The choices for today were:
1. Write down the times you have been in love in your lifetime. What were the lessons of the love? Notice if you’ve had a love that helped you to develop yourself. What was developed and how did the relationship help? You may want to explore the opposite and write about how love relationships have taken your away from yourself. What were the signals that your self was being lost? Was there room in the relationship to do things differently? What are the lessons here?
2. Write to a young person in your life and tell him or her what is the most important thing to remember about love. You can keep the letter in your journal or ask the youngster if they would like to see it.
3. Write on your ambivalence about love and how that affects your love life. Now write about a miracle in you.
4. Write about the ways in which you love yourself.
well as I have spent a good part of today in my head thinking about love and myself and what I am doing and not doing for myself out of love I guess I know where I am heading here. I think the most amazing gift of love that I have given myself recently was making the decision that I would no longer allow anyone, including myself, to abuse me. I had an epiphany that others could only abuse me because I was allowing them to and they were only treating me as well or unwell as I was treating myself. The worse I treated myself, the more I allowed others to abuse me. Then there was this day that someone pushed the envelope and abused me in a way that was just not ok. I remember that day as if it were yesterday. It was the day I stood up and questioned my abuser and they came at me with everything but the kitchen sink. Issues I thought had been resolved years ago, got pulled back out of the grave and used to attack me and I was in such a state of shock that I could not move. The next day I was reading Don Miguel Ruiz’s prayer book and he talked about how others can only abuse us to the level we are willing to abuse ourselves. I had to own that I had allowed this person to abuse me. I had allowed others to mistreat me. I had allowed it because I was doing the same to myself. So I left. I left that relationship and I took the words the Creator had given me – Release, Cleanse, and Prepare and put myself in a spiritual sabbatical. I released everything that was not essential to my existence and cleansed myself. I released relationships that were not affirming and loving. I cleansed myself of the denial, and the lies I had been telling myself. I stopped trying to blame others for what I had allowed to happen in my life and begin taking ownership for my stuff and pressing through my pain. I began cleansing myself of my hurts and began healing my wounds. I began confronting my fears and replacing them love. I wish I could say I was done with this healing, but I know it is an ongoing process. But each day, I love myself more and am more focused on feeding the love in me and not the parts of my personality that are about fear. I have surrounded myself with people and relationships that are about supporting me and loving me in my journey unconditionally.
In the process of doing this, I began to prepare myself to live the life I was created to live. I have also felt passionate about my teaching, but this semester is so different. I am not sure I can explain it, but I can feel it. I felt it last night after I left my classroom and felt the energy of my students and heard them diving into the concepts before we had even started. But it is not just my teaching. I have found this passion for journeying with others who are seeking to evolve spiritually. There is this feeling and blessing I am left with every time I step out of a group or an individual session with someone. And when I have the gift of witnessing someone take a step forward; no matter how significant it may appear to others, it astounds me. It makes me wonder if this is how the Creator felt as the world was being envisioned. It makes me wonder, if this is how the Creator felt when chaos was becoming love.
Then I get to come to my journal – and yes, there are times that I just do not feel as if it is the time that I am supposed to write. But then I come ands start and the words just take over and my heart opens up and I feel myself breathing easier and everything feels as if it is opening up inside and then I just want to curl up somewhere afterwards because I need to reflect on this amazing spiritual experience I have just had and I know that all of this is possible because I have been working so hard this last couple of years to love myself unconditionally. I have released all the expectations I have had of myself other then to just be the best me that I can be at any moment in time. The extent to which I have been able to silence the inner judge and the inner victim is my gift of love to me. Sometimes they try to speak up, but I know make them a commercial and as a friend of mine said recently, when they come in, the mute button is pressed. So grateful for those mute buttons. And if I can’t find the mute button, I give myself the gift of pausing. I breathe love in and out and change the environment and the energy in my being. Love conquers everything in my life. Love conquers fear. Love conquers doubt. Love begets love begets love begets love. So how do I love myself, hmm, I just love. I be what I was I created to be – love. I was created by love in the image of love to be love and to share that love with all of humanity. And because I want this to be a more loving world, I have to be a more loving person. So I love myself so I can be more loving. I want to change the world, so I am starting with myself. Yeah – change the world, start at home. Thanks HGTV. Be the change you want to see in the world, thanks Ghandi.