Love For Others

There is a source of perfect love and grace within us all, and until we find that foundation for ourselves, loving others will always drain us.  This could be perceived as a negative assessment of love, and could discourage you from sharing love with others- but this is entirely not the case.  In fact, it is the exact opposite.

We go about our lives; we have good days and bad.  On the good days we may smile to the man who bags our groceries, and on the bad we may not make eye contact with a friend or drive too fast to work.  We believe that these moments, which make an impression on us, are either harmonious or stressful.  The decision is rooted in our perception, and it affects how we digest these experiences.

But the real truth lies beneath our conception of the feelings we create for ourselves.  The origin of everything- every laugh, every smile, every tragedy, every loss- is a fountain of infinite enchantment, always present and always waiting for us.  The secret lies in the moment we decide for ourselves that every single thing we do or say or feel about others has its source in love and grace.  Until that moment, we cannot actually give the true source of love and grace- only a component of that love.  An energetic cousin.  This is the factor that drains us, because it has not come from that infinite source.

This does not mean that you should not give your love to others.  It means that the only thing you truly can give is love.  That any other way is draining.  I understand that to surrender to this concept, at first, may not seem natural.  We have been conditioned to believe that life is hard, that bad things can happen to good people, that happiness is rooted in particular monetary or sexual situations.  But maybe try it for a day.  Take the leap.  Tell yourself that you love yourself, that the reason anything has happened to you is love and watch the events of your life begin to change.  The entirety of the world will unfold before your eyes and it is beautiful.

Love For Oneself

It has taken me a long while to come to the realization that I love my body.  That no matter the state of my mental or physical self, I will always strive to make it better.

            I truly do believe that people are born with differing capacities for self-love, that their constitutions at birth are determined for them by a divine combination of environment and genetics.  And while this matter is outside of our understanding at the time, we will always have the ability to take what we have and shape our constitution for betterment, even going as far as constructing a new archetype with an aptitude for unlimited love.  Joyful-loving-kindness, our primordial and intended nature, transcends any and all boundaries currently established by beliefs held on neural or physiological plasticity.

            There is a fine line between analytics and criticality; both are qualities that allow us to discern a situation and judge how to appropriately act or react.  But this astute discrimination has now extended itself to a mentality that no longer provides for our favor in the realm of self-love.  What I mean by this is that we have to be able to be critical.  We have to be able to go about our day and read people’s body language, digest maybe what their wearing, how they hold themselves, or what they say and react appropriately.  Perception is not only a quality important for our lives socially, for our communication skills, or for our advancement in the world of 10,000 things, but it is a skill fundamental and necessary in this regard.  But instead of using this attribute for the sole purpose of betterment, we now critique other people nonsensically- maybe we think the shoes they are wearing are ugly, or they have a stupid looking face, or their haircut is unattractive.  If you find yourself having any of these sorts of thoughts, most likely you are making the same sort of judgments to yourself.  Maybe you find yourself looking in the mirror and feeling as if you’re fat, or you wish you had bigger biceps so you tell yourself that you’re going to go to the gym and cut out carbs, and eventually you get to the point where you create rules for yourself about what you can eat and how often you have to exercise.  All of these restrictions only emphasize the cycle of self-loathing that begins with a simple glance in the mirror and a subsequent thought.  But the point here is that until you decide for yourself that you love your body no matter how you came into this world, you will never have the awareness to recognize your constitution or tap into the potential for unlimited love available to us.

Having love for yourself is not an egotistical sort of love.  It should not be confused with admiration.  Love is a state of mind we reach when we discover the beauty of our bodies, marvel at the beauty of others, and lose the desire to have expectations for how we or anybody else should be.  When we find love for ourselves we find harmony in this dance.  We go about our day, we act without judgment, we take it all in.

Anger

We have all these opportunities throughout the day to get angry.  Each and every time we have the choice to either let the anger become us or let it pass through us.

            It is an odd thing to think about anger as a choice- that going for any emotion in fact- but a transformation in the body occurs when an emotion takes hold.  But, there is an initial process where, if we catch it, we can consciously decide whether to let the anger reside in us for a while or observe it passing through.  If we do let the emotion take hold of us, the body reacts chemically.  Perhaps we tighten our muscles in a certain area of the body, our heart rate increases, or there is a flush of adrenaline- in all of these cases we are reacting.

            The most challenging situation once an emotion has engaged us is releasing the anger.  A good question to ask yourself is, “Does this emotion benefit anyone?  Is this anger currently helping me?”  There is an adaptogenic explanation behind each and every cellular reaction in our body.  The “fight or flight” response of adrenaline and norepinephrine is one of the most commonly referred to sympathetic nervous system reactions that occurs when the body is under stress.  Ten thousand years ago this was an extremely valued physical reaction to prime the system to run from serious threats such as tigers or an invading tribe, but in today’s social climate, it is a response initiated more frequently.  It has become a learned response.  Maybe we get angry while driving to work, we have our cup of coffee and spill some on our shirt and that upsets us, maybe our boss is being unkind- the list goes on and on.  But what we don’t think about happening is that when we call on our body to release particular hormones under stressful conditions, we are neglecting other important systems.  Our body becomes flush with glucose and fat for heightened muscle function, digestion becomes neglected, we have narrowed vision and loss of hearing- all of these actions are occurring to best aid us for the immediate situation.  However we are affected later on becomes background noise to get us through the present moment.

