Archive
Love and Self-Love
(Epilogue: I went back to the post office this morning and they did have my glasses, pretty much right where I had left them. My immediate reaction was delight and gratitude, even for this small event. And then I asked myself about the lesson: mindfulness, gratitude, and never sweat the small stuff!)
In my on-going exploration of this subject of Self-Love (why is it so important?) I wrote something worth sharing in my daily “Pages” the other day:
It all comes back to trust. This is always hugely important. And trust falls back on Love. Everything rests on Love. All of creation springs from Love! And where does this love spring from? How did this “energetic” get launched, and “who” launched it? Of course, this is the mystery, this is The Goddess, The Holy. And this is Their echo across the gulf of time to now. It is Self-Love that launched all of Creation. It is the reflexive “thing” that initiated everything. And ultimately this “Thing” is a vast and unfathomable emptiness. It is the Void, the Deep referred to in Genesis. It is over this Deep that the Voice of Love spoke it all into being. (Or did She sing it?) How? Does it really matter? Why? This is the bigger question. Clearly, for me, this is about Self knowledge. It comes back to the reflection, the echo, the mirror we are for the Love Energy that pre-exists the All! That which came first is this “Thing” of which I write.
We, our consciousness, our love are the reflection of that original Love. This is the Image of God we wear and act. This is the image we see in every face, in every creature, in every being, in all of creation, The Created.
To Rosemary’s Video Inspiration and Exploration this week, her call to Self-Love, we respond as a reflection of creation and the creative force of Love. There is no way around it! If we are a reflection of the Love Energy that created everything, then we are Love and our response must be Love; it is essential for us to be the mirrors in which The Holy see themselves. Without us They don’t exist! Without our Love They show us faces of more limited emotions!
When we love ourselves, we love. When we love we reflect the face of Goddess. When we reflect the face of Goddess we are lovable and are loved. Love is this energetic through which all echoes reverberate. It is the Ether carrying the songs of praise across the valleys. It is the Water of Life carrying the whales’ songs from wave to shining wave. It is the Earth carrying the deep ground vibrations, the songs of the rocks from peak to purple peak. All of this is Love, nothing more. There is no deep mystery here other than What started it all. And maybe this question doesn’t really matter either. If Love is All then the beginning is Love as well. Accept this and everything becomes clear and real.
So, the words of Jesus are true: God is Love; and Love is God. We are Love; we are God. Love is both inside and outside. It is the substance and the substrate. It is the container and the contained. It is the bridge across the gulf and the gulf. It is emptiness and everything. It is nothing and All. It was before the beginning, It is now, and It will be after the end.
As a creature of now it is my purpose to reflect this power of the Universe, this Love in all that I do and through my very beingness. If I am Love, God, this creative force, this very Life Consciousness, then I can only be and act out of Love. And this includes loving me.
Self-Love. Not a simple path. Practice Love; begin with self!
ROSEMARY’S EXPLORATION: “Gratitude and Loving Yourselff”
Here’s Rosemary’s commentary on her weekly video I posted yesterday:
In this season of Thanksgiving and holidays we focus on being grateful for the blessings in our lives and for the people who are sharing our journeys with us. But have you taken the time to move into gratitude for yourself?
What traits do you have that you can feel grateful for? What aspects of yourself do you need to learn to love? Gratitude for yourself in all your parts is the first step toward loving yourself.
Most of us find it very easy to be grateful for the friends we have in our lives. Some of us can be grateful for our families, or at least some family members. But what about YOU? We are so good at analyzing ourselves and finding fault when we would give someone else a lot more leeway. Have you ever felt self-critical? Do you catalogue your mistakes or the things you wish were different and focus your energy on these things? Do you find it easier to focus on what you don’t like about yourself rather than those aspects that you do like?
If you answered ‘yes’ you’re not alone. But consider that every single aspect of you is important to the WHO YOU ARE at this time in your life. Every bit of you is lovable, whether you believe that at the moment or not. WE asked you to come to Earth to be a part of the process of the unfolding of the Plan of the Universe and you agreed to join us. Thank you.
