Is there a difference between the feeling of love and the actions of love? Yes!

The Feeling of Love

When you feel love, you have a wonderful warm full feeling in your heart. It is the feeling that enters your heart when you open your heart.

The feeling of love is not a feeling that you generate from within your own physical body. It is a feeling that you invite into your heart through your intention. When your intention is to learn about loving yourself and others, your heart opens and you feel the fullness of love in your heart.

Love is God, Spirit, the energy that we live in and that we are in our essence. We live within love and love lives within us, but we cannot feel the love unless our heart is open to it.

John 4:24
"God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."

1 John 4:8
He who does not love does not know God, for God is love."

1 John 4:16
"God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.

When your intention is to protect against your pain with some form of controlling behavior - controlling your feelings, or attempting to control others - your heart closes and you cannot feel the feeling of love. Your intention to protect against pain, or to learn about loving determines whether or not you feel the feeling of love.

The feeling of love is a great gift of spirit, which we invite into our hearts whenever we open to learning about loving.

The Actions of Love

The actions of love come from the feeling of love. When we are open to learning and are loving ourselves, our heart becomes so filled with love that it overflows and we want to share it with others through our actions of love.

It is the feeling of love that generates actions of love.

Can we act loving without feeling loving? Yes. And sometimes acting loving can open our heart and we then feel loving, but this is not always the case. It depends on your intent.

If your intent in acting loving is to get something from someone - to get love, approval, attention, sex, money and so on, then your action is not loving. For example, getting your partner flowers or making a special meal for him or her might seem like loving actions. But if your intent in doing something special for your partner is to get something you want, such as attention, sex, or approval, then the action is manipulative rather than loving. Because most of us are sensitive to energy, we can feel the difference between an action coming from love with no strings attached, and an action intended to control getting what you want.

When you believe that the love you need has to come from a person rather than from spirit, then you might find yourself constantly trying to get love with your controlling behavior.

Many people act loving without feeling loving, such as doing charity work because you are trying to appear to be a good person. When your intention is to appear to be a good and loving person, the act itself is empty of the energy of love. These "loving acts" do not lead to feeling loving, since their intent is to get something rather than give something.

However, when you act loving, even when you don't feel loving, such as getting up at night with a crying baby, the loving action can lead to a feeling of love. When the intent of the action is to give with no agenda, the action itself can open your heart to love.

We have the free will to choose our intent each and every moment. Our intent to love or control determines how we feel and how we live our lives, and is the most powerful choice we have.

Heal your relationship with Dr. Margaret’s 30-Day online video relationship course: Wildly, Deeply, Joyously in Love.

Image by S. Hermann & F. Richter from Pixabay