Self-care: The bridge back to Universal Love
PRINT PAGE
Self-care: The bridge back to Universal Love
We think of self-care as something we need to do, so that our human body can function better. There is a basic truth to this, but what if self-care is just not an end in itself but a doorway, a bridge back to the magnificence of who we truly are, to Universal Love?
Our lives are not our own. From early childhood and onwards, life for most of us is characterised by trying to conform to a world that is largely loveless. And conform we do. Our adult lives become daily moments of trying to be something we think others want, as we grasp for things on the outside to fill the emptiness within. We do daily battle with the doubt that plagues us and engage with an unquenchable desire for anything and everything that will, even for a moment, numb us or take us away from the inexplicable pain inside that seems to have no source and no name.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth quintessentially encapsulates this when he states that life is but “a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. Life without love is indeed an empty misery. And like Macbeth, we too run in restless circles to the beat of a loveless drum that is not of our own making.
And yet as babies and young children we knew what we were, we knew what love was. We felt it in our inner hearts and we knew, deep inside, that we were great Universal Beings from great Universal Love. This means, at its most basic, that we had an inner knowing that we and everyone else was more than just human; that together we were part of a great One-ness that was literally out of this world. It is the connection to this Universal One-ness that joyfully and transparently radiates out of the eyes and faces of newborns. And it is there for all to see if we but allow ourselves to ‘see’ with our inner hearts.
Most of us have created lives sufficiently buffered and numbed to no longer remember the spectacular beauty and vastness that we are from and which we are called to live in our human incarnations. Nevertheless, some of us have had enough of the emptiness, some of us are questioning our world and our relationships and our place in it all, some of us are waking up.
So how do we return to living the great Universal Love which we innately already are?
Consider the following three steps:
1. Self-Care
The great return to universality and universal love begins with self-care. This humble step, or series of steps, is crucial. We do not realise how far we have strayed from the multidimensional sensitivity, love, wisdom and intelligence that we are. We are thus called upon to instigate this initial movement, which is in many ways basic, simple, functional and mechanical. What this means is that we need to put into action a whole new practice of living that is genuinely self-caring. For example, what we eat and drink, how we exercise, what entertainment we engage in, how and when we put ourselves to sleep and so forth, has to be put on the table and honestly explored as to whether it is aligned with self-care or whether it is not.
Throughout this step we need to consider that anything that takes us away from feeling the sensitivity of the body is a barrier to us returning to the fullness of what and who we really are.
It is not possible to bludgeon the body with alcohol, cigarettes and even caffeine and hope to nurture our multidimensional awareness and sensitivity. The body needs to be treated as the heavenly vessel of light that it is because it is indeed the vehicle that holds our immortal presence.
2. Self-Love
When we have started to arrest habitual patterns that do not truly serve us through the process of self-caring, we begin to feel the subtlety of the body. And through the body we start to feel a tangible quality that is our innermost being, our essence, our Soul. And this gives us a whole new marker for what we are. Engaging in past practices that numbed our awareness now becomes less enticing because connecting with our Soul presence reveals the magnificence and grandness that we are from, which becomes a profound and life-changing experience.
We begin to love ourselves from the inside out. We start to discard and reject the loveless dictates that the world imposes on us, which feeds us restrictive ideals and beliefs about what we are as men and women, and we begin to source the light inside of us instead, the knowing of who we are in truth. The more we discard what is not true, the more we fall in love with what we really are – beyond this life, identity, name and job title.
Part of this process involves the healing of our hurts – whether these stem from childhood or even further back, from past lives. If we hold onto our hurts, we are owned by them – evident in how we carefully shape our lives in ways that do not trigger these hurts and how we react in dramatic ways when these hurts are activated by external situations. It is thus in this second step that we are called to honestly and lovingly work with and heal our hurts. By doing this we eventually discover that our hurts are not even real – we don’t own them, they own us!
So why do we hold onto our hurts so tightly, even when we know they are causing us to behave in ways that do not serve us? The answer to this human dilemma cannot be resolved with the intellect or with our five human senses, but in connecting with our multidimensional origins. Long ago, there was a part of us, the spirit, that chose to move in separation to the whole of us, our Soul. The spirit does things we know are not good for us – eating too much, drinking too much, staying up late and all the things we do that we know we should not be doing – and this part drives us to behave in ways that keep us moving and living in separation from the whole of who we truly are. It is this spirit that hangs onto our hurts, using them as an excuse to justify ‘our’ attitudes and behaviours, which keep us living in separation to our Soul, to the whole. And when we are willing to let go of these hurts, seeing them as not personal, not ours, then the doorway to our Soul and to Universal Love opens up again.
3. Universal Love
What we are is Universal Love. And it is the grandest love of all. The connection to our bodies that we nurtured in step 1 and step 2 becomes the foundation for an alchemical transformation. We begin to sense and perceive the world beyond the limitations of our body. Through the human vessel, yet simultaneously beyond this vessel, we begin to feel the multidimensional space we hold across the universe, which connects us to everyone and everything.
We realise there is no ‘self’ in this level of love because there is no separation between us and others; that we are ultimately One. Separation is revealed as the great human illusion. This inspires us to be of true service to others because we feel the fact that we are equally part of a greater and grander whole.
We begin to understand what Love truly is and the responsibility of expressing this Love in the actions that we do, the words that we speak and the thoughts that we allow. And yes, it may be difficult to understand Universal Love until we begin to (re)connect with it. Suffice to say it is worth starting to take these steps, for the joy of Universal Love is far beyond any momentary pleasure that can be gained by satisfying our earthly desires, any fleeting distraction that is being peddled on any street corner or any temporary stimulation that is offered on our television sets. Indeed, it is not until we have (re)discovered Universal Love that we come to understand what it truly means to live and love. But we all know what Love is, and deep down we all know that we are grand and universal beings that come from a Love beyond our imaginings, for we live and move within a grand body of that same and equal Love, the Oneness we are and come from.
And it all begins with the humble steps of self-care…
Filed under
Evolution, Healing, Livingness, Love, Self-love, Soul
