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Today on Illuminations,
Learning to Love Yourself.
Isn't it strange that often it feels easier to love and care for other people than it does for ourselves?
So many of us are not at ease with receiving kindness,
As if it were uncomfortable,
As if compliments wash over you like water off a duck's back.
You receive a gift and you blush,
You say,
Oh it's too much.
Yet the tiniest criticism penetrates.
It seeps in so much easier.
You are not immune to your own criticisms.
Your body hears everything your mind says.
It feels and remembers.
Self-talk matters because your cells are listening.
Self-love and compassion is a practice.
And like anything you want to cultivate,
It requires tending to.
You first plant the seeds of self-love and then you attend to them.
Water them with words of kindness.
Lean the sunlight of your heart towards them.
You become intimate with these beautiful parts of your nature so they feel more readily available.
Sometimes self-love might look like saying nice things about yourself to yourself and meaning them.
Sometimes self-love might look like expanding your capacity to receive,
To open yourself to the depth of beauty,
Compassion and grace that resides within and around you.
Sometimes self-love might look like kindness,
Saying that it's okay to feel like this whatever this is in any given moment.
Sometimes self-love might look like staying with yourself through the difficulty,
Holding your own hand even when you recoil at the touch.
And sometimes self-love might look like simply forgiving yourself over and over and over again.
Metta is a word in the Pali language that means loving-kindness.
And it's also an ancient practice to help make our hearts more porous,
Like moisturizer to soften dry hardened hearts,
Because a hardened heart is harder to penetrate.
So we make the heart more porous to absorb the full tide of joy,
Compassion,
Kindness that is available.
We sweeten the mind and pacify whatever is standing between you and a sense of self-healing.
Today we practice giving this metta to ourselves.
This is the first step,
Because we can't give to others something we don't ourselves already have.
The ancient teachings say that metta is the first of the four great immeasurables,
The Brahma,
Viharas or divine abodes.
And when we tap into our true nature,
We have a boundless capacity for love.
It's not a finite resource.
It's what you are made of.
So in a way,
You don't really have to try.
All you have to do is remember.
Begin by taking three deep breaths.
Let the air flow freely through you,
Each exhale softening you like a breath massage.
Feel your shoulders and jaw let go and the earth receive your body fully.
And then you become still with just the soft rhythm of inhale and exhale in the background.
Now you're going to repeat these phrases silently to yourself.
The words are like little pebbles that you drop into the still lake of your being.
And then you let the ripples wash over you.
Let the meaning mingle within you,
Sending sweet well-wishes from yourself to yourself.
The first phrase,
May I be free from harm?
Continue to repeat silently,
May I be free from harm?
A gentle kindness,
Let it soak in.
The next phrase,
May I be happy as I am?
That's as I am right now,
Not if or when,
But here,
This moment,
In all my perfect imperfection,
Can you mean it?
May I be happy as I am?
The final phrase,
May I be at peace with what comes?
May I be at peace with what comes?
Sometimes when you become still,
The unfinished business of the heart can arise in the wake of meta.
If resistance or any difficult emotions arise,
Love those as well.
So you practice loving all the parts of yourself,
Especially the parts of you that are unwanted,
That you Now simply rest like this.
Release the phrases,
Allow your being to steep in the ripples of meta to bask in its aftermath.
No need to try,
Let it wash over you.
Now begin to rouse yourself.
In a few moments,
You'll get up and move back out into the into your life.
But remember these seeds of self-love that you've planted and keep watering them with your kindness and your attention.
Trust that they will grow and eventually they will bloom.
And you will find an abundance of love available to you as you live amongst the glorious gardens of your heart.
