Love and Freedom
By Sarah Maria
One of the defining themes of my adult life has been this something that I refer to as Love. When the universe forced me into personal crisis a few years ago, it slowly became apparent that a key issue was love. Ever since then, my life has become, in one form or another, a meditation on love: What is love? How do I love myself? Why does my heart feel broken? Will I ever feel loved? How do I love and be loved? Does love exist? Is it just an idea, or is it something real?
So far, I have learned much through this meditation; I have learned much on this journey. This article is designed to help you explore the contours of love in your life, so that you can enjoy the gift that is everyone’s birthright, the gift that the universe wants to give you.
In my experience, learning to love yourself is an essential step on this path of love. It is the first step because if you hate yourself, you can’t go anywhere. But how do we love ourselves? When I was first told to love myself, I had no idea what that meant, nor how to go about it. Love myself? You might as well have been speaking a foreign language. Loving yourself does not mean that you indulge every desire, whim, or impulse. Nor does it mean that you become infatuated with yourself, per se.
Loving yourself means that you take good care of yourself. It means you get rid of all those false voices that say you are defective, incompetent, unattractive, and unlovable-whatever it may be. You begin to see more clearly negative voices of conditioning, and you discover that they are nothing other than conditioning. You slowly learn to break free from them, affirming your inherent self-worth, not because you have done anything or are any particularly way. You are inherently loveable simply because you exist. It is your birthright; it is the gift of being a human being. You accept yourself as you are, and allow yourself to grow and change in the direction of greater peace and harmony.
Self-hatred creates destruction and discontent. As you learn to love yourself, you break free from these negative tendencies and learn to treat yourself with the dignity and respect that is due to every human being.
As you learn to love yourself, as your own heart heals, the natural impulse is for love to flow outward. Your relationships begin to change. You begin to share love with other people. You begin to discover that love does most certainly exist. Yet this love is not a commodity. It is not something that can be earned through merit. Love just shows up. It shows up sometimes on this path of life. You might experience it with your best friend or your lover, maybe a child, or even a parent. As you explore it, you will discover that the love is there first. The love just shows up, and then you find out why it is there.
