Appreciation and self-love

Live every day in appreciation....appreciate everything about yourself and everything in your life...even the difficult stuff, for it is here to teach you and grow you into who you are meant to be. When you are living in appreciation of everything, you will notice a good feeling inside. That good feeling is you being in alignment with your higher self, that which connects you to God or Source Energy, the Universe (whatever you want to call it). When you are in appreciation of the difficult times, you begin to seek the lesson to be learned. When you get the lesson, you feel even more appreciation. It's a remarkable feeling. I can tell you this every day, but it's experiential as is everything on the spiritual path. Live it and you will know this to be true. Self-love is knowing you are connected to Source Energy, to God, and that God is pure love so how could you not be? Sit with this thought, it will begin to transform your view of yourself and then transform your life. Again, I know this to be true but it is experiential.
Namaste

Limiting beliefs

I've experienced enough relationships in my life to begin to have a clear vision of what I want in a man and from a relationship. One of the key qualities that became a requirement for me is emotional availability. I want someone who can express openly, honestly, yet compassionately how he feels and what he thinks...another term might be emotionally mature. I had learned through the course of relationships and through much of my own self-growth work that I had been emotionally unavailable in my life and relationships. I won't go into specifics as to why (at least not in this writing), but will just say it was the result of environment and conditioning. It is well written in psychological self-improvement books that you often attract in another those qualities in yourself that you dislike, but unless you are aware of yourself you think it's just something wrong with the other person. I personally don't like to use the word wrong when referring to someone else, but to speak in general terms, that's what humans think...there is something wrong with other people. So I became aware of this characteristic in myself. I had a difficult time truly expressing my feelings, allowing myself to be open and vulnerable to others. I've worked hard at changing that about myself and I think I've come a long way. Even with my friends I feel I'm much more open in telling them how I feel about them and our friendship. Given all the self-work I've done and continue to do, I thought now I would find that man who was emotionally available. And in the beginning of this last relationship, I thought John (not his real name) was. However, it did not take me long to figure out I mistook affection for emotional availability. This would be no revelation to him. I spoke to him about it and he agreed. Now I had to look at why, yet again, did I attract an emotionally unavailable man? I had been clear on my desire and I had done the self-work, what's the deal? The answer came to me the other day. I had a limiting belief that men are emotionally unavailable and it is not possible to find a man who possesses all the qualities I want. This speaks to what many call the law of attraction....your thoughts create your reality... I believe that is true. However, so do your beliefs. Beliefs are thoughts you thought over and over again and they became a core belief. If it's a belief of lack, then it is a limiting belief. I am grateful I came to this realization so that I can now begin to change my thinking and my core belief on men...I can and will have a man who possesses all the qualities I want.

Namaste

Nothing to fear....

You have nothing to fear but fear itself -- very famous and profound words. Also very true words. Many spiritual teaches say there are only two true emotions, love and fear. I have come to know through my own life experience this is true. Whenever there is an emotion of anger, hurt, anxiety, hostility, judgment...what we perceive as negative...dig underneath the surface emotion and you will find fear. Fear of being hurt, fear of being judged, fear of losing something, someone, or yourself. Rid yourself of fear and you come to know no matter what happens in life, you will be all right. This is easier said than done in this human experience, but just begin to try and see for yourself.

I am dealing with a personal challenge right now...the ending of a love relationship. I have moments of anxiety, moments of fear that I will not find someone else with the good qualities this person who is leaving has; fear that I will live my life alone and not have someone "special" to give my love to who openly receives it and gives his love back; someone to share my life with; moments of anger because he chose not to talk with me about his feelings and gave me no voice; angry because I was committed to the relationship and he clearly was not...dig under the anger and I find feelings of hurt and feelings of not being worthy of the effort to work through whatever the challenge was...in another word, fear. I am grateful I have grown in my awareness enough to recognize when the fear rises. I then focus on my breathing, and reconnect to my soul and know I will be okay. I know not only from previous life experience, but also because I know the creative life source I call God is loving, only loving and that life will give me the experiences I need for my highest good. I learned many lessons through this relationship, lessons I can take with me on the rest of my journey. Lessons that will make my next love relationship that much more gentler, that much more flowing. Yes, I am sad when I think about not having this person in my life. He is truly an amazing man. My ego would like to think he chose fear over love and that he will regret this decision. But I know his soul has it's own path to take, perhaps it learned all it could from our relationship and now that relationship is complete. If our soul's were meant to continue on in this lifetime together, he would have made a different choice. Perhaps he would have chose to tell me what he was feeling and why. Perhaps he would have looked for other options than completely closing the door on love. I continue on my soul's journey looking for the lessons in every experience to achieve my highest good in this lifetime. All is a blessing.

Anger - helpful or hurtful

I'm listening the CDs of Abraham-Hicks and I heard an interesting perspective on anger. Anger is a step above depression, despair, apathy on the emotional scale, so rejoice in the feeling and the fact you are moving up the scale. However, it is important to not get stuck in anger and continue moving up the emotional scale. As someone on a spiritual journey, I thought I had to get myself to a place where I never got angry about anything. And aren't we often taught as children that anger is "bad?" I realize now that is far off the spiritual path. The spiritual path includes allowing and acceptance...allowing oneself to feel whatever it is in that moment and unconditional acceptance of what is. Anger is a teacher. Anger is a trigger to figure out what is underlying fear or hurt under the anger. Whenever I find myself angry, I know there is hurt there and I ask myself "what is this really about?" I've been practicing this for years now and so answers come to me quickly. It offers a release from the anger and an awareness of an inner wound that can now be healed.