Loving
Yourself = Being in Your Heart
"To
find your way, listen quietly and attend with your heart."
~Anonymous
In my July 18 ezine, "Love Yourself
and You Will Attract Love,"I wrote about the importance
of loving and healing yourself as a precursor to attracting
love. I realized after talking to my
husband who is a psychotherapist, that this idea, "You
have to love yourself first," often confounds people.
Many of his clients/patients have said they hear this
statement a lot but have no idea what it really means or how
to go about doing it.
So from the beginning: To "love
yourself" essentially starts with being in your heart
chakra. The heart is associated with love,
joy, laughter, compassion, respect, generosity and
understanding. When you are in your heart,
you are loving, accepting of what is, and in gratitude. The
heart chakra is also a center for transformation, allowing us
to transcend the reactivity of our lower chakras and make
conscious choices for responding to others and the world.
To understand what it means to have our heart open or to be in
the heart chakra, it's helpful to contrast the heart (fourth
chakra) with the solar plexus (third chakra). In
the earlier ezine, I mentioned that some people are hungering
for love, wanting someone to give their lives meaning and make
them feel lovable. Some have
relationships that are filled with chaos, jealousy or strife.
And others have relationships that are quietly
suffering, where partners feel irritated or a sense of
distance, disappointment or discontent. These
are often subtle, underneath the surface feelings that are
gnawing away at the love until partners finally don't even
know if they love each other anymore.
All these are kinds of negative third
chakra states, blaming another or needing to be made whole or
happy by someone else. Coming from the
third chakra rather than the heart often makes people
desperately try to change their outer circumstances (or their
partner) or they may just withdraw and just feel hopeless.
Even silently suffering is a third chakra state.
But it's impossible to resolve anything or to begin the
healing process while in the third chakra. All that's
possible while in anger, depression, resentment, fear or any
third chakra state is more of those same negative emotions.
Healing is only possible from the heart. Shifting
into the heart, a person realizes that all there really is to
work on is the self. From the heart,
it is easier to accept what is--without drawing
conclusions--and even begin to feel gratitude to others for
being teachers or mirrors to us. From this
state forgiveness, healing and transformation can occur.
So to love yourself, it's important to get involved in
situations that will help you open your heart so that you can
experience your heart energy, become familiar with it, and
learn to shift yourself back into the heart state when
something pulls you out. And once your
heart is open, you can begin to heal those wounded places
within you. Sound healing, psychotherapy,
spiritual coaching, yoga and meditation or any number of
healing modalities can help shift you into your heart and
begin to heal and open you to better and better versions of
your authentic self.
Once we heal ourselves and begin living as one who is in a
healthy, happy relationship, we will soon find correspondence
in our outer world. If we were in a
negative relationship, it transforms to a healthy one, or it
falls away so that we can attract one that reflects who we are
now. Kicking and screaming for the other
person to change or madly searching for a partner is never the
answer. In other words, we will never get
what we want by coming from the gut. And even if
anything is won this way, we will most assuredly soon be
disappointed in our "win." We can only
heal and attract healthy, happy experiences when we are living
from our heart.
So we can only get what we can give--and this includes giving
to ourselves. As the great spiritual
teacher Muktananda said, "Love yourself. Honor
Yourself." And to love ourselves, we must treat ourselves
as our own special child. If we are loving,
nurturing and giving to ourselves, we will be that way with
others, and the world will bring us the same.
Ultimately, we must open up that
wonderful heart of ours and let its love, acceptance and
compassion heal us, help us to forgive and bring us back into
our natural radiance so that we may simply be love in the
world.
Love and Joy~
Pamela
If
you would like coaching to help you learn to be in your
heart and attract the relationship of your dreams, or if you
would like help with any relationship or life issues, call
me to schedule your one-hour, $75 introductory session
today.
Empowering Love
~empowering you to have the life and love your heart desires
407.733.6282
Copyright, 2007, Empowering Love. All rights in all media
reserved.
