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The missing
link in the chain of spirituality is self-love.
We come to this astonishing discovery only after
we have tried desperately to change ourselves,
fix ourselves, reinvent ourselves at nauseum.
None of it worked because there was no self-love
behind it. Charity begins within.
Self-love is something that all of the great
spiritual masters lived. Jesus said that the
kingdom of heaven is within. He meant that it is
within our own consciousness. Self-love cannot
be bestowed by another. And the paradox is that
we are all love. Love powers the universe.
When I lost my daughter to a childhood cancer at
the age of seven, I was only 35 years old. I was
in my early forties before I even began to heal.
Grief for a child is different than for any
other. You are facing not only the loss of the
child, but their children’s children. The blank
space not only opens up daily but also for
generations. This loss set my feet firmly on the
spiritual path. I began to read hundreds of
books related to that subject. The Autobiography
of a Yogi by Yogananda was given to me by my
mother. It was my first taste of eastern
spirituality. Yogananda loved the Christ as well
as Krishna. He showed me that love is love is
love....
Still I had years ahead of me to make the
astonishing discovery that self-love is the
linchpin of life. Without that, we are useless
to others because we will project our
self-loathing onto them. I certainly tried. I
often made life miserable for my family in the
years after my daughter died. My husband and I
were left with an eleven-year-old son who had
his own grieving to do. My husband tried to
neatly solve the problem of grief by becoming a
workaholic. His self-love was on the back burner
just as mine was. Just as everyone’s is. For our
culture teaches us to love our neighbor as
ourselves. What it doesn’t reveal is that we
must love ourselves first. That is the right
order.
There is a wonderful book called I Come As A
Brother, by Mary Margaret Moore. That book
had a sentence that leapt out at me and changed
my consciousness forever. She said that WE need
love ourselves. And in so many words, until that
happens, we cannot give what we don’t have.
So I began the daily practice of sitting quietly
in my chair first thing in the morning and
saying: I choose to love myself. Five little
words that took me in a different direction. The
scriptures became living lessons for me now.
Once I chose to love myself, I could love my
neighbor, for you are your neighbor. There is no
division in the world of love. Your own
wholeness feeds the multitudes with baskets of
loaves and fishes left over. Your own
consciousness leads the way to your healing.
Joel Goldsmith of The Infinite Way and
author of many books, was an extraordinary
mystic. He discovered that he was the “I am that
I am.” So are we all. But we must do as he did,
sit in silence affirming this until it becomes
second nature to us, until it clicks. You will
feel your body shifting from mechanical energy
to conscious energy, allowing your being to purr
like a contented cat. For now, everything is in
right order. You have faith that within you is
the power to move mountains, within you is love
itself.
So if you are serious about learning to love
yourself, do this. Sit down first thing in the
morning and say, “I choose to love myself. I am
in God’s presence now.” That is it. All you have
to do. Your energy, by law, will change for the
better. Then get up and go about your day. I
like to put myself in a balloon of white light
as well, asking that I may send love to others
without receiving any of their stress and
tension. Try it. Change your life from a
mechanical one to a conscious one. It is worth
your time on earth to learn to live for
eternity. And love is the building
block...always.
© Copyright 2011 Vicki Woodyard. All rights
reserved.
By
Vicki Woodyard:
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