Awake & Loving

This job called being human is multi-faceted and complex if we’re set on reaching our full potential. To live a life well-lived takes both awareness and compassion.  I like to say these are the two most important tools in your “chest.” And yes, I do believe both live in our heart centres.  It’s here that the mind quiets down, so it can stay awake and observe.  It’s here where our compassion can grow and be expressed.

Yet we can’t put these tools to work until we know that it’s our job to do so.  In other words, we can’t be passive about either. If we don’t cultivate mindfulness or pay attention, we check out and go unconscious. We run around so busy that it feels strange to slow down. If we don’t reach for love for ourselves, we default to everything and everyone else, especially when we’re out of balance.  Our self-love and expressions of it become few and far between because we reserve love for when we happen to bump into a situation or a person that makes loving easy. In this way, we’re stingy with our self-love.

Love isn’t a side dish. It’s the main course.

Building a loving — aka trusting and safe — place inside yourself is your job.  Cosmic 5D Astrologer, Christine Clemmer likes to say, “take a seat in your heart.” I think this sums it up well.  I like to imagine pulling up a chair at my own self-affirming feast.  Of course, we can see this as self-centric or selfish, but this is untrue. The fear of self-love is a distortion and a way that the outside world has tried to control us for a long time. The truth is that when we’re able to actively pursue our own self-love, the more love we generate and spread around.

Buddhist psychologist and author of Radical Acceptance, Tara Brach, is perhaps one of the most loving and compassionate spiritual teachers on the planet today. If you’re stuck in painful emotions and unable to stay present and loving, try her RAIN meditation here. I certainly have benefited from it.

If you’d like support expanding your self-love, get in touch.