Loving yourself
I've been hearing from a lot of people to love myself. Its a huge message that comes often. But with all the talk of ego, building up, breaking down, and awareness I wonder which part to love. Who am I even. Am I the awareness, am I my body, thoughts, feelings, emotions? Am I the rock or the grass. Am I someone else that I see. Am I the spiritual vibration?
Is it wrong to love my body, love the way I look, love my talents and skills? Are those traps of the ego?
Where does love come from? What's the deepest source? I know its from within for sure, but why is it I feel it at and from the centre of my chest? The feeling can't even really be explained, but it feels "right", thats for sure. I guess anytime anything feels wrong, is because you are not feeling love.
Ive been effortlessly running in circles in the darkness, sadness, and depression, amplifying, further distorting it, self hating, destroying, giving up, holding on to just that but not enjoying it. At first I sit there to not be there, now it just flows.
I want clarity, love, enlightenment, peace, happiness, harmony, and fulfillment, and I feel like I "have" to start making choices towards those. It appears as if simply letting the darkness flow without opening the flood gates of light is bringing about no change.
I have this idea or belief that I will be in darkness, sadness, grief, and that all of a sudden I will be okay with it and I will enter a deep seated spiritual bliss. But it appears that being okay with it, for me, actually takes some effort. Some work.
My mom was telling me, that my brother and I were born opposites. I am extremely passive, and my brother is extremely aggressive. Perhaps it would benefit for me to actively bring in love. I guess I brought in darkness to deal with it, and it flows freely now (like I opened a flood gate). So what about the love? Maybe it just requires strength and assertiveness to bring it in, so then that too can flow freely.
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Authentic arising
Hi Cody, I'd say the key to love is authenticity.
It's about peeling away what's in the way of love. There is a natural unifying energy that connects through the heart when we remove all the barriers to it. Science uses the term "neg-entropy" - it's the natural organising energy of the universe.
It expresses through different characteristics. Some feel it in a very passive accepting way, others positive, passionate and forceful. In our course work, we sometimes do a demo of bending a six foot steel reinforcing bar - two people hold each 'hold' one end of the bar simply from the pressure of the throat pushing towards one another. Then they push until the bar bends in the middle.
It's awesome to watch. My experience is that it feels very powerful and passionate doing it, but it can only be done by feeling immense love for the other person pushing against you. It's this love that close the gap and bends the bar.
So personally, I find a natural yearning to inner clarity and harmony - a feeling of emptiness. But then out of that space, I find authentic expression arises. It can be passionate or gentle or any array in between. What I do observe is that it always works to remove blockages and catalyse even higher sense of harmony.
Do I give energy to that? In the beginning I did, yes. But that was an identity doing it - an identity wanting to be an expression of love.
At some point I noticed the identity, yet I accepted it was a good thing as long as I knew at some point I'd have to let go of even that.
There came a point where I knew I was efforting to be love. Then the experience of love dwindled. Paradoxically, at that point, when I let go of everything, I found love naturally arose from within.
Chris