Awakening to Self-Love

One of the many things that I’ve learned from this multilayered spiritual awakening is to love myself more. I really thought, before my awakening, that I had a handle on loving myself. I thought I knew how to love myself, and in some ways I did. But I’ve since learned that there are deeper levels and nuances to love, even self-love.

I took care of myself and expressed my self-love in my daily routine. Using sunscreen, flossing frequently, taking good care of my skin, those were my expressions of self-love. And, at the time, they were what I could do and what I knew. I was where I was supposed to be, doing what I was supposed to be doing, and being who I was supposed to be at that time.

What I didn’t know at the time was that I had to no idea how to love myself truly, deeply, and with intention. That behavior was never modeled to me. My mom was a single mom of five, working wherever she could to support her children and all without child support. She was surviving. Maybe at the time her version of self-love meant listening to Helen Reddy’s I am Woman at full volume from time to time. I’m not knocking the restaurant it just wasn’t on the menu. It was something I had to learn for myself.

It’s only since my awakening and my new understanding, that I can do better for myself. I learned to love myself better. To do that, I needed to get honest with myself. Ask myself the tough questions like, “Is this the absolute best that I can do in this moment?”, or “Is there a different perspective that I can take on this?”. I needed to challenge my beliefs about self-love.

Asking questions of myself comes naturally to me, and I still had to work at it. Being honest with myself and taking responsibility for every reaction or piece of information was important to the process. And I now see them as self-love. Self-honesty and responsibility are now part of my definition of self-love. We each have our own definition, so no judgement needed of ourselves or others.

Next, I had to figure out how to develop a loving relationship with myself. What did I need in a loving relationship with myself? What did I want from that relationship? It all sounds very strategic and targeted, but I experienced it through interactions with Spirit and channeled scenarios or illusions as I’ve called them. Through these experiences I tried things, rejected things that didn’t work, and found what I needed from a relationship with myself.

Spirit taught me, or showed me, how to discover what self-love meant to me. Part of it was about being more intentional with the loving actions I was already taking. By setting the intention of “this is self-love”, any part of our daily routine can become more loving. And another part of it was discovering for myself through trial and error what felt loving to me. I courted myself. I put a little effort into loving myself. And, in time, I learned to love myself more fully.

If you’re like I was, thinking that I knew what self-love was for me, it may be worth investing a little more energy into asking questions and diving a little deeper. You may even want to court yourself a little. It’s a worthy endeavor. We are all worth loving ourselves and enjoying self-love. Maybe if we all loved ourselves a little more, our world would be a little more loving.

The image today is mine.

Be well,

Nikk