If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a million times. You have to love yourself first!
Yeah what? I had absolutely no idea what people were talking about. I was a giver, and I had learned to give and give, and just maybe someday someone would love me in return.
Kindness towards self? Caring and nurturing towards self? Giving to self?
These are the things I needed to learn to understand love. And more.
My most profound learning experience was when the one person in the world that I had tried to love deeply, to whom I had dedicated 2 decades of my life, had worked so hard to get it right, had stood beside, walked beside, supported and fought for, stood there in front of me and regurgitated their perspective of my efforts. How pitifully wrong I had been, how much damage I had done them, how hurt and rejected they had felt, how I had ruined their life.
THIS was a defining moment.
It was at that moment that I discovered great compassion for myself. For all my mistakes, wrong turns, misplaced judgments, poor decisions, bad choices, misaligned beliefs, the hurt I caused others, never intended, and most of all for just being me in a world where we allow our perceptions to define us. At that moment I came to realise what it means to be human.
Only then was I able to fully understand love. And only then did I realise the qualities of unconditional love – that deep, heart-felt caring, with empathy grounded in lived experience, immersed in a chalice of compassion, first for self, then for others.
Before self-love
Nobody valued me. My parents didn’t value me, my family didn’t value me, my bosses didn’t value my work. My colleagues didn’t value my input and my friends didn’t value my friendship.
On closer examination I discovered that I was overly critical and very protective of myself. A heart that had been broken too many times was locked away inside a …wait for it… a coffin. Can you believe that? Yes! With every heartbreak it was my practice to view that as “another nail in the coffin.
Armouring our hearts is our response to heartbreak when our heartbreak is just too painful to bear. It's not uncommon do it by diminishing our immune system or inhibiting our breathing.
With and without self-love
I want to make this point. Your body is truly an awesome instrument of support and information. And it responds in direct accord with your intentions.
The energies of our heart chakra help us to love ourselves.
We can allow these energies to express our love openly and fully, or, we can lock them away and become protective, possessive and altogether cranky by being over-critical, feeling guilty and becoming a bit of a martyr – poor me!
When we separate ourselves from self-love, our body responds accordingly and so it is not uncommon to develop physical conditions. These are generally related to any of the organs and glands in the vicinity.
How your body responds
Our immune system is about protecting us. That’s its job and that’s its consciousness.
When we shut down our heart energies, and become overly protective of ourselves, we are saying to our body that we are unable to process these emotions. As our emotions are an integral aspect of our life, we are saying that we are unable to live fully.
One way that our immune system may respond is to step right up in its effort to support us. It may become overly protective to the point of where it may indiscriminately protect us from ourselves, such as might happen with autoimmune diseases and some immune system cancers.
Our immune system is mirroring our behaviour, doing just as we are, indiscriminately protecting ourselves by guarding our hearts from threats, real or imagined.
Are you aware that our thymus gland, a very important immune system gland situated in our mid-chest, is shrivelled and diminished in most people. So much so that the scientific community still regard this as "normal". Normal it may be, but natural it is not. In my opinion it is more a reflection of the heart armouring that is so common in our society, than a natural state of health. There's no denying that our immune systems, as a population, are seriously compromised.
Other possibilities
For me, my body reacted by creating the condition of asthma.
Our heart chakra anchors our life force - our breathing. Anything that interferes with our breathing is another way to shut out our emotions and shut out our life - smoking, hyperventilating, lung conditions like bronchitis, pneumonia.
Anytime anything threatened me, my lungs would seize up and the bronchi would shut down, and SHUT LIFE OUT!
Over time I discovered that any change at all would send me into mild anxiety and my lungs would go BAM! Shut down! “NOPE WE AREN’T GOING THERE. You want to keep your life out and we are making sure we help you as best we can!” Oh, we have an interesting relationship now that I have changed my mind!
These are just a couple of examples of how disruptions to the natural consciousness of our body’s energies eventually play out as physical conditions.
The heart chakra’s natural consciousness is of self-love and compassion, balance and giving.
You too can find love
I’ve conquered the self-love dilemma. I’ve done that through being my own best friend, loving myself completely, being self-ish. YOU CAN TOO!
I’ve questioned and released every belief that I’ve had about doing for others, about being selfish, about putting others first – all considered great virtues in our Western society. In the right context these virtues serve us well, but not until we have first turned them towards ourselves and healed our own broken heart.
Self-love in business
You’ll find that self-love spills over into all areas of your life, including your business. You will become the CREATOR of your business, knowing that every decision and choice is a new learning and creative experience. You’ll understand that there are people who want your love and others for whom your love is not a good match.
Feeling good is the fast track to self-love
You can achieve this by making sure every single decision you make is one that feels good to you.
I have a lovely opt-in just for you called "Feel Good Now". A mini-series of 3 activities that will put self-love up front in your mind, making sure that self-care and self-love are a priority. It’s about practising feeling good until your body has accepted the new vibration and your nervous system formed new pathways. If you practice for 21 days it will change your life.
Do it! It’s simple but powerful.
If you need some help, in my work I listen to and connect you to the story behind your difficulty with self-love. The events, situations, the time and dates and circumstances, the related emotions, perceptions and beliefs that conspired to encourage you to shut down your heart energies and separate you from self-love. I intuitively hear with practised, structured intuition, what your innate wisdom has to say, which enables heartbreak to be released surprisingly quickly. Contact me if you would like to talk about how I work and to see if we are a good match.
In the meantime, FEEL GOOD!
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