So if you are perfect right now, in this present moment, and your role is to learn lessons and to help everyone around you to learn their lessons, then every thing that you have done and every aspect of who you are contributes to all of the lessons being learned. Just as you are grateful for those around you, be grateful to yourself for being just what you agreed to be.
Everything that you see as a fault in yourself has some purpose, even if you don’t understand it at the moment. If you wish to change something about yourself, then change it. But do so from an energy of gratitude for the lessons that you have learned and from the space of not needing to be that way in the future. This is a much higher energy than to be in disgust or frustration with yourself!
Each of us is on a path of personal growth if we are living a conscious life. We are constantly moving forward by assessing our lives, changing that which we wish to change, lifting our awareness to higher perspectives and moving on to the next level of being. We are learning lessons all the time. Whatever we see in ourselves is serving a purpose or has served a purpose on our journey. Being in gratitude for ourselves is the starting place for loving ourselves.
Accept yourself and every moment of your life up until this point. Every backward glance over your timeline can carry with it an appreciation for all that you have learned. Some lessons came clearly and easily and others were difficult or tedious to learn. You might still be in the midst of some tough lessons or you might be in a more peaceful moment in your life. And every single lesson has brought you a step further on the path of personal growth. Every aspect of your person has been a loving contributor to every lesson. Be grateful. And love every aspect of yourself.
Loving yourself is not just an emotional thing. It is an important step along your personal journey. I declare today ‘Love Your Wonderful Self Day’! I love you just as you are. Now take that to the mirror and say, ‘I love you!’ to the reflection you see there. And express your gratitude for at least 1 part of you. Smile. Congratulations!
PS: Did you know you can get these video messages and my commentary directly by email every Friday? When you subscribe I also include a GIFT as a thank you for joining my list: a professionally recorded 7-minute audio recording to help you relax and de-stress. Subscribe Here
Inspiration from The Divine Feminine: “Love Yourself”
This week’s video urges us to love ourselves and to demonstrate this love by holding healthy boundaries and by trusting our intuition:
PS: If you would like to hear more from The Divine Feminine Rosemary offers a FREE short call every Monday evening, 8:30 pm Eastern time. She channels a message about the energies for the week and offers other information to guide us toward living a more conscious life. Register to receive the call-in number!
Men and Emotional Health – Grief
In recent posts I’ve been writing about emotional health and balance. And just yesterday I included some thoughts about balancing yin and yang energies as we go inside to seek guidance, to switch on our internal GPS and determine if any course corrections are needed. In these turbulent times, the waning days of 2012, I’m finding the need to go inside frequently to establish balance and take a close look at my route forward!
And part of what is going on for me, what I’m working on is processing grief. Sometimes I look back on my life and sense that I’ve done a lot of grieving, and of working through the grief that so many men seem to feel. This goes back to the 80s and Robert Bly’s Mytho-Poetic Movement. He was all about the grief process and how little western society allows any real space for this emotion. Another of my teachers, I met him through Robert, addresses grief as one side of a coin; the other side is praise! This comes from Martín Prechtel (see my review of his most recent book).
What Martín offers is very much in keeping with the Taoist approach to transforming emotions to virtues which I addressed here a few days ago. For Taoists Grief is transformed to Inspiration.
Grief is a good way to end this series on the transformation of emotions. We in the west pay much too little attention to this deep emotion. It is our unexpressed, unprocessed, unmetabolized grief, even more than anger, which leads us into wars. Grief leaves us empty if we don’t deal with it. And we then fill that emptiness with aggression. A milder but still potent manifestation of this emotion is Disappointment. Here again we have no good way to process this. We need to learn to transform grief and disappointment to Awe, Inspiration and Praise. Again there is deep Inner Work needed to work through this emotion. Our stories help with understanding. Meditation helps with moving from Grief to Praise, from Disappointment to Inspiration.
Grief is often associated with death, of course. Death is the ultimate loss. When we lose something, especially a loved one, an emptiness opens up that is difficult to fill. When we go inside and touch that emptiness we too often shrink away from it. It is a cold and bitter sensation that we would rather avoid, cover up, fill in, and ignore. None of us likes that hollowness; it is painful!
