The Way of Self Love

In a time of global healing and Souls shifting from fear into love, I also understand that the transition into self-love can often be unclear and challenging. There is often a misguided perception of self-love being only soft and a weak manifestation in the physical world or an ego-ness of selfishness and greed. Many associate love with kindness, patience, compassion, happiness, surrender and turning the other cheek but love, above all of these, is strength, self-respect, discipline, courage, will power, boundaries, emotional connection and depth.
Choosing a love based life is never about sacrificing yourself for another, it is about choosing yourself for another. Becoming a martyr in an act of love only drains yourself and the one you love. Empowering your light opens your heart and with it the ability to love another.
How we treat ourselves is a long combination of what we have learnt, dreamed of, feared, experienced and seen throughout our whole life and from many others.
For years I went through my own turbulent relationships. Always the same situation, I would meet a man, become attracted to who he was, always seeing his good but feeling the need to ‘fix’ his problems for him. I was a glutton for punishment until a powerful realization came forth during one of my most abusive relationships. The relationship had progressed from emotional abuse to verbal abuse and had begun the terrible cycle of physical abuse. I was walking down the road to get us both lunch when a thought just popped in from the back of my mind, it said ‘suck it up Catherine, this is love.’ I stopped in my tracks and said immediately to myself, ‘No it is not love!’ From there I began to release this old belief and create a new understanding about love. A week later I left this relationship and went on to a two year journey of healing and self-love. I then met my beautiful partner who is now the father of our beautiful little girl.

The path of Self-love
When living a life from love the first person and the first place you can ever fulfill this from, is yourself and right now.
So this begins the question of How? How do I love myself?
Self-love can be found through other attributes and these are;
Self-acceptance/non-judgment
Self-respect/boundaries
Self-worth/value
Self-empowerment/positive action

We all go through shifts and changes within our emotions, our minds, their thoughts and our bodies. Becoming aware of these and accepting them is the most powerful step you can take towards self-love. It is through acceptance that we create space for love to enter. Whether it will be in healing and releasing old pains/hurts/traumas and negative beliefs, to healing suppressed emotional wounds within the body. ‘Peer pressure’ can only influence you when you are lacking in your own self-acceptance and looking for approval and acceptance through others. Self-acceptance is the gateway to non-judgment and here is where our greatest ally towards true self love lies.

Non-Judgement
The death of our ego, the source of our pain, the keeper of our illusions, the master of our fears and the key to our liberation. Non-judgment will be the hardest work you will face because it is ever present and a constant in our upbringing, media and people around us. Meditation is the tool to bringing peace and awareness in our minds and thoughts. Simply ten minutes a day of sitting in silence with your eyes closed, watching your thoughts, connecting with feeling and discovering the watcher and always going just a moment longer than when you get the pull and desire to stop.

Self-Respect
Respecting how you feel, respecting what you want, respecting your body, respecting your dreams, respecting your mind. Without realizing it, when you connect with your true inner self, your heart will align and connect with those around you that are either on the same path as yours or that are ready to hear or experience what your heart, mind and body have to give them.
But it is in how we treat ourselves that we connect with, feel and understand how to treat, not only others but the entire world we live in.

Boundaries
This is a powerful part of creating self-love and I will have another article written specifically on boundaries – their importance and how to set them.
For now though what can help you to understand self-respect is through the healthy awareness of personal boundaries. These apply to how you want to be treated physically, how you want to be treated emotionally and also by paying close attention to what thoughts you want to be placed within your mind ie. The people around you, radio, television etc. everything you say/eat/feel/hear and do is creating an energetic blueprint for what you are creating within and around you in your future. Everything counts and everything matters.
∗New article on Boundaries

Self-Worth
Self-acceptance and Self-respect create within you a connection to your truth. When you connect with this you can start to understand yourself through a sense of importance in your life. You are unique and alive for a reason. Knowing this gives a spark of self-belief. With this self-belief are the key values you have that make up your own self-worth.

Values
Integrity, honesty, truth, trust, kindness, compassion and honor all are attributes that come forth naturally within you after much of our trials, lessons and hurts we have gone through in life. The ego only wants revenge and to place upon another the same pain it feels itself has received but the soul chooses differently. The heart knows what it feels like to be hurt, lied to, abused and not appreciated and knowing the connection it has with all of life, it never wants to inflict on anyone or anything else the same hurts that it has felt.

Self-Empowerment
True Self-Love has an unbelievable strength and power in it. When you start to make choices towards your life’s dreams, when you start to face the fears that stand in your way and hold you into your comfort zone, when you take actions that are in alignment with who you really are, what you really desire to do, wear, eat, be, say, want and think, this empowers you to fulfill your life experience in harmony with not only your Souls’ goals but with the people, situations, places and everything in your world. Like a rainforest that thrives in harmony with everything growing within it and the sky’s that lay beyond it, so too does your life begin to thrive affecting everything else around it.

Positive Action
Each time you take any action based from love, which is an action towards your truth, it creates a ripple effect that triggers many other things to connect with the fulfillment of what you are meant to do. Actions based from fear will always feel forced, difficult and are often done with anger, frustration and guilt. A positive action is simply one that is done from the heart. Listen to how you feel when you are doing something and if you are questioning if it is positive, relax, breathe and try again. Anything done in urgency is always done in fear. Anything done with ease and speed is always done in love.

Self-love is so often confused with selfishness and ego but in order for Self-love to exist it automatically and naturally flushes out all that exists negative within us. Like light in a dark room, you don’t need to fight anything, because it goes on its own.
I send you all my love on this great and wonderful journey, it may at times be challenging but always remember that without resistance, it is impossible for strength to grow. The world is needing the light of many a strong Soul to help the shifts we all innately desire, to take place within this world.