Tag Archive for: love

How to Love Yourself

How to Love Yourself

Reading Time: 3 minutes

One day when I was leading a group, someone shared that their goal was to learn to love themselves, but felt it was an impossible task. Others agreed with this statement. Most of them were either bombarded with an endless barrage of negative self-talk, or they felt strong guilt from some past actions. I offered that the easiest way to love yourself is to really know your yourself…to realize that you aren’t who you think you are. The ‘you’ that you have a hard time loving isn’t really ‘you’. You are not your programming and conditioning. Negative thoughts about self come from somewhere, they all have a beginning point in an event or circumstance – you’re not born with these thoughts, unless there’s a past life influence, but even then they began at some point in that past life or the one before, etc. Sometimes the programming can be subtly and unconsciously passed down through the generations, with parents influencing their children based on how they were raised, how love or anger was communicated or not communicated.

Just like you can open the hood of a car to explore how it’s wired and how it works, you can engage in deep self-reflection to see how your programming and conditioning began. An effective way to do this exploration is to go within to access a higher state of awareness. For example, if you have a strong feeling of guilt because of a past action, you could imagine floating above that scene and investigate what was going through your mind at the time. Perhaps you did something regretful because at the time you thought you were gaining or getting something from it, given the mindset that you had of yourself and the world at that time. The only purpose of guilt is to point to what you could do differently next time, and in that moment of awareness you are doing precisely what your highest purpose in life is…to learn, grow, evolve and awaken. The primary way humans learn is by making mistakes. So from the viewpoint of your soul, mistakes are only seen as an opportunity to grow, and in that moment of seeing, your soul is happy. The highest part of you is timeless and guiltless; it doesn’t care how long it takes to get a lesson. Just as you can tinker with a machine to make it run more smoothly, we can be aware of the amazing impact we would have on ourselves and the world if we released the negative thought programs that govern our life and replace them with clarity, confidence, creative potential and freedom – all qualities of our truest self. We’re not here to berate ourselves, or remain stuck and recoiled in fear and guilt, living from a false sense of self. We’re here to challenge ourselves to shine and thrive, to learn to live from our potential, and to experience that the joy of doing so feels better, freer and “more real”.

You are the infinite being that can be aware of a passing mood or thought, and investigate where beliefs originated. There’s a part of you that can be aware of your thoughts. Who or what is this ‘I’ that can say ‘I’ feel happy, and then can notice ‘I’ feel sad 10 minutes later? Thoughts, moods and beliefs can come and go, but the more permanent ‘real’ you is the constant, unchanging awareness, forever anchored in the here and now, that can notice the mind’s ever-changing moods and thought patterns, like watching sticks or debris washing down a stream. The awakened sage, Eckhart Tolle, says the next step in human evolution is to become aware of our thoughts, thus creating a gulf between ‘us’ and our thought patterns. Therein lies the difference between suffering and liberation. It depends on where we place our identity…the ever-changing mind or the mysterious, expansive, boundless awareness that can witness it.

 

What We Are

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I often ask my clients toward the end of a session: “Is there anything in the universe that can harm you? The answer is always an immediate, definite and emphatic response, “no!” That’s a strange answer to anyone. The world is full of things that can harm us. But in that moment, they are responding from a timeless aspect of themselves that lacks nothing and has no fears, a soul dimension.

We are multi-dimensional beings. Of course we are separate individuals, who can deny that? But that’s only one relative level of truth. Another part of us is the energy, light and consciousness that animates the body. You could call that a “more real” aspect of ourselves because it’s eternal and doesn’t rot like the body. You can’t harm a soul with a knife because it’s pure energy. Probably the best evidence that we are soul beings using a body is in the fast growing cases of children remembering accurate past life information, or subjects who have done a past life regression and later verify the details obtained from it. Certain cases are solid.

But even the fact that we are different souls using a body is a relative level of truth. A ‘higher’ truth is that all souls come from the same one creator energy source, so there is oneness under the surface. We are like unique, individual waves that forgot we are also the ocean. But this forgetfulness is part of the design, and seeing through it is to awaken from any suffering that is inherent to the dream. Thich Nhat Hanh says,“We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.”

This highest dimension of ourselves can be glimpsed at any moment. In fact, it’s only available here and now. When you are fully present with a flower, a latte, a person, the wind, a cat or the smell of dead leaves, in that moment you are not in the world of the mind which subtly pulls you into the future or past. Instead, you become pure presence and awareness…effortless and changeless…limitless and indefinable.

Though life experiences come and go, there is something that is unchanging – that which can be aware of any passing thoughts, moods or experiences. It’s that same sense of “me” that exists at age 5, 25, or 85. This awareness even transcends the body according to cases of near death experiences.

So who are we? It depends on which dimension of ourselves we choose to identify with. Identifying with our higher dimensions brings a natural by-product of more compassion, empathy and love. Judgment falls away because we don’t identify others with their opinions, moods or actions, but see these as a product of their ongoing programming and conditioning. At a higher level, they are what we are — changeless awareness that transcends the stories of who we are.