So, how do we get to Inspiration and Praise from that lonely, empty place? How can we even suggest that there is Praise on the other side of Grief? When we lose someone truly close to us through death, we turn to celebrating a life lived well. We remember shared stories, inspiring moments together, important milestones on our shared journey. We find many ways to praise that life. And from the specific, from that loved one’s life, we can expand to celebrate Life, the larger cycle of Life and Death in the great context of Becoming.
Here we find connection. And through this connection to the Greater we can begin to fill in the empty hole in our middle. This is a lengthy process. It takes time and work, inner work, to reach for the connection; to move into the context of Life. This is where we find Inspiration and reason enough for Praise.
Grief to Praise. It is not an easy route; it takes time (more than the three days offered by businesses to employees for the death of loved ones!). It requires an expansion; the hole in the heart is not filled in but the heart expands to somehow accommodate the hole! Take the time for this expansion process. If you find yourself grieving, whether it’s for the loss of a loved one or some other great loss (job, home, youth, energy, health…) sit with it; touch it gently; move into the emptiness; begin to see the possibility for expansion. Do the inner work, a bit at a time as you can.
And remember to bless yourself in this great work!
Men and Emotional Health
The recent videos by Rosemary and our commentaries have been about health and balance. Balance is achieved by bringing all four of our bodies, Spiritual, Mental, Emotional and Physical into both a healthy state and into balance across them.
Examining Emotional Health and Balance I have presented how Taoist Chinese sages work with emotions by transforming them into virtues. I have previously addressed Anger and its counterpart virtue, Creativity (Resourcefulness). And I have looked at Anxiety and how it might be transformed into Connection and Joy. Today I address two additional emotions: Fear and Worry.
Working with Fear is to transform it to Wisdom. Fear is probably the most primitive, instinctual emotion, therefore most deeply seated. It is an emotion of the ego and the ego’s job is survival. Fear triggers the fight or flight response, the reptilian brain component designed to keep us alive. Through inner work it is important to transform Fear into Wisdom and Empowerment. We move from the primitive, instinctual response to an Enlightened response. Frank Herbert, author of the Dune science fiction series, wrote that “fear is the mind-killer.” Exactly! When faced with survival it is easy for the mind to shut down and move into automatic response mode.
The trick here is to catch our reaction to an event or an object which triggers fear, to pause and breathe into the fear, and then to examine if this thing or occurrence is truly something to fear. These days we rarely encounter saber-toothed tigers to which the flight/fear response is appropriate!
There is a Korean Koan practice that helps me in these potentially fearsome situations. The practice is very simple: pause and ask “What is this?” Go inside to find an answer. And then ask the question again, this time of the first answer that comes to mind. Continue the practice until the questioning comes to a satisfying conclusion. This is a way to transform Fear to Wisdom.
Worry is often a wasted expenditure of emotional energy. I prefer to transform it to Centeredness. Next to Anger, Worry may be the next biggest emotion Western Men have to deal with. While Anxiety is about our place in society, Worry is more about our place in the Cosmos. Who are we; why are we here; what is life all about anyway; and is there any purpose to any of this, to my life? And these questions extend to health, security, and general lack of well-being. To counter Worry it is good to go into our stories for insight into this emotion. How has Worry affected us, influenced our decisions, guided our choices? How does Worry feel on the inside? What color does it have?
Worry transforms to Centeredness and Ecology. When we sink into our own Inner Space, our Wisdom, we become grounded and wholly present. We connect here with the All, the Universe. And from this deep place of wisdom we begin to understand our connectedness to everything and everyone; this is different from the transformation of Anxiety to Connection which is more about our human connections. This is broader and deeper. And the result is a deep appreciation of everything, all of creation, including ourselves! Within this context there is no room for Worry. We are part of something so much bigger. And we begin to see where we fit in the overall Ecology of the Cosmos. We see ourselves at the microcosmic level fitting neatly into the overall picture of the Macrocosm. There is great peace here and the beginning of balance.
Wisdom and Centeredness. These seem so much more appropriate responses than Fear and Worry! Try them on. Pause and ask: “What is this?” Breathe and move inside; find your Center. Everything in the Universe radiates outward from that Center. You are a key piece in that Universe!
PS: for my next post I will examine one more emotion that men need to pay particular attention to: Grief. Stay tuned!
