Loving yourself 

Unlocking the door to being alive

Loving yourself is the answer to every single question you’ve ever asked.  How do I get more energy, how do I have less pain, how do I feel more, how do I heal, how do I experience my soul, how do I know bliss, how do I know what to do, how do I trust, how do I make more money, how do I have the relationship that I want, how do I have more confidence, how do I serve…?   The list goes on.  Every single question that you have ever, ever, ever had comes back to this very easily understood yet less easily applied way of being and existing.  

Why is it so hard to love ourselves?  Why do we feel such unworthiness in our existence?  We fundamentally know that we “should” love ourselves and that loving ourselves is the key that unlocks the door to being alive and yet we don’t choose it.  We judge ourselves, blame ourselves, think we should be different than we are, worry that we are imperfect, that we’ve said or done the wrong thing or that we will, that we won’t be enough.  This can come out directly towards ourselves or we can direct/project this onto others or onto our situations and circumstances in life.  Either way the root is the same.  Something about us (or existence) is unlovable.  

Most of us have become masters at trying to get love and then pushing it away once we begin to taste it.  Personal relationships are a fertile ground for this type of behavior.  We so badly want love from another and yet simultaneously can’t receive it when its given.  This can also show up in wanting acknowledgement or reception by others of our work or something that we create.  We want the reflection of love through receiving attention yet when we get the slightest amount of that attention we feel uncomfortable, like we don’t want to be seen.  So this is the paradox of wanting to be seen and yet not wanting to be seen.  Wanting to be loved yet not feeling worthy of it.   

Return to Love 

Unloved to Loved

Unlovability is the root of all pain and suffering.  I believe it to be the primary root of most all sickness as well.  This is good news because if being unlovable is the root then the cure is evident and found in your return to love.  How do you return to love?  It begins with the seeing of how it is you have not been able to love yourself.  You must turn and look towards your unlovability.  Acknowledge just how hard it is to fully and unconditionally love yourself.  Looking at where you push love away in everyday situations.  Perhaps you can’t accept a compliment, maybe nothing you do is ever enough even if it was done well, maybe you don’t let yourself stop and rest because people “need you” so you must show up or you won’t have or accomplish enough, perhaps you can give love but feeling it directed towards you creates a feeling of shutdown or separation.  

Rather than keeping yourself in the dark be willing to look at how you push away and resist love.  It takes courage and yet you can do it.  The amount of light you can emit into this world is directly correlated with how much love you can receive and know yourself to be.  When you know yourself as love it is the end of figuring anything out.  There really are no more questions at this point, at least questions that come from lack and unknowing.  The only questions that seem to arise are those that are in direct connection with your already knowing state of self.  Its like asking a question but already knowing the answer simultaneously.  

When you know that you are love you can serve no matter what.  No insecurity or doubt in self arises about what you are capable of or what you should do.  You become a pure vessel and transmission of God/light and true giving arises.  You are no longer giving to others or creating out of lack of worth of self and trying to prove your worthiness to get validated or your safety needs met.  Instead you simple give because that is what you are.  There is no agenda.  It is not about self-sacrifice or being a martyr as those things come from the perception of lack, but instead about simply giving as the abundance that you know yourself to be.  Nothing is unsolvable and everything is seen as love.

Being rested as love is the most energizing and alive state of being.  The boundless freedom of you is experienced.  You no longer need anything from anyone or anything.  You know yourself, accept yourself and realize that you are love.  You can’t not see everything else as that for love is the fabric, the substratum and the essence of all of creation.  You included.  You are loved.  You are love. 

Dr. Amanda Hessel, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado