How to Live a Life of Love
Insights from The Telepathy Tapes on consciousness and unconditional love
In recognition of the inextricable link between consciousness and the phenomenon, I’ll be incorporating more articles focused on understanding and expanding consciousness and the multidimensional nature of reality.
“Make your whole life about love.”
That was the advice a non-verbal autistic boy, John Paul, shared with humanity in the popular podcast, The Telepathy Tapes. With a direct line to universal truth, these inspiring young adults trapped in unruly bodies are beacons of what becomes possible when we enter the realms of higher consciousness.
John Paul’s message struck me as a profoundly succinct summary of the purpose of our human lives. Immersed in the illusion of separation, we are always seeking to rediscover who we really are and what we are a part of.
The Telepathy Tapes kids want us to know that all roads lead back to love.
But what does it look like to make your whole life about love?
How do we put that into practice in our daily lives?
Starting with Self
Making life about love starts with loving yourself. We are naturally more loving toward others when we can bring genuine compassion borne of our own struggles and insights to how we view their lives. Without loving ourselves deeply and authentically, our love for others can become distorted by our own unmet needs and hampered by our own emotional triggers.
In coaching it is taught that you can’t guide someone beyond where you have gone yourself. The same is true here—you can’t truly love someone more than you love yourself. Compassion, acceptance, respect, and understanding must be experienced and embodied firsthand through our own inner exploration before we can really be at peace with another’s path. Only when we are truly happy with ourselves will we genuinely want the highest good for others.
Below are practices for loving ourselves, followed by practices for unconditionally loving others.
Claiming our Infinite Worth
In practicing self-love, we must first recognize that worthiness isn’t something to be earned—it’s our natural state. From the higher perspective, being an “unworthy person” becomes an oxymoron, like an ugly flower or free slave. You cannot exist and unworthy at the same time. Any pain around unworthiness arises from believing something about ourselves that isn’t actually true.
When we look outside ourselves for love, validation, and esteem, we are looking for someone else to find us worthy because we are doubting ourselves. This sense of unworthiness changes how we perceive ourselves and limits us. But just because someone else doesn’t see our beauty or appreciate our innate worthiness doesn’t mean there is anything lacking in us. The limited thinking of another does not create a deficiency in us.
Affirmation: I am worthy without question or qualification
From Self-Care to Self-Liberation
Rather than seeing self-care as selfish, we can recognize it as an essential practice that nourishes our energy and allows us to show up fully for others. Self-care might look like saying no to obligations that drain us, creating quiet time for reflection and renewal, prioritizing activities that bring us joy, or setting healthy boundaries in relationships. It means listening to our inner wisdom about what we need in the moment, and making choices accordingly, even when those choices disappoint people.
Just as we’re instructed to put on our own oxygen mask before assisting others on an airplane, we are most able to be of service when we are grounded in our own wellbeing. Rather than showing up depleted, resentful, or operating from obligation, we bring the authentic presence that comes from being well-cared for and at peace with ourselves. Through this, we give others permission to honor their own needs and we create relationships based on true choice rather than duty or guilt.
Affirmation: Self-care allows me to shine
Creating and Sharing Joy
When we are in our joy we radiate our love to the world. We become like a lighthouse on a bluff, gently but brightly illuminating the horizon. We’re not chasing other people down with our wisdom, like a flashlight in the face, but embodying the light so fully that people are naturally drawn closer.
The more we open our heart, the more we can set the tone of any interaction or shift the energy of any situation. An open heart acts as an invitation for others to come into coherence and grow that energetic field. In the presence of that light, any darkness will dissolve or flee.
Affirmation: I choose joy
Seeing the Divine in Everyone
There are the obvious and easy things that most of us associate with being a decent person, like speaking and acting with kindness, treating people with respect, and offering support when needed. This tends to come naturally when we feel an affinity for someone.
But how do we love when things get messy and complicated? When we feel triggered and bothered by another person? When we are worried about the path another is on?
These are the situations that call us to consciousness and invite us into mastery. These are the opportunities to fully step into unconditional love.
Below are practices for loving others.
Allow Others Their Journey
When I feel myself wanting to judge someone’s choices, beliefs, or behaviors, I start by reminding myself of this: their journey is divinely guided for their evolution.
The path of love requires tremendous trust in the infinite intelligence guiding each person’s life. The same force that orchestrates my growth and knows exactly what experiences will catalyze my realization is at work in others’ lives. Just as no one knows my soul’s unique path, I don’t know theirs, nor am I responsible for it. To assume otherwise is to claim an authority in their life that none of us actually have. This trust allows us to step back from the impulse to intervene, even when we think we see an easier path.
We let them be the expert and authority on their life.
Like the Prime Directive in Star Trek, non-interference allows space for people to come into their own realizations, even when that comes with significant discomfort. Sometimes love is allowing people to struggle so that we don’t rob them of their opportunity to grow and the satisfaction of solving their own problems. Transformational learning theory is clear on this—people learn and change through direct experience, often referred to as “disorienting dilemmas,” not the advice or protection of other people.
