Valentine's Day is here, so love is on my mind, even more so than usual! What love meant to me in the past, what it meant last year and what it means to me now. Thankfully, I'm learning more about love each and every day. There is one thing I know: you can't love others more deeply than you love yourself. In order to radiate love out into the universe, we have to possess it for ourselves.
We were born with a great capacity for love. A beautiful, infinite capacity to see ourselves AND others for who they are, to acknowledge their existence with acceptance and openness. Then, the world trains it out of us. We were born able to love our bodies, our existence, our mind, our spirit, but the world gives us conditions, tells us we have to decide: what is good and worthy of love versus what is bad and worthy of shame. We take those conditions and determine what parts of ourselves deserve love.
But the good news is that we still have that deep capacity within us - the ability to see past the "buckets" of good versus bad and see our full selves. It's a daily process of choosing love for yourself, but here are some steps to give it a shot:
Permission: When we give ourselves permission to see our full selves, the ability to feel our entire existence, we are telling ourselves "it's okay." Let yourself rest in a safe space and know you are enough. Tell yourself you deserve this time and energy.
Acknowledge: Note your feelings, without judgement. Label emotions and sensations you feel in your body; "I feel a tightness in my chest, I feel an uneasiness in my stomach, I feel distraught." If thoughts come up to try and explain the emotions, just label it as "thought" and gently move back to feeling.
Answer: Send out a sense of gratitude to the sensations and emotions. Tell yourself you are worthy of love.
When we give ourselves this permission, acknowledge our whole selves and answer our emotions with love...we can then give that same level of deep love to others. And that, my friends, is the magic sauce.
Suggested reading; Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz
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