An observation on love
From my personal journal
This morning I wrote the following “letter to myself” in my journal. Later I read a book by John Ruskan that helped me wake up from my confusion. I hope you enjoy this. I plan to include more of my personal journals here.
22 Jun 2023
Dear Maureen,
This is so important!
You need to take care of yourself! Nurture you.
You need to give yourself much more love. You need to be “lazy.” You need to do nothing. Listen to music. Read a novel. Watch a movie. Go for a hike. Explore!
You have been writing this book (Wake the F Up) non-stop for 6 years! Non-stop.
You keep telling yourself that the book will be so useful to others – to motivate yourself.
But really, the book is for you. Its what YOU need to wake up!
This is the irony!
Here you are writing a book on waking up, yet you are still asleep by not fully loving yourself!
Hahaha
So read your own book. Do your own work.
Love Maureen
Later that day I was skimming one of my favorite books, “Emotional Clearing” by John Ruskan. He is clearly awake!. In it he talks about love and why we are all so confused about love. My lesson is below.
Here are his beautiful words:
· “We all know that love is the answer to our problems. We all want it and try to maintain it, but we never can completely, in spite of our best intentions. Many spiritual spokespersons simply keep urging us to be more loving, as if it could be done intentionally. We try, only to fail, and feel guilty and inadequate.“
· “The mind can never generate love. No matter how hard you try to talk to yourself into feeling love, you will never succeed; you are setting yourself up for continual failure.”
· “Self-love has nothing to do with using yourself as the object of your love. Self-love comes from within, is generated from within, not from “loving” any object because it may please you tremendously, whether that object is someone else or yourself. Self love is a condition of awareness, a way of perceiving, an attitude, which results in an integrated perception of the world. The art of loving begins with self-acceptance. They are essentially the same.”
· “What is love? Love is the experience of the Higher Self. Love is the euphoric nature of the Witness, simply watching all that happens. Love is of the body, the feeling nature, and not the mind. Love is the unconditional acceptance and experience of all feelings [and all that is.]”
My lesson
Rather than berate myself for not loving myself enough (which ironically is ego-based self-hate), I can practice accepting myself completely. For example,
I can acknowledge that I feel tired, and that is okay.
I can listen to my body and trust it.
I can recall the many things I appreciate about myself.
I can list things to do that make me feel alive.
And when I FEEL more fully accepting of myself, I will vibrate that total acceptance, and love will pour out of me. In that state I will I will automatically do things that feed my soul and the world.