We can hold space for their healing and provide support when requested, such as by practicing radical presence and offering them our complete attention. We can create a safe space for people to share honestly and listen without judgment or unsolicited advice. We can give people what they often most want, which is just to be heard from a place of empathy and compassion. We can honor where they are on their path.
Affirmation: This person is divinely guided by their higher self
Release Others from Expectation and Obligation
Often what gets in the way of love are the expectations and obligations we project onto other people. The truth is that no one is required to be what we want them to be or to show up for us the way we insist. No one is responsible for how we feel or what meaning we give to an event.
Our emotions are for us.
They are designed to be signals to where we are out of alignment, alerting us to the need for a new choice. Other people usually play a role in co-creating circumstances that bring our unresolved issues to our awareness. That doesn’t make them perpetrators—it makes them partners in our growth.
This is not an argument for letting people walk all over us or having no standards for relationship. We can love unconditionally, accepting people for who they are and where they are on their path, while honoring conditions for what we want in a relationship and voicing where those conditions aren’t being met. The healthiest relationships are between people who are honest and transparent about what nourishes and depletes them and who take responsibility for any unfair and/or unspoken demands placed on the other person.
Affirmation: My emotional wellbeing is my responsibility
Steer Clear of Others’ Drama and Illusions
There is a delicate dance between allowing someone their personal journey and enabling what is holding them back. For example, where a friend is invested in (what we see as) limiting beliefs or self-defeating behaviors, love can mean refusing to affirm those beliefs or behaviors, which is essentially insisting on seeing them in their full divinity. No matter how someone sees themselves or a situation, we can hold a higher perspective and know that they are deep and wise and they’ll arrive there eventually if it is their path to do so.
Similarly, truly benefitting someone may also require refusing to entangle with their drama or feed their illusions. This involves being mindful of the energy we are lending to a situation and what energies we are amplifying. Sometimes an appropriate question is, “How is it serving you to engage with this?” or just acknowledging, “This must be really difficult for you.” Knowing when to say something and when to step back and be silent takes incredible discernment, which is often only learned through trial and error.
Sometimes love demands firm boundaries. This might mean ending a relationship when staying in contact is doing more harm than good. While this may result in temporary pain, it creates space for genuine insight and transformation rather than enabling harmful patterns or getting trapped in a toxic and sometimes addictive loop of heightened emotional triggers. Love respects both parties enough to allow natural consequences and growth processes to unfold.
Affirmation: I will hold a higher perspective
Bring More Heart
Being human can be really hard. We live through heartbreak, longing, anxiety, stress, and fear. We cope with the confusion and challenges of navigating the unknown. We all have our baggage. Even when we are viewing a situation from a more expanded perspective or we simply can’t relate, it is important to remember and acknowledge that the experience the other person is having is very real and true to them, including all of the emotions they are feeling.
For example, think of a teenager’s first break-up. As the adult, because you have experienced that yourself, probably many times, you know that life goes on and there will be many more opportunities for connection. But to the teen, it really may feel like the end of the world. We can hold both the grander perspective and empathy for how difficult that moment is to the person living it.
Compassion is a universal language because it connects us not just to our common human experience but to the flow of love that powers existence. It is the literal and metaphorical hug that strengthens bonds and offers comfort and support.
Affirmation: Compassion is a human kindness
Love as a Life Practice
When we make our whole life about love, we become love itself. Every act is an act of love. Every word is the language of love. Every breath, thought, and feeling adds to the love in the world.
This is the vision of the children of The Telepathy Tapes. It is also what makes telepathy possible. As one child said, you cannot have this gift if you lie. What this really means is that our abilities expand as we do. These gifts open up as we develop the capacity to wield them responsibly and not be overwhelmed by them.
This brings us back to consciousness. Maybe our embodiment of unconditional love is the true measure of consciousness. How close are we to that God frequency? What are we willing to see as possible? Who do we really think we are?
It sounds trite to say that love is the answer, but isn’t it?
Carolyn Brouillard is Managing Partner of ExoFuturesConsulting, which works with forward-thinking organizations ready to explore the profound implications of contact with NHI. She is also a transformational coach, helping change-seekers create a life they love through transforming their thinking and claiming their power.
Thank you Carolyn, this is so good and inspiring. I too believe that embodied love is in process of transforming humanity. Your article moves past any trite cliches about love and packs tomes of concise and *practical* wisdom regarding what embodied love actually looks like.
There is one part that raises a practical question for me, about love sometimes looking like not affirming someone’s limited beliefs. I agree, but it has occurred to me that my labelling another’s thought as limiting is a personal judgement I make, based on how I perceive their world *could* be were they to release the limiting belief.
Isn’t that a kind of imposition of my will? I think it is, but also that it might be a necessary shining of light? So where do we draw the line of non-interference?
Haha great freakin article!!!!!