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Learning To Love Yourself

jan matson harvey rabbitA friend of mine has been on a journey to “find love.” He was married for a short time and has been in a number of relationships after he and his wife divorced. But he has never found “the one.” He told me recently he has fallen in love with a woman he has known since his childhood. They lost touch for many years and have reconnected. The challenge for my friend is that this woman doesn’t seem to be willing to make a commitment. He worries that he may never find true love again if the two of them do not get together. I invited my friend to consider the possibility that the love he is seeking is right in his own heart. 

I believe there is only one Love we desperately long for, and it is within us. Yet many people never turn and go within to discover this love that is always here. We can get glimpses of it when we love other people or when they love us, but our journey of awakening is really and truly about finding the field of Love within ourselves. I shared an excerpt with my friend from the children’s book, The Velveteen Rabbit, written by Margery Williams. It is a beautiful story of a stuffed rabbit who desires to become “Real” through the love of its owner, a little boy. The rabbit was a wonderful playmate for the boy, but now the boy has grown up and left his toys behind. The Velveteen Rabbit has become worn, and he feels abandoned and rejected. In this excerpt, he is talking to the Skin Horse, who is the wisest and oldest toy in the nursery: 

“What is REAL?” the Velveteen Rabbit asked the Skin Horse one day. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?” 

 “Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.” 

 “Does it hurt?” asked the Velveteen Rabbit. 

 “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”  “It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand. But once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”

Although the Skin Horse is talking about the rabbit receiving love from the child, I believe becoming “Real” in this story is a metaphor for rediscovering your authentic, real self, the self that doesn’t need to be any different than what it is to love and be loved. It is important to realize that for most of us it was not safe to be ourselves when we were growing up. Our parents may have loved us, but it was often inconsistent. These “unconscious giants” did the best they could with what they knew at the time. Yet, many of us felt invaded and abandoned, and it hurt too much to keep our hearts open because the pain was so intense at times.  So we closed our hearts down, retreating into our heads, becoming human doings rather than human beings. And we have spent our lives looking outside of ourselves for the love we long for in order to feel “whole” again.  

It is absolutely okay and wonderful to love and be loved by other people.  But as most of us have discovered, that kind of love comes and goes, opens and closes. Who we really are, the field of Love that is our essence, is always with us and it is what we truly long for.  How do you come home to this field of Love? This happens as you discover the safety of opening your heart again. Becoming “Real” is when you open your heart enough so you can really, really love yourself, even when your so-called unacceptable parts show up, or when you are going through big challenges or even truly dark times in your life. These are the times when you most need and deserve the healing balm of your heart.  

So, how do you learn to open your heart again?  How do you learn to love yourself when you are so often unkind and even cruel to yourself? How do you accept yourself just as you are?  One of the ways I have learned to fall in love with myself is to ask Life for help. When I am having a really challenging day and I see that my mind is caught in stories of struggle and my heart is closed, I might say, “Life show me how to open my heart” or “Show me how to be with myself so I can love myself exactly as I am, even the parts that I have disliked or even hated my whole life.” It is totally possible to allow everything you have done (everything!) and every part of yourself that you have mistreated or even loathed to be enfolded back in your heart. 

Meeting all of the abandoned or wounded parts inside of you, including your shame, anger, anxiety, loneliness and despair, is a painful process and it often brings up a lot of grief.  Like the Skin Horse said to the Velveteen Rabbit, is doesn’t happen all at once and it hurts sometimes. But it is the safest thing you will ever do.  As author and spiritual teacher, Stephen Levine, once told me, “The only sane response is Love.”  Know there is absolutely nothing inside of you that doesn’t deserve your heart. So when you are ready, place your hand over your heart and ask Life to show you how to be “Real.”  There is no one in the world more deserving of your true love and an open heart than You!

Image of Harvey by Artist Jan Matson  www.janmatson.com 

  1. A friend sent me a book a few months ago “Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On it” and I have been practicing saying I love myself ever since….it is amazing to know that our love is a continuous force that can clear away all that does not matter and give us a new perspective whenever we reach into ourselves and allow our hearts to be filled again with loving.