Learning To Love Yourself
— Self-Love from the well that is always full
This post is a part of my ongoing series on Love.
Many paths of spiritual teachings and self-help books speak of the importance of loving ourselves.
It is a common psychological truth that most people are much harder on themselves than they are of others.
Indeed, loving ourselves is often described as a prerequisite for learning to love others.
Although many teachers instruct us to love ourselves and stress the importance of learning to do this, to those who carry within them the pain of guilt, self-recrimination, self-doubt, and lack of self-esteem, this may seem to be an impossible task.
Love who you are, embrace who you are. Love yourself. When you love yourself, people can kind of pick up on that: they can see confidence, they can see self-esteem, and naturally, people gravitate towards you.
– Lilly Singh
Three Key Elements of Learning To Love Yourself
There are three key elements of learning to love yourself that are often left untouched and unexpressed that are of paramount importance.
Be Gentle With Yourself
One is to be gentle with yourself. Look over your life, your weaknesses and failures with compassion. You are not perfect and more important you are not expected or needed to be perfect to love yourself.
Anyone who told you that you need to be perfect to receive love did not know how to love and set you up to fail. Love does not require perfection. Love is available to hold you, to nurture you, and heal you exactly the way you are.
Forgive Yourself
Two is to forgive yourself. Of course, you have made mistakes in your life. That is a part of the human experience. It is how we learn and how we grow.
Past mistakes have nothing to do with the present. They are in the past. You need not carry them into the present.
As you forgive yourself you can tuck them neatly into the past where they belong. Let whatever residuals of self-blame and guilt you may have been clinging to go. They no longer serve you and have no place in your present life.
Look to the Source of Love
Third is to look to the source of love that is a bottomless well that is always filled to overflowing (your Soul.) It is through touching your Soul and bringing forth the love that is always there for you into your consciousness, into your being, that you are flooded with love and filled with resounding joy.
You have within you a Source of self-love that when you become aware of it is unconditional and profound because it understands all of the motives and misunderstanding that created the mistakes or life lessons you have Learned.
Your Soul has been with you since the beginning of time. It knows you completely and accepts and loves you without condition. It is available for you to access whenever you call upon it, whenever you need it.
Your Soul needs nothing from you, expects nothing from you and requires nothing from you and it rejoices in the opportunity to fill you with the love it bears for you, to fill you with the resounding joy that spontaneously arises from the touch of the Soul.
– Genevieve Gerard
From the consciousness of your Soul awareness, forgiveness, Grace, and compassion are available to you. Part of demonstrating that you have learned a lesson in life is letting that lesson be in your past and then, through self-forgiveness and compassion letting it go. Your future is not determined by a past mistake. Your future lies before you unwritten and unformed. It is filled with new possibilities and potential you have not yet had available.
How To Connect
Meditation techniques, visualization, and mantra’s are all available to help you reach for contact with your Soul. This union of Soul and Personality, this oneness with your Source of self-love is the natural state of your being, even if you have never attempted to reach that source before this very moment of time.
In reaching out to touch your Soul you need only be open to receiving the wellspring of Love and Joy that is there to give you all the love your heart can hold, all the joy you have ever imagined.
To be receptive to the experience of the love and the joy of consciously connecting with your Soul, here is a simple meditation to help and support you.
Soul Contact Meditation
If you are ready to open yourself to this possibility, experience this brief Soul contact meditation visualization:
Calm your mind, open your heart, invite the Light.
Sit quietly, open and expectantly and focus your attention on your breath. Observe the natural rising and falling of your breath as you take from life exactly what you need and let go of exactly what no longer serves you. Sit up with your spine aligned. As you breathe let yourself calm your mind and let your attention focus on being right here, right now, totally present in this moment of time.
Be here NOW and open yourself to being aware of your Soul.
Form the intention to touch your Soul, and allow yourself to be open and ready to receive all the love that resides for you in your Soul.
Now visualize or imagine a radiant point of Light about 3 feet above your head. Identify that Light with the Light of your Soul. At the top of your head visualize (or imagine) a fully opened lotus flower. From the radiant point of Light above your head see a golden Light descending, like the Sun nurturing a flower.
Bring that Golden light down into the top of your head and allow it to gently flow down to your heart. Let your heart fill with just the right amount of the Light of your Soul and the Love of your Soul.
Remain open and receptive for as long as feels comfortable to you. Let the love of your Soul for you wash over you. You may be filled with resounding joy or deep profound peace. Whatever you experience is there for you, freely, whenever you want to experience this union of yourself, with yourself.
When you have received from this connection all that you wish or need, return your attention to your breath, noticing the natural rise and fall of the breath and become aware of the world around you.
As you open your eyes and prepare to return to the call of the world, you may notice that you are filled with a love, a joy and a peace that passes understanding. Take that with you out into the world and give that to the world in gratitude for the blessing you have received from the Touch of your Soul.
– GG
By taking this brief time to consciously connect with the Love, the power, and the wisdom of your Soul you are declaring your willingness and intention to be and become all that you are as a human being. You are opening to not only being who and what you are as a human being, but a unique blend of a material human being and a Spark of Divine Light that is the hope of humanity.
As a blended being of Soul and substance you can love and express yourself as the imperfect being of humanity, a being that moves through life learning and growing through all of life’s adventure.
As you learn to love yourself you are exploring and manifesting the purpose of life which is demonstrated by learning how to love, how to forgive, and how to merge what is eternal and empowered, with what is material and temporal. Learning to Love is the most important part of life, and learning to love yourself is an integral part of that process.
Namaste,
Genevieve
The Blessing of Love on all that you do!
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Last updated 7-15-2019
About the author:
Genevieve Gerard teaches Transformational Consciousness – from first awakening to enlightened Soul awareness. She helps you experience the joy that results from the spontaneous “touch of your soul.”
Read more details…
Genevieve has a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy and Theology and a Master of Arts Degree in Counseling and for over thirty years has worked one-on-one with people who were recovering from devastating disabilities and chronic pain. Teaching the mastery of the mind-body relationship she was one of the early professionals trained in biofeedback, visualization, imagery, and meditation as essential techniques to help people heal their bodies, heal their emotions, heal their minds, and heal their lives.
Genevieve’s work demonstrates what she knows so well, “It is spiritual connectedness that triggers physical healing and emotional and mental well-being.” Helping people, like you, tap into your higher-self is the power she wields to guide you to heal and transform your life.
Now, with this understanding, she combines the effective techniques she developed over decades teaching mind-body mastery along with her extensive experience in meditation and spiritual development to create a synthesis of mind-body-spirit that delivers complete healing and opens the door to unlimited personal growth and an encounter with your Soul.
In addition to her current life guidance coaching sessions, and workshops performed around the world, Genevieve has produced more than 20+ guided meditations in the last eight years that are available on iTunes, Amazon, CDBaby, and her website.
It is her vision that through your experience with the techniques of awareness, visualization, and meditation, the love of your Soul will touch and transform your life through her writings and products. It is her sincere desire that the potential of a life of joy and celebration that seems to elude so many people can become a reality for you, now and forever.
Browse her life story and read the Touch of the Soul that changed her world. To contact Genevieve, visit her keep in touch page.
Copyright © 2012-2019 Genevieve Gerard and Touch of the Soul LLC. All rights reserved.
