loving yourself

To relate to your pain you have to love yourself, part 4

Our tendency to cling to the agencies of pain comes from our fear of lack.

Of loss.

And to an underlying, even unconscious, sense of separation from the rest of everything.

From each other. From the world. From God.

From ourselves.

It’s that separation from self on which the whole thing rests. When you deny some aspect of yourself, you are cut off from the whole.

Separated.

We grab onto whatever we’re used to. A known quantity. Even if it does not serve us. Even if it’s destructive.

A behavior.

A fantasy.

A situation.

A relationship.

For fear of being left with nothing.

Not realizing that our birthright and our most natural state is to live in connection and prosperity, based on the full, free expression of who we are.

To relate to your pain you have to love yourself, part 2

By Peter Crowell 2 Comments

We tend to recoil from pain. So we don’t easily learn from it. It can take repeated, prolonged encounters with the same form of pain before insight happens.

From malfunctions in relationship, to taking things personally at work, to holding on to anger, to world wars.

It’s the same problem: in recoiling from pain, we move not toward balance, but toward a different form of imbalance.

And that’s guaranteed to perpetuate pain.

To make it worse. To compound it over time. To weave it into the fabric of how we do things.

To relate to your pain you have to love yourself, part 1

By Peter Crowell 2 Comments

Without darkness there is no light. Without sorrow there is no joy. Without this there is no that blah blah blah.

Blah.

Whatever.

That’s not the point. There’s little sense in trying to explain or understand the existence of pain unless you’re going to do something about it.

The real constructive effort lies in learning how to experience it.

Because you’re going to.

Realize, however: you can engage with pain in a way that helps unlock the potential for growth hidden inside it.

We don’t have to live in fiefdom to pain.

In servitude to the exigencies of life.

Pain is a gift basket filled with vital information.

No, okay, not really a gift basket. But it’s filled with clues to what each of us needs to prosper.

To stay in the now you have to love yourself, part 5

By Peter Crowell 2 Comments

Presence is a kind of prayer state. The more present you are the more pure your experience of simple being.

That’s what presence is: simple being with focused consciousness.

You simply are. And you know it.

Presence is not spooky or ghostly. There’s no buzz or euphoria. It’s nothing unusual.

The fuller it is the more normal it seems. It’s just you getting up in the morning.

But really doing it.

It’s ordinary on steroids.

Really, really ordinary.

So ordinary it’s mind blowing.

It’s you and the world as they really are.

Full tilt awareness of that which is.

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Filed Under: Becoming Human, Unleashing the awesome Tagged With: loving yourself, presence, present moment, the now

Self love and staying in the now, part 4

By Peter Crowell 10 Comments

You can learn a lot from distraction. The thoughts that keep recurring. The desires that pull you.

These things are information about how you are inside.

About aspects of you that need expression and haven’t found it yet.

In the present, if you observe, you’ll see your attitudes and orientations. The involuntary aspects of you that may or may not serve.

Stories about the past.

Stories about the future.

Stories about others.

Stories about yourself.

They show up as potential distraction. Little chances to wander away from the present into fantasy.

With work you can notice them, isolate them, heal them, and integrate them so that they no longer distort your perspective or have a negative effect on your experience.

To remain in the now you have to love yourself, part 3

By Peter Crowell 29 Comments

Fullness of life involves openness to whatever life hands you.

Hard.

Easy.

Whatever.

The only way to experience life with balance and completion is to be all in. Each aspect of you. Nothing left in the cupboard.

Nothing ignored, rejected, forbidden, forgotten or lost.

The fury, the lust, the child-like animation, the reliability, the volatility, the tendency to be late.

It’s all you.

To remain in the now you have to love yourself, part 2

By Peter Crowell 6 Comments

Authenticity is passive.

Mostly.

There are times when you have to actively be yourself. But there are aspects of authenticity you can’t “do.”

You cannot deliberately experience joy, for example. You can only allow it to happen.

And experiencing joy is part of being you. No matter what you might think to the contrary. (If you do think to the contrary, you need to practice staying in the now.)

Because being yourself is a byproduct of cultivating presence. Of residence in the now.

We all need to experience our own beauty as often as possible. And we can’t do that hypothetically. We have to step into the present moment, again and again, and take honest account of what we find.

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Filed Under: Becoming Human Tagged With: being yourself, loving yourself, self discovery, the now, transformation

To remain in the now, you have to love yourself

By Peter Crowell 3 Comments

The past is one second ago. The future is one second away. The now is now, and only now.

No matter when that is.

No matter what’s going on.

And the now is where everything happens.

It can be a painful, scary place. And it can be ecstatic. Or it can be calm, steady, almost unnoticeable.

Our level of penetration into the now is called presence. We are only present to the degree that we can bear being in the now.

If the now is too painful, all or part of you will tend to check out. And there are lots of ways to check out.

Not checking out comes down to your ability to relax.

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Filed Under: Becoming Human Tagged With: being yourself, full self, inner obstacles, Love, loving yourself, self discovery

Self love is crucial to developing your talents, part 1

By Peter Crowell 15 Comments

Devoting time and energy to a talent or an idea is an indicator that self love is present.

Developing your talents is crucial to discovering, experiencing and revealing who you really are.

If you are not doing this, then huge regions of your being go unexplored and your sense of self is not what it could be.

You may have created a safe, small world for yourself, where you are in control and things are comfortable.

Or you may have done the opposite. You may have created a world filled with stress, frustration, a job you hate or a relationship that keeps you on edge.

Either way you’ve blocked out your talents. A huge part of you is simply not present.

Because it doesn’t fit in the world you’ve created.

You’ve constructed or become trapped in a world where essential elements of your being are simply not welcome.

But you’re not really trapped. There’s a way out.

Or in, if you like.

It just feels a little dangerous.

Love others, yes. But love yourself first.

By Peter Crowell Leave a Comment

In order to fully realize your potential as a human person, you must allow the unobstructed flow of God to pass through you.

It happens through your talents, your ideas, your relationships.

The energy that brought you into being and holds you there, also empowers you to reveal it to the world through your thoughts, words and deeds.

And you can participate in that on purpose, if you choose to. That’s how you love other people.

You take that flow of the love of God through you and you point it at other people.

But to do that, you have to love yourself.

Because self love is the love of God activated through you. And it is the source of the love you give to others.