How
do you learn to love yourself? Self-acceptance is the first step.
Self-agape
requires that you accept yourself as you are, warts and all.
This means dropping every particle of self-deprecation you can
find. Now, many of you, especially you older souls, think that
putting yourselves down has value.
You
may think that feeling bad about yourself will motivate you to
do better or be a better person. When have you ever seen this
work?
Or
you may feel that trashing yourself will prevent you from being
an even worse person. The
truth is, punishing yourself will probably make you into a less
happy, less spiritual person. In fact self-deprecation is never,
never of value.
Here
it is useful to think of dog training. Beat a dog into obedience
and it will cower and hate you. It may obey out of fear but one
day, given a chance, it will turn against you. Train a dog with
kindness and rewards and it will love you and do almost anything
for you. You may argue, "But I'm not a dog!" Your body is like
a dog and deserves to be treated at least as well as one. It
likes to be petted.
Step
two in learning self-love is to learn to suspend judgment of
what is good or bad about you. It is arrogant to assume that
you can stand as judge of yourself and put yourself on trial.
It is also arrogant to stand in judgment of others or of your
experiences. Therefore, dump every shred of arrogance you can
find and you will also eliminate your judgments and criticisms.
You can then have more love, more experiences, and more awareness.
Step
three in learning to love yourself more requires that you begin
to experience yourself as being cause and not effect. This means
being out there having your life run the way you want it to,
rather than being at the effect of what others want. Stop yourself
in any situation and ask yourself whether you feel you are causing
what you are experiencing or whether you feel you are victimized
by it. You may be uncomfortably amazed at how often you find
you are in effect.
Step
four in learning self-love is that you allow yourself to see
all the good you have created. Everything in your life has served
you in some way, even the most horrific negatives. Find out what
you have learned from those negatives and see that they have
served you. Your essence set it up that way because essence wanted
you to learn certain things. When you can see that, then you
know you are on the right track and you can validate yourself
for a job well done.
Step
five is accepting experiences and not blocking or fighting them.
Flow with the experiences your essence has set up and experience
them fully so that you won't be repeatedly confronted with them
until you finally pay attention to them.
Step
six is composed of several substeps. It involves not falling
prey to one of the four victimizations:
a.
Not enough time.
b.
Not enough money.
c.
Not enough sex.
d.
Not enough love.
Now,
almost everyone has one or several of the above. Almost no one
has enough of all four. You either have plenty of time and no
money, or plenty of money and time and no love, or plenty of
sex but no money and so on. The truth is that you can have enough
in every category. To get there however you must change your
beliefs to the contrary. Let us now examine each of these in
more detail.
a.
Not enough time
When
you do not give yourself enough time to relax, get your work
done, or be with good friends you literally rob yourself of the
opportunity to have more in your life. This is the activity of
impatience, the rush to pack so much into your schedule that
you do not enjoy any of it. Drop impatience and take time. Paradoxically,
when you relax more and take the time you need to enjoy your
work or relationships you become much more productive. Do you
take the time to dress well? Do you take time to take care of
your body? Do you take time to reflect and enjoy being?
b.
Not enough money
Having
enough money is a product of feeling you deserve it and allowing
yourself to have it. If you are programmed to think that people
who have money are evil or have sold their soul to the devil
then you will never allow yourself to have it. If you feel that
if you had money you would abuse it, you will likewise see to
it that you have very little. In Western culture and throughout
history, having money has been seen as having power. If you believe
that you are powerless then you will probably also be without
money as a result.
The
truth about money is that it is pure energy and as such it is
neutral. How you use it is what makes the difference. Allow yourself
to have as much of it as you can handle. Having money requires
you to have a great deal of responsibility if you are to use
it appropriately. There is even a lesson in wasting it so you
can't lose by having more. Contrary to what some of you think,
having more money does not necessarily deprive others of having
it too. True prosperity includes sharing and has a way of growing
rather than diminishing. Now, some of you choose not to have
it, not because of low havingness but because it is not where
you choose to have your lessons this lifetime. This is a legitimate
choice.
c.
Not enough sex
When
you deprive yourself of a satisfying sex life out of guilt, self-righteousness,
or fear, you contract your ability to have, do, or be more. Your
capacity to enjoy your body and express energetically through
it is in direct relation to how much you can have. Through satisfactory
sexual expression you communicate and share yourself with others.
Now a satisfactory sex life is up to you to define. For some
people (especially the solid roles of warrior, scholar, and king)
daily sexual activity feels right for full satisfaction.
For
other people (especially the fluid roles of priest and artisan)
less frequent sexual activity feels prosperous. For a few souls
total abstinence is appropriate for the lessons they have chosen
to focus on. If you feel frustrated that your sex life is paltry
then you are creating a condition of scarcity out of low havingness.
You are probably operating out of fear or guilt. A thorough examination
of these feelings and their source will pave the way for greater
abundance. Intending to feel satisfied and actively seeking it
will ensure it. The truth is that there are partners for everyone.
d.
Not enough love
Love
is everywhere. So, if you are experiencing a scarcity of love,
you are blinding yourself to it for your own reasons. Often these
reasons include the belief that you are just not lovable. Simultaneously
you may fear the intimacy that love brings. Or you may fear abandonment
and the pain of losing love so much that you avoid it like the
plague. Whatever the reasons, scarcity in love reflects a temporary
limitation in your ability to be more of who you are. As with
sex, money, and time, raising your ability to love requires that
you give yourself more of it. The cure for fear of water is learning
how to swim. The cure for scarcity of love is learning to love
yourself more.
When
you love yourself you charge yourself like a magnet. Others are
drawn to love you as they would be to a magnet.
To
summarize, prosperity is about truth, love, and energy. Prosperity
is a result of telling yourself the truth, caring enough about
others and trusting them to tell them you love them, and having
the energy available to act. The aim is to have an abundance
of all three. Phrasing all this in other words, you are here
to learn about handling the physical plane. Prosperity is the
measure of how well you do that.
Let
us look briefly at love in a relationship. One way of looking
at love is to see it as the ability to resonate with the other
person, not only a spouse or lover, but say someone in your family
or a friend. Love is about looking after them, being aware of
their needs and knowing where they are. So when they come home
tired, you are aware of that and respond so that they feel nurtured.
It is a useful tool to be able to ask this person, "What can
I do for you today so that you will feel nurtured?" You can also
observe any resistance you may have to asking that question,
or to actually doing the nurturing.
| Authors
Details:
José Stevens
José Stevens,
Ph.D., is the founder of Essence Psychology and lectures
internationally on essence and personality, shamanism,
and prosperity. He is the author of Tao To
Earth and Transforming
Your Dragons and Secrets of Shamanism. The
Authors Web Site |
|
