I don’t know about you, but I am pretty good at making ‘deals’ with myself – little bargains and compromises.
I’ll do yoga today, but I’m feeling pretty tired so I’ll do it later, or maybe I’ll just do the sun salutes rather than the whole primary series.
I’ll eat healthily tomorrow, but today I really want that pizza and chips.
Everything in moderation is a pretty good philosophy on life, except when it comes to one element, which is probably the most important one, but yet the one we compromise ourselves on most frequently – love.
We think that love is a moveable feast – that we can love someone more or less depending on how they treat us or how we feel that day, or if our boss has been mean to us or if the cat knocked over the milk on her way out (only applies if you’re a cat lady). It isn’t.
Loving someone means going all in, all the time. It doesn’t matter what they do, what you do or how you feel, when you love someone you love their soul and that doesn’t waver.
So how the heck does that work when your boyfriend acts like a dick (excuse the language) or you had a really rough day and snapped at your friend when they offered you a cup of tea, because do they really think tea is going to help the situation?! It works because loving someone’s soul isn’t about loving their behaviour, it’s about loving the part of them that is part of you and part of the Universe – the soul part which is intrinsically linked to every other living thing.
You don’t have to condone bad behaviour, either on the part of someone else or yourself, but you can correct lovingly rather than from a place of anger or fear. You can choose to understand that it’s easy to fall into a fearful mindset and react accordingly when we find ourselves in the world we do, but that the only way to get out of that and bring ourselves, and whoever else is involved, back to a loving, peaceful and happy place, is to bring your intention back to love and remind yourself of the love you share, deep down…way past the dirty underwear left on the bathroom floor and the empty milk carton put back in the fridge.
A Course in Miracles teaches us that we cannot go into love half-arsed (not without 100% effort for the non-Northern Englanders of you out there). If there is even a little fear present, then there is no room for love. Love is whole, and complete, and when it is truly present there is no room for fear, anger, or upset of any kind.
Being able to see love in the presence of something you find upsetting or hurtful seems like a near impossible task, but keep remembering that every judgement you make is a result of how you are choosing to perceive a situation. Your senses merely give you data. It’s your brain which decides what to make of that data and what it should mean to you. So place your mind in love and ask to see things differently. A client recently told me that when I first started going on about my ‘I forgive myself and I choose to see this differently’ mantra, she really didn’t know what the heck I was going on about but, after some time of doing it anyway, it clicked, she really could choose to see a situation differently and consequently react to it differently, and that didn’t mean she was condoning back behaviour or putting up with something she shouldn’t, and it actually created space for others to react differently and more lovingly towards her, too.
Make compromises in your life in the name of moderation. Look after yourself and your needs and don’t be too hard on yourself, but do not think that loving yourself ‘a little’ is OK. You can’t just love a little. It sadly means you don’t love yourself at all. Take this moment, and every moment going forward as an opportunity to love yourself completely. Keep showing the smallest amount of willingness and the Universe will meet you where you are. I know – it met me, and continues to meet me everytime I choose differently.
