How to Love Yourself?

March 23, 2018 2 Comments

This has been a tough one to work with this month.

Velvetleaf has been whispering to me that it really doesn’t matter how much personal work, or “self care” you do, or don’t do. What you do for a living, or how you measure up in our society’s narrow definition of a successful life.

She says, “Lisa, the only thing that matters is that you be yourself.  And who you are is simply Divine love made manifest in human form. Nothing more, nothing less. You are here to be love, to receive love and to give love. To be yourself. That is all.”

And that is super easy, right? 😜 Easy to understand, to process, to execute...piece of cake!

Velvetleaf’s gloriously soft, heart-shaped leaves, her heart shaped seeds, and her magnificent seed pods shaped like beautiful crowns, all radiate a message of pure love through and through.

“You are love itself,” she says. “As am I. As are we all.”

Humans are divine spiritual beings, embodied. We are love incarnate. We are powerful creative beings able to shape the world around us and our experience of physical reality with the power of our thoughts.

We are all sovereign beings with full reign and power over how we experience our lives.

Except that for the most part we have forgotten this truth. Plant beings have not...but hey, they’ve been around a lot longer right?

And as we deal with the day to day realities of our physical existence. We process information with our minds through the lens of our unique and often painful stories and we have difficulty connecting with our hearts and the truth of who we are. But it seems to me we actually need to experience all that we are not in order for us to understand all that we are.

And so we have cut ourselves off from divine love that flows through us, and from our access to it, even though it is our birthright. Our sole purpose. It is who we are and yet that desire to tap into divine love, to accept it, to receive it, is so buried, we do not believe we are worthy of it, much less that we embody it. Or even worse, that the pure love that we are is something that we can only experience after the death of our physical bodies….if we are “good”.

But I can feel it. When I tune in and turn off my human suffering and victim meter. A deep knowing in the depth of my heart. We are each unique, teeny tiny, perfect manifestations of pure love energy that make up our inconceivably vast universe.

Our very essence is pure light, pure love, divine consciousness. This concept seems so egotistical and ridiculous that we make up rules and regulations and stories and bury this truth so deep it takes lifetimes to uncover. But our hearts have never forgotten.

To love yourself is to love all that is.

To love yourself is to love ALL facets of our dualistic selves—light and dark, “good” and “bad”, masculine and feminine and so on. All facets which can’t exist at all independently. We can’t know one without the other. We can’t know pain without the joy. You know all this...😁

The beautiful plants and flowers around me never complain that they are imperfect or somehow incomplete...ever. My dog merrily lives out his (albeit pampered) canine existence with joy, and always in the present moment.

The plants, animals, every other form of life, in fact, on this planet are such perfect teachers for helping us understand and integrate and express the truth of who we are. For showing us how to truly live, and love. They are all quite sure of the perfection of their physical expression, however it manifests, and they have no choice but to fulfill and live out their incredible lives. We have a choice however. We have free will.

We are born perfect, and whole, and somehow along the way we forget that. We believe somehow that we are broken or unworthy, sinful creatures needing to be fixed or achieve some level of existential competency before we are allowed to receive the love and abundance that is our birthright. Heaven is definitely not on Earth.

And so each of us is walking our unique path towards the realization that actually we are perfect, whole and worthy and divine beings already. No need to work hard, or even prove it, we just need to remember it. And then be it. Live it.

There is so much talk about self-care these days. But self-care is not self love. It is a component for sure, but self love is so much more than a spiritual retreat or exercise routine or avocado toast or whatever.

I believe self love has more to do with ACCEPTANCE of the truth of who you are, HUMILITY, and also UNDERSTANDING of the human condition with its current limitations as they play out in the world around us.

LOVING YOURSELF is forgiveness of yourself when you don’t feel you measure up in some way.

LOVING YOURSELF is recognizing the perfection of the physical vessel that carries the seed of Divine love that is your soul.

LOVING YOURSELF is allowing yourself to be loved.

LOVING YOURSELF is releasing the self-judgement, the anger and self-loathing that rots our bodies and minds.

LOVING YOURSELF is feeling all the feels with self-compassion and patience.

LOVING YOURSELF is knowing how powerful you truly are to choose how you want to live your life no matter what circumstances, stories or dramas are playing out through the lens of your personal reality TV show.

LOVING YOURSELF is finding flexibility when life doesn’t go the way you want.

LOVING YOURSELF is knowing that external circumstances are all beyond your control anyway.

LOVING YOURSELF is surrendering to the fact that we will never have all the answers.

LOVING YOURSELF is seeing your own divinity and recognizing the divinity in all beings.

LOVING YOURSELF is knowing that you are exactly where you are meant to be.

LOVING YOURSELF is your birthright.

This is big stuff. Hard stuff, but it is also really very simple stuff. The beauty is that the moment you shine your light of love on all the darkness that you think you are or that you are feeling, the darkness dissipates. This is true for us all. This is the exquisite beauty of being human. We have nothing to fear and it will all work out exactly as it is meant to.

And Velvetleaf assures me WE HAVE EVERYTHING WE NEED to create Heaven here on Earth.

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