            Sometimes it is best to take a breath, or other times to try and take a step away from the anger.  When we can separate ourselves distinctly from the emotion we can observe the anger entering our body and then leaving.  Too often we only notice an emotion being incited, sometimes it is best to take note of the emotion leaving, simply by saying “gone” or taking note that the emotion has left.  This can make the transition away from the anger more swift, and consciously we have decided that we are not angry any more.  The body and the mind remember this.  It shortens the duration we have been angry, but most importantly the anger doesn’t make a lasting impression on us.  If we do not notice the anger leaving, we do not have a distinct time duration for which we are angry, and the body can remain tense for whatever or however long.

Anger is one of the most consuming and detrimental of emotions, along with fear and hopelessness: The Big Three.  But perhaps the best antidote is laughter.  Ask yourself, “In regards to what is currently making me angry, does it really even matter?  Isn’t it funny that this made me angry?  Maybe this time I won’t let it bother me.”  And have a laugh.  Then we notice that the anger is gone.

Kathi's Healing

Healing.

What does healing truly mean??  The essence and interpretation of healing has different implications for everyone.  Healing comes in many forms, some need to heal emotionally some need to heal physically and  often the two go hand in hand.  All human beings need to heal in one form or another, so what is the meaning of this?

 Healing is a necessary "progression" of the soul.  It is a journey that we as human beings have to take on in order to evolve.   An individuals struggle with pain (physical or emotional) is necessary in order to mend.  Because of this,  healing brings us a freedom that no other exposure, can match.    Our struggles bring us a wisdom and understanding that could not be taught in any other form.  Our soul is on a path.  The path is a metaphor for our life's experiences that help us to grow and expand.  These experiences unfold and can be used as a means of self discovery, gradually helping us to become conscious of ourselves.  

"Every situation,

properly perceived,

becomes an opportunity to heal."

A Course in Miracles

We are surrounded by many different methods to aid us in the healing process, there is something for everyone.  Sound, crystals, religion, spirituality, doctors, medications, meditations, healers, psychics, books, tapes, support groups, vacations…these are all a few tools that are meant in one form or another to heal a human body or "spirit".  We seem to get the necessity of this, yet we are not taught anything about it, it is something that each of us must discover in our own time and in our own way.   The course of our own healing must be highly individualized.  No two human beings have the same body or the same life experiences.  True healing is self-healing.

""No one saves us but ourselves.

No one can and no one may.

We ourselves must walk the path."

Buddah

Whether it is emotional or physical, all healing begins the your heart.   By starting in your heart and loving yourself you will heal yourself.  By loving yourself you give yourself self worth and in turn will shine a light upon your brother….what a difference this can make.

"In every community there is work to be done.

In every nation there are wounds to heal.

In every heart there is the power to do it."

Marianne Williamson

If I love myself, I love you,

If I love you, I love myself."

Rumi

With your desire to be healed you heal others, what an amazing world we live in!

Namaste

Healing

In order to heal, the desire to heal must evaporate entirely.

            At first, this idea may seem counterintuitive.  You could argue that to move forward with anything, whether it is healing or a job promotion, that you must have desire, that every developing action is induced by the drive to do so.  And, yes, desire must exist, but there is good desire and bad desire.  The discrepancy resides in our interpretation of the word and how it is implemented.

            Even if you place your intention on healing, on actualizing a perfectly healthy self somewhere in the future, that perfectly healthy self will never exist because you are creating a reality that does not and will never provide the conditions for a perfect self.  The simple act of wanting to heal creates a manifest self that is currently, and presently, not healed.  There is no distinction between believing that you can heal or believing that you can’t, in either case the answer/result lies somewhere outside yourself in the future or somewhere else- that you are not presently perfect and healed.  The only difference is that the latter case constructs a certainty in which you presently do not have the capacity to do so.

            Being perfectly healthy is about having a healthy soul, that is, coming to an understanding that no matter the state of your physical body, that everything is as it should be.  When we disengage from desire, we surrender and accept our current state.  It is through this process that we better feel the present moment, and no longer react to the emotions that relentlessly flood our system from day to day.  Desire is rooted in a need.  Desire rooted in a need has its source in being unsettled.  Being unsettled goes hand in hand with searching.  When one no longer searches, one awakens.  This is the foundation for acceptance.

            Perfect health is a state of being where the soul no longer searches.  The concept “everything happens for a reason” holds under the theory of predestination, whereas, coming to an understanding that everything is as it should be, is a separate state entirely.  Things and events are placed before us, not because they’ve already been decided, but because we choose not to let them alter us from our primordial state of natural and unconditional love.  When we come to this understanding, truly, down to our bones, we will heal because we already have.