The Light of Self-Love
Using the Light of Self-Love
by Bob Mangroo
Do you feel beautiful? We cannot see beauty outside of ourselves if we fail to see it inside ourselves. People are often in beautiful situations, and yet fail to grasp the beauty that surrounds them. Their minds have become disrupted with insecure thoughts. Yes, it’s true that at times we can be in a nice place, well dressed and feel wonderful, but what about the times where people are in delightful and ideal situations, and yet feel unsatisfied. No matter what they do or buy, it is never enough fulfillment.
To see the loveliness of life is to not seek it from our environment. We cannot get joy from the outside world if our inner world is filled with bitterness. No amount of cheering up will remedy negativity; no more than trying to make rotten food taste better by sweetening it up with sugar. If a meal is cooked deliciously with fresh foods, you do not need to add anything to it. Similarly, when our internal world feels good FIRST, we need very little to sweeten up our life. Children and animals regularly demonstrate this point. A child will play with an empty box and a puppy will play with a ball and be completely free and joyful. They carry the light of joy no matter where they are and with whatever they have. Their minds have not yet been contaminated with negative influences, and the life force of love still abundantly flows in their consciousness.
Many adults have forgotten this innocence and play. We have become conditioned to hold more attention on our external world and less on our internal world. We have become victims of our environment and rely heavily on our outside world to make us happy. Most people rarely stop to contemplate who they are. The beauty of life is already contained within us for life itself IS the beauty. It’s not about how our body looks; the magic is we have a body. The fact that we can experience life through our five senses is a wonder all by itself. We tend to pay little attention to our own body, mind and soul, and yet our own individual self is mysterious, magical and as complex as the workings of the universe.
To embody the beauty of life, one must enter self-love. Self-love dispels insecurities and heals emotional pain and suffering. This may sound like sentimental ideology, but it is the most practical thing we can do to improve our lives. Self-love releases a fresh new energy and a higher perspective of life and self. Our lives then build from that loving place. Often, we hear about raising our spiritual light, creating our reality and connecting to God consciousness. Yet none of these things can happen efficiently without self-love. How can we attract success if we feel unworthy of success? How can we attract love if we don’t feel loveable? How can we be healthy if we are harassed with self-criticism? How can we become compassionate if we are unkind to ourselves? Self-love is the spring board that we jump from to enter our higher nature, spiritual light and success.
Our self-love becomes the guiding principle in which we live and function from. Would you like to do business or be in a relationship with someone who hates themselves and hates the world? Or, would you rather be in the presence of someone that is peaceful, loving and compassionate?
A person can only be peaceful and compassionate because s/he has found self-love. As human beings, we are naturally drawn to the light of self-love.
Keep in mind though what self-love is not. It is not arrogance or some form of grandiose thinking that you are superior to others. Self-love is simple, quiet and non-judging. We acknowledge the sacred nature of who we are as an individual, and we see the beauty in others as well by reducing our opinions and judgement of ourselves and others.
When we devalue ourselves, we will tend to criticize and judge ourselves harshly, and we will find faults in almost everyone and everything we encounter. Life appears to have many flaws and the world becomes uglier in our hearts and minds. Low self-love represents an old consciousness and comes from influences, beliefs and negative teachings that were placed upon us from the past. We have become conditioned to think low of ourselves either through negative comments or abuse from family members or relationships. Perhaps, we have even been following incorrect teachings given to us from religious and school systems, etc.
If for some reason we have been exposed to negativity, the good news is that we can through our will change how we feel about ourselves. In other words, we can learn to love ourselves again. We can rid ourselves of insecurities by shifting our attention toward self-love. Very much like a boat turning around and coming back to shore, we can turn around and come back home to ourselves. There is no need to search the empty waters for love. Instead, we must come back toward the love that already resides in the shores of our own hearts.
We must stop being our own enemy and become friendlier toward ourselves. We can go a long way if we practice to think more about what’s right about ourselves instead of what’s wrong.
Do not make self-love a form of hard work, and most importantly, do not fight your mind. If you have self-condemning thoughts, do not get upset for thinking so. Just calmly bring your attention back to something pleasant about yourself. This practice will bring you back to self-appreciation and self-love. Spiritual mastery is to not spend a single moment fighting the dark. Rather, it is to spend all of your time raising your light. Then, you will discover that life is in fact beautiful. Most of all, you are beautiful, so take a moment and imagine you are meeting yourself for the first time. With goodness in your heart, step forward and shake hands with your own soul.
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About the Author
Bob Mangroo is a personal potential coach and spiritual teacher. His training and coaching work includes hypnosis, meditation and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). In addition, he has earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology at York University in Toronto, Canada. www.bobmangroo.com
