Get Back to Complete Love

How can you love someone that you don’t know? Sure, you can acknowledge a universal love if you identify with the truth that we are all connected. But to share an intimate love with someone takes knowing the person really well. You establish the trust and consistency that build enduring relationships.

Have you taken the time to build that relationship with the person you spend the most time with? Ehhem…I’m talking about you. The thought of this pure form of intimacy – essentially taking a look inside your soul (not too heavy, right?) – is enough to paralyze many with fear. And who can blame them? It can be scary and weird, uncomfortable and frustrating. But it’s kinda also the most fulfilling thing you can to. Getting back to the complete love that you were created in the image of is sort of all there is. What greater purpose can we find other than to love ourselves and through our thoughts and actions, create a more complete and beautiful world to live in?

Have you ever even thought about what you like most about yourself? What’s something that you value about yourself? Is there a skill that you possess and hold in certain esteem? What’s one instance where you carried yourself in such a way that would evoke admiration and inspiration if you were a third party watching from afar?

If this exercise presents as a bit daunting and well, frankly, hard as hell, you’re not alone. You’re not even unusual. The concept of “loving myself” very much eluded me for many years. I understand now that I didn’t know what it was to love myself because I didn’t want to. I was more comfortable in the position of playing a victim to the people and circumstances that had created my life, rather than taking responsibility for the role I played in my emotional fulfillment or lack thereof.

This brings me to my next point, which is: don’t rely on others to inspire you to love yourself. Finding inspiration in the actions of others will happen naturally and on its own, when you have the willingness and openness to recognize that sort of thing. But why not inspire yourself? Why not BE what you seek? Akin to the famously shared Gandhi quote “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” why not be what you want and attract it as well? I think that we all too often put our emotional stock in the idea that someone will save us and motivate us to be more. Maybe someone will show up with her magical fairy godmother wand? Well I have news: no one is coming. At least there are no guaranteed arrivals for this terminal. You are the one that has to show up. Show up and attract what will sustain your own self-empowerment. Everything else is ancillary. Just a bonus to the grand prize – the process of loving yourself for who you are.

Many talk about never having experienced love. I find this interesting. I believe, instead, that these people simply forgot about the love from whence they came. We are born as these perfect, whole and complete little balls of love. Overtime, we learn to forget about this. Life throws fears, doubts and criticisms at you. It’s nothing personal. It just is. This pretty much starts when you learn to process shapes and colors. We learn to judge ourselves and let ego take the wheel. Judgment words fill our vocabulary and society encourages us to compare ourselves to others. That complete love is still there though. It just got buried under the disempowering thoughts we choose to subscribe to.

Instead of the unending pursuit of the happiness that our egos make us believe we deserve, what if we worked on breaking down the walls we built? The happiness that you seek exists within you. You are your own soulmate. You can get back to that place of complete love, because you were there once before. We weren’t created to forget. We were created to remember. Through the thoughts you make, the environments you place yourself in, and even the food you eat, you can choose love. It may feel like traveling upstream sometimes, because you’re working at undoing and resetting potentially years of habits. But it’s a journey. It’s THE journey.