“How’s Your Health?” A Commentary from Richard
Have you reviewed the video and commentary by Rosemary from her FREE weekly MuseLetter? I posted them over the past couple of days; and if you want to receive them directly you can subscribe here. And today here are my thoughts on the question Rosemary asks:
In her Video and Commentary this week Rosemary asks a broad question about health. On the surface this may seem to be a simple, straightforward question. For the most part when we think of our health we immediately scan our physical bodies for anything that may be signaling a pain or illness. But probing the question of our health is a much deeper subject than that first reaction!
We have four bodies, at least! And Rosemary addresses each of them in her commentary posted yesterday. For optimum health we need to “treat” each of these bodies and balance them. For men this can be a real challenge!
Last week I wrote of the emotional body and one emotion I am particularly familiar with, Anger! In Taoist philosophy the ancient Chinese identified five primary emotions and their correlating virtues. For example Creativity is the virtue corresponding to Anger. The other four emotions are Anxiety, Worry, Fear and Grief. Treating these emotions and moving them, transforming them to their virtues is the work we must undertake at the emotional level to achieve a healthy emotional body that in turn supports the physical body’s health.
Today let’s look at Anxiety, a serious emotion affecting so many of us in Western Society. Here in the US we are nearing the end of a polarizing National election. And in the Northeast US we are cleaning up and recovering from a devastating storm, Hurricane Sandy. This election cycle has seemed to go on forever! And with the long prediction of Sandy’s potential as an historic storm, it seemed larger than any storm could live up to; yet for many, it did! Just holding the energy of these two intertwined events is sufficient emotional strain to give the healthiest person a severe case of Anxiety!
What do we do?
Anxiety is often associated with our place in society, our standing within our family, group, tribe, nation, world. It is about who we are; it is deeply connected to self-esteem issues. Using the Tao as guidance, the emotion of Anxiety is associated with the heart and small intestine; it is the Fire Element emotion. The virtues that correspond to Anxiety are Connection and Joy, clearly virtues of the Heart. Moving Anxiety to Joy is a natural transformation as we work on our place within the human family, recognize the importance of that place, our being in that place and the Connection we have with others from that place. And once we have that Connection, deep Joy is there for us. The process here is remembering our own connections. “It’s a Wonderful Life” that famous Christmas Capra movie, is an excellent reminder of just how connected we are in this life and how vital to the overall scheme we are.
The process is reasonably simple: breathe into your Heart Center. Visualize a ruby red light streaming in to your chest to cauterize the wounds inflicted by Anxiety and transform those wounds to Connection and Joy. We are humans, a connected species. We live in groups and survive through cooperation and connectedness. Anxiety is created through our sense of
disconnectedness. Breathing the color Red in to our Heart Center restores this sense of togetherness in all of Life’s experiences.
My 15-year-old granddaughter just came down to visit and to apologize for her over-reaction to an incident around the dinner table this evening. I accepted and in turn apologized for my own over-reaction! It reminds me of our connection; our heart-connection. Family, friends and neighbors, communities, cities, states, countries…we are all connected. We can transform our Anxieties through remembering all of our Essential Connections and taking great Joy in those Connections!
PS: Tomorrow, November 2, just in time for All Souls Day, the Day of the Dead, you are invited to a Conversation with The Other Side! Rosemary brings in the Energies, Loved Ones who have crossed over, Angels, Spirit Guides, all manner of extra-dimensional beings during this time when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest! Join me! Learn more here!
ROSEMARY’S VIDEO: How to Avoid Flip-Out
OK, I’m coming back to this blog that I’ve been neglecting for too long. It’s time to get “regular” again. And with shifting season as we move into the dark times, the quiet times, the inner times, it’s a good time to not only reflect but to offer back what has been churning around inside.
I’ve been motivated in part by partner, Rosemary’s review and renewal of her work. She has shifted from a fairly standard weekly Ezine format, published for well over three years now, into a more active, video format. She publishes the weekly MuseLetter on Fridays (you can subscribe here). And last Friday she published a video and commentary that inspired me to get the word out to a wider audience! So, without further introduction here is Rosemary with an important message. I’ll be back tomorrow and on Monday with commentary.
Men and The Goddess 