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Become Your Own Beloved

In this week when we celebrate Valentine’s Day, I am inviting you into a most radical thing – to become your own beloved.  We search for love ‘out there’ because we have put ourselves out of our own hearts. There is so much about ourselves that we have rejected, so we hope to find somebody who will love us unconditionally because we can’t give that to ourselves.  This barricade around our hearts causes us to have very little mercy with ourselves and others. Such a painful way to live.

Because we are ashamed and afraid of so many parts of ourselves, we bury these qualities deep inside, hoping not only that we won’t notice them but that nobody else will either. It’s like trying to hold a bathtub of rubber duckies under the water. No matter how hard you try to keep these qualities hidden deep inside, they pop up, often when we most don’t want them too. This causes us to be imprisoned in resistance, not available to life.

How would your life change if you made room in your heart for every single part of you?

What would happen if you understood that to become whole means meeting everything about yourself with kindness and understanding?

What would happen if, when loneliness came, you didn’t fall into it? Instead, you breathed into it, touching it with tenderness.

What would happen if, rather than being afraid of your fear, you said “hello” to it?

What would happen if you weren’t judgmental about how much your mind judges yourself and others?

What would happen if you weren’t ashamed at how much self-interest and self-pity at times move through your mind?

What would happen if, when anger, irritation and even aggressiveness show up, rather than being lost in them, you touched them with kindness?

What would it be like to enfold sadness with caring rather than being pulled into its world?

What would happen if, rather than closing your heart when envy or jealousy show up, you touched them with compassion?

What would happen if you recognized that your mind is at times competitive? Maybe not as much as some, and maybe less than others, but it’s there inside of you as it is with all people.

What would happen if you saw the compulsive nature of your mind – whether it’s around busyness, sex, food, alcohol, drugs or struggle itself – and rather than going to war with it, you met it with your aware heart?

What would happen if you understood that it is okay for doubt, or confusion, or dread, or greed, or anxiousness, or even revenge to show up?  The more you allow them to be here, not giving them power by falling into them or resisting, the less they control you. Or as a friend once said, “Acceptance is magic!”

How freeing it would be to see that your mind dabbles in all these feelings, along with many others, just as everyone else’s does. But because you are mostly afraid to acknowledge this, these feelings run you from underneath your everyday awareness.

It is time to come out of hiding. There is nothing about these qualities in your mind that you need to be ashamed of or afraid of. You may deem them unacceptable and even forbidden, but they are just how the unconscious human mind operates and everybody experiences them. Healing is not about getting rid of them and arriving at an imaginary ‘all together’ place. It’s about discovering how not to struggle with them so you can bring them home to your heart.

Are you willing to come out of hiding? Are you willing to make room in your heart for every single part of you? When there is nothing you need to keep hidden anymore, your attention is then fully free to be here for life. If you are in a relationship, this willingness to meet yourself as you are with kindness and compassion will make it much easier to meet your partner in the same way.  And if you are longing for a relationship, developing a healthy relationship with yourself will make it more possible to have a healthy relationship with someone else.

I invite you to be your own beloved and become a part of the healing force that our beleaguered planet so desperately needs in this time of chaos and change.

 

 

  1. Be My Valentine? Ha ha 😉
    Thank you so much for your beautiful words. Much appreciated on his day.
    Happy Valentines Day, Mary. xo
    Alicia Wells
    Fort Nelson, BC, Canada