Love can be an overused word. It is a cliche and a stereotype when it is only a word, when love is not felt. Everybody has felt the power of love in their life. It can not be described, it just is. When we feel love, it changes the chemical structure in our bodies, we feel alive, the world becomes brighter and everything is possible.
Some people don't realise that the only love they will ever feel is the love they feel themselves. The love that flows through them. Other people can love us but we can only experience the acts of that love, the gifts and the respect from the one who loves us. The person loving us feels their own love flowing through them, for us. But we don't 'feel' their love unless we allow our own feeling of love to flow through us. So if we want to experience the feeling of love, we have to feel it ourselves.
And it is beautiful when we feel the love for others. The love for a partner, children, parents, friends. A love for nature, pets, books, hobbies, country.
We can take inspiration to feel love from the outside. We can watch people who are in love and that can trigger the feeling within us. People, pets, poetry, paintings, beauty, nature can all inspire the feelings of love within us and the feelings are beautiful.
But there is a missing piece in all of this. Self love.
When we are loving others, when we put them and their needs first and we don't feel the love for self, then we are always seeking for that love to come to us through others. We love others with a hope, expectation and a demand that they will love us in return. Love becomes an obligation. You don't love me, is an accusation often made in partnerships as if that was a crime. We continually search and seek for others to love us and our feelings turn to fear, mistrust, control, jealousy, manipulation. We try to force others to love us and use many clever means to try and gain their love. Love becomes a loaded word and turns into betrayals, pain, hate and open warfare. And we wonder what happened to the love.
We don't have to wait for the inspiration from the outside to feel love. And we don't have to wait for other peoples' love. We can love ourselves.
What if there is no lack of love. What if we have access to unlimited flow of love from within us. What if we were courageous enough, free enough, outrageous enough to love ourselves. What if we felt a love for self whenever we wanted to. In any situation, at any time of the day and night. Would we still be the same person, would the world still look the same to us. Would anything be impossible?
What would it be like, if instead of berating and beating ourselves up, we would love ourselves. What if every emotion that came up was accepted and loved. What if the inner voices were loving and accepting. What if we didn't have to do so much, achieve so much, try so hard to get others to love us. What if we didn't have to do anything at all to be lovable. What if we just loved ourselves regardless of what still needs to be changed.
What if we did not have to wait for the world to change before we loved ourselves. What if we didn't have to wait for other people to change and we just loved ourselves.
What if there was no need to change the past and we could accept it just as it is, because we loved ourselves. What if we loved our failures, disappointments, regrets. Would the past still haunt us then? What if we could let the baggage of our past go and it no longer hindered and troubled our present. What if its difficult emotions and memories were embraced. And loved. And set free. How light would we feel and how free?
How different would we be, how different would our inner word be if we loved ourselves. What if there is nothing inside of us that needs to be feared, disliked or hated. No emotion, no memory, no experience.
All of this is possible with self love. It is the ultimate medicine that is always available. There is no need to ask for a permission, we can just love ourselves. There is no special place or time requirement, we can call upon its sweet embrace at any time. We can love ourselves going about our daily lives. It does not need any prescription to be applied. No money is required to buy self love. It only needs to be chosen, allowed to flow through us and felt.
And when our self love is full and overflowing, we can easily share it with others. We can shower others with our love with no controls, fears or expectations. Because we don't need anything from them in return. We don't need to put demands and conditions on their love for us. They can freely share it with us, or not. We had freed ourselves from the chains of conditional love. Because we love ourselves.
A forbidden act it was, this act of self love. And it can feel ungraceful and awkward at first, like we are doing something wrong. Stealing something and eating a forbidden fruit. This act of self love. After all, we were born sinners we were told. We should prove ourselves first, earn it, be someone and do something to deserve it. We were told.
So it takes courage to love yourself. And determination. And a constant choice to love you.
Try it and see what happens.
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