Learning to love ourselves is our eternal task and I believe the main reason we reincarnate in this world. If we do not learn to love ourselves in a healthy way, we will hardly have a healthy relationship with other human beings and nature. Self-love is a very broad concept that includes many psychological constructs such as self- esteem, self-compassion and self-acceptance; it means taking care of our self at a physical, spiritual, and emotional level. Self-Love is an endless job, but the good news is that the more you work on it, the better you feel and the better life gets!
Becoming aware of the erroneous ideas about self-love and love for others:
Learning how to love our self is a topic we are hardly educated at schools, much less at work and other institutions in society. It is the reason why we still find some groups in society that encourage people to endure unnecessary pain or suffering on the self to obtain something good in life or to go to heaven. There are also groups that still erroneously explain that great spiritual teachers, like Jesus Christ, purposefully gave upon their body out of “love” and to “save” us from our sins.
Instead, we should be educated with the idea that the real message of the great spiritual teachers in history is love and compassion, and if they lost their lives in a cruel way is because they were actually assassinated by a group of people who did not know how to love themselves and others. Everybody has the power to save themselves in this life, let’s use that power. We have the power to save ourselves and others by loving ourselves. Creating and believing unhealthy statements only damage our true nature and ability to love our own self and evolve in a healthy way.
Common mistakes we make in life when we don’t love ourselves:
- We deny and ignore our gifts and talents. We tend to hold on the erroneous idea that we have to do and be what others want us to be or become.
- We go into life choosing professions and making relationships that do not fulfill us. We tend to choose friends that reflect our own fears and insecurities.
- Creating relationships with the idea that others have to love us and makes us happy before we become happy and love ourselves.
Practice self-love:
There is power in self-love. We, as Children or Lambs of God-the Divine Intelligence, have the essence of pure Love in our hearts and spirit; and as such, we are capable of creating great things for ourselves and others. But first, we need to take of ourselves physically, mentally, and spiritually.
- Honor your true self and calling by doing the things that bring you joy and positive energy every day. Practicing these habits have brought more health, creativity, and joy to my life.
- Remember to be kind to yourself in the good and bad times. Use loving, happy, self-soothing and compassionate words with yourself. Check the words you say to yourself when you make a mistake or things do not go the way you want. Changing the way I talk to myself has improved my health mentally, spiritually and physically.
- Love your body, it is the vehicle that accompanies you in this life-time. Practice your favorite sport, get a massage, a facial and eat healthy, natural, organic food.
- Get to know your Spirit by practicing meditation, doing the things you love to do. Remember you are a spirit having a human experience, take care of that spirit that will be with you forever.
- No one is perfect, unconditionally give love to yourself when you fall in an old pattern of not loving yourself.
Loving you unconditionally!!
Flor
The idea that All of us are the children of God who take away the flaws and the mistakes of this world-beginning with ourselves-, came to my mind many years ago during my first encounter with the North American culture. One afternoon I was standing up at a big open field outside my house and my knowledge of the richness and miseries of the North and South American cultures went deeper inside my mind and I had to request an answer from my spirit. I could not continue keeping the same old ideas that usually live in a person who lives inside the same culture for many years.
It took some time and countless personal and spiritual life experiences for me to fully comprehend the real meaning behind this insight. Now I understand that my spirit was telling me that the challenges in this world may look so big, but we need to remember that we are the children of God who can take away the flaws of this world and that any change begins with us. And that can no longer ignore the fact that we are responsible for the creation of our individual, global and universal reality. To continue repeating the idea that another being is going to remove our mistakes and erroneous ideas by magic is just not going to help us make our lives and this world better.
We are living in times of very profound personal and spiritual transformation that call us to evolve, to grow and to create a better world for all of us. It is our job now to take personal responsibility for our ideas, actions, and its consequences, by looking inside ourselves and asking what we can do to create a more beautiful life and world.
This idea that all of us are the child of God who takes away the flaws of the world does not ignore the work done by many spiritual teachers and healers such as Jesus Christ, to whom I am sure many of us are very thankful. On the contrary, it is time for all of us to follow on his great examples of spiritual growth and evolution, to learn from his possible mistakes and to work on creating a heaven on Earth. We have to accept that the only beings who can save ourselves from misery, pain, and violence that still prevails in this world is us, in alignment with the divine universal energy, Source, God consciousness, or however you want to name it.
