture of emotions. Know that regardless of the state your love-life is in, you are loved in heaven. Know that ultimately the angels whisper in your ear, "Everything is going to be okay." If you consider yourself single, rethink your use of that word. I don’t believe we are ever single; that word seems to promote a belief in separation, and we always have the choice to connect to life.

To further your mindfulness of love here are a few practice suggestions:

Designate a love-link between you and the angels. Think of something that you may encounter throughout your day that will initiate a moment to feel loved by the angels. An obvious love-link could be a heart. When you see a heart, take a moment and know the angels are in your heart. Look for hearts, listen for the word in conversation, notice it in writings, and feel your heartbeat. Other love-link suggestions: butterflies, flowers, cupids, clouds, diamonds, wings, etc. Think of a new love-link each day.

Consciously make your world more beautiful. Beauty is important because it means something is divinely cared for. I am not talking about our current fashion sense of beauty, I am talking about something deeper than conditioned visual beauty. We all have our own sense of what is beautiful; let beauty into your life, whatever it means to you. Ask the angels to remind you to notice beauty, to look up at the clouds, to notice the sun shining through the leaves of a tree, to literally stop and smell the roses. Increase beauty in your environment: Plant a flower, make yourself look a little better by smiling more, buy some art for your home.

Don’t forget to laugh and lighten up. The angels are attracted when we are sharing laughter with someone we love. Instead of punishing yourself for a "mistake," try laughing at yourself.

Gratitude allows you to move from a state of neediness to a state of grace. It is one of the best ways to lift a situation. The angels respond instantly to a moment of gratitude. Even when you don’t feel it, start to be thankful for a situation and in time the feeling will catch up with your intention.

Real compassion and loving kindness give off the highest divine vibrations, and bring us into direct contact with the divine. "Real means that we are not looking for anything in return. It means being willing to love for the sake of loving as a way to help the angels heal the planet, not to feel better about ourselves or to get a lover. Compassion means we are willing to give love when we have been given hate, to forgive, to consciously go beyond our self-interest and bridge the gap of separation that is so prevalent in human society. Even a baby step into compassion sets the angel in us free and opens the gate of the miraculous.

source: http://www.beliefnet.com/story/12/story_1203_2.html

What do angels look like?

I often receive emails asking, "Please tell me what my angel looks like." Often the questioner has been listening to someone on radio or TV describe their "vision" of angels surrounding members of the audience. Can people really see angels around a person? The Bible and the mainstream Christian faith know nothing of such second sight. It would be interesting to have three people, who claim to have the power to see a person’s angels, write down their descriptions and then compare them. I have no doubt they would describe three different entities!

Why? Because in their natural form angels are spirit beings, and our physical eyes cannot see the spirit. It also does not make sense that one’s angel (or three angels, as some claim we all have) would always be standing right behind their charge. In the Bible we learn that angels can move with tremendous speed, so guardian angels could keep their watch even if they were 50 or 100 feet above their charge.

Angels do have the ability to assume temporarily a shape that humans can see when there is a reason for them to do so. Most often in the Bible and in life today, when angels are seen they appear as people, looking no different than other persons. Remember Abraham’s visitors in Genesis 18? Hebrews 13:2 also states, "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." The passage suggests that at any time it is possible that we may have encountered angels without our being conscious of their supernatural nature. Being inconspicuous is often a part of the angel’s ministry.

Most often, as angels do their work, they remain unseen. I am certain that when we get to heaven we will be amazed at how often angels were present and active in our lives though we were not aware of their activity.

Of course, there are exceptions. In biblical times and in life today, sometimes the angels appear in awesome splendor. They may appear as warrior angels, tremendously tall and powerful, or as beautiful beings with or without wings. In Psalm 104:4 angels are described as a flaming fire. Many have told us that they have seen an angel appear as light. At times the light appears as a faint glow that grows until the room is filled with brilliance. At other times it is an unseen figure bathed in light. Some have been only able to describe what an angel was wearing because the face was bathed in a such a bright light that it could not be seen. For some observers, the light is pure and white, brighter than any whiteness they have ever seen; others describe a light of different colors.

Are angels male or female?

This is the question children ask most often. Many of the pictures we see of angels, especially those on Christmas cards, are of a woman with long blond hair, dressed in a flowing white robe and with graceful wings.

But are angels mostly women? No! They are neither men nor women. They do not have a gender as we know it. They do not marry or have children (Matthew 22:28-30); they are sexless beings, at least in the normal sense of the word. It is possible that celestial beings have a gender in a way unknown to us. C.S. Lewis speculated about this in his fictional space trilogy, Perelandra.

What we do know is that angels are not masculine or feminine in the way we use those terms. When I sit on the floor surrounded by five-year-old children who ask that question in Sunday School, I simply answer, "Angels are not boys or girls. They are different than people. Different and wonderful."

Don’t all angels in the Bible have masculine names?

Whenever I am leading a seminar on angels and this question is raised, I ask: "What are the names of angels in the Bible?"

The answers come quickly: "Gabriel and Michael."

"That’s right," I answer.

"Are there others?" For a long moment, there is usually silence before someone calls out the name of Lucifer, the fallen angel. These three are the only angels named in the Bible. The Apocrypha adds Raphael, and Uriel is also mentioned in Jewish, Kabbalistic, and some Christian traditions. The Kabbalah includes many other angel names, most ending in -el, from the Hebrew root indicating "God." These names are all masculine.

I can picture the angels chuckling about our speculation over their names. Since there are millions and millions of angels and we only know the names of a few, we certainly cannot draw any conclusion about the gender of angels based on their names. We are limited to a human vocabulary. It is quite possible that countless angels have wonderful names we have never heard on earth, names that are truly angelic but neither masculine nor feminine.