Imagine if we’ve got something wrong about love. Well, not necessarily wrong, we just missed a step.
A huge step.
Two steps in fact.
The focus of love in our world is external. It’s about another, the other. It’s about giving love, receiving love, sharing love, making love, creating love…
Now this is great, don’t get me wrong.
But there’s something missing.
And it’s the cause of so much of love ‘failing’ and being so difficult for so many people. It’s a struggle to find love, for love to stay, for love to be enduring and fulfilling and all the things we’d like love to be.
The first thing that’s missing is we’re not taught about love.
We are given no education at all about love.
What we are given is the media’s perspective on love.
What we are given is Hollywood’s take on love.
What we are given is the marketer’s product-driven view of love.
What we are given is an illusion.
What we are given is patterning and conditioning.
What we are given is a box, often narrow and judgmental, that love needs to fit into.
We’re not given a philosophy of love, or the tools to develop one.
We’re not given the possibilities of love.
We’re not given what love can be.
We’re not given ways to explore love.
The second step that’s missing is that we don’t start with an inner love, loving ourselves.
We’re taught, simply by the world we’ve created, that being loved, and loving, being accepted and accepting, is conditional.
From the time we’re small it’s about being what’s expected of us, doing what we’re told.
It’s about fitting in to someone else’s belief of who and what we should be.
This makes it so much harder to love ourselves.
As we grow up, these ideas are reinforced again and again in so many ways.
The goal of this is more about keeping a system in place, continuing a religion, a society, based often on narrow and judgmental ideas and practices.
If we were taught more self-love how different our lives would be.
We’d create lives, relationships, jobs that fed more of us, more parts of who we are.
It doesn’t mean we wouldn’t work, it doesn’t mean money wouldn’t be important, it doesn’t mean the collapse of western civilisation as we know it.
It would change, yes it would.
Loving yourself more, you’d be more aware of what feeds your heart and your soul.
You’d naturally be more aware of your health, every aspect of your health.
You’d be more conscious.
You’d be freer.
But you’d have to think more about what you do, how you live, the relationships you have.
You’d have to ask more questions.
You’d have to communicate more openly.
You’d certainly have to listen more.
You’d give up on being so right.
You’d be happier.
You’d be an adventurer, an explorer a discoverer, a creator.
Your choices will change.
Loving yourself more is not easier, not at first.
You have to stop being a follower.
You have to engage more and more.
You have to know that you know less, so much less than you thought you did.
And then you’ll find out that you know so much more than you thought you did.
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