To anyone who right now is going through some level of personal/spiritual transformation I want to tell you that you need to remember that you too are a child of God and no matter what has happened in your life or is happening to you right now, you have the power and the opportunity each moment of a day to make wiser choices and to begin creating a better and happier life for you and the world. Your most powerful tools are the ones many spiritual teachers such as Jesus have taught us: prayer, peace, joy, forgiveness, and love. Here, I want to share with you some tips that have helped me grow personally and spiritually each day:
- Realize that you are a child of God, the Divine energy or however you want to call it, and begin loving and appreciating yourself as such. You have more power inside yourself than what you think. We are spiritual beings having human experiences for our own development.
- Remember we have free will to choose our own path. Every transformation begins inside yourself. Whatever your situation is right now, it is your choice to decide what road you will follow. One day I chose I wanted to be happier, truthful, and began searching for ideas, actions and people who could help me achieve that goal every day.
- Forgive yourself and others for past harms. Choose to love yourself and others daily. Cultivate peace and positive energy inside you.
- Please do not feel you are alone in this task. Use meditation and prayers to call the Holy Spirit, God (s) and spirit guides into your life to help you. Prayer is my first tool when I don’t know the solution to a problem.
- Take action and work daily in the direction you want to go. If on any day you fail to act in the direction you want to go, forgive yourself, be kind and loving with yourself and continue working in creating your best self.
Are you aware that giving thanks to nature, people and God (s) has been such an important act in our lives since ancient times? Our ancestors (from different cultures around the world) recognized that being thankful to the universe was essential to life. These days, thanks to scientific research, we know that our ancestors were on the right path, expressing gratitude is beneficial for our mind, body, spirit, and of course, to our relationship with others.
Some things I do on Thanksgiving Day, and I try to do every day
Reflect on your abundance: I love to meditate on the many things I am grateful for, small and big things that happened to me during the year that is ending. For instance, I evaluate how my life has transformed during this year, how much I have evolved spiritually, the loving lessons I learned on my mind, body, spirit, and God; and on everyone who contributed to this transformation.
Give thanks: to people, nature, the living Divine Force (God), etc. You can do it face to face, in writing, or mentally. You can be thankful to somebody who lives close to you or far away from you, to someone who lives in the physical world or in the immaterial world. Give thanks for the past, present and future, for all and everything.
Give thanks to yourself: Be thankful to you, appreciate yourself for all your efforts in transforming, evolving, and creating a more beautiful life for you and the world.
Say thanks in your daily life: On Thanksgiving day I also make sure that I am still pronouncing the word “thanks.” As many of you know, I spent my childhood and early 20s in a South American culture that taught me to say thanks to people everywhere and every day. It was so natural to say “thanks,” that when somebody had forgotten to say it, we would notice it immediately. Now, I know that it was one of the things that kept us alive, joyful, and optimistic in spite of the instabilities we had to experience every day in our economically underdeveloped culture.
Teach how to say “thanks”
Sometimes, I ask myself: What is happening in our contemporary culture? Why is it that these days I find more and more children, and some young adults, who do not express gratitude? I wonder if nobody is teaching them how to appreciate the things they receive from others and/or if they are learning to take things for granted. So, I have decided that after I help a child or an adolescent and I don’t hear the word “thanks” in return, I usually ask: “Did you say thank you?” “What do you say?” In other cases, I just instruct them to say: “thanks.” I love it when they say “thank you,” I know they feel better after saying it.
Give Thanks for all the positive and all the negative
This is one of the lessons I treasure from my mother and my Andean culture of origin, and something I have sometimes forgotten during my travel around North America.
It is probably easier to give thanks for things that we evaluate as positive or good, than for things we evaluate as negative experiences in our lives. Expressing gratitude for all the good things in our lives will bring us more positive emotions, better health and happiness to us; but, what about the negative things that are happening or happened to us (divorce, loss of a love one, loss of job, not much money, betrayals, negative criticism, etc.)? Give thanks for them too; not because you like the negative experiences and you want them to happen again; but because those experiences are teaching you valuable life lessons.
Do not get me wrong, I know how difficult it can be to say thanks to life or the Universe for the “negative” experiences, especially when you do not understand what is going on at that moment; but, as I have learned it, saying “thanks” to life (for the lessons) during difficult situations in life, will bring you peace, and allow you to pass the pain you are feeling at that moment and to focus on examining your situation (and everybody involved in it) more carefully.
So, this Thanksgiving holiday, and every day, I encourage you to give thanks, not just for the positive things that are happening in your life, but also for the “negative” experiences, because, eventually, they will transform into positive spiritual lessons that will help you create and live a better life.
Thank you for all your love, and Happy Thanksgiving Day!
Flower
“For each new morning with its light, for rest and shelter of the night, for health and food, for love and friends, for everything Thy goodness sends.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”Albert Schweitzer
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