Introduction

How often do we hear others (and possibly ourselves saying  “I hate how I look, my body, myself”? How often have we experienced intense embarrassment because we have dressed, said or even thought something that would be perceived as inappropriate to the event or occasion?

Hands on your hearts how many of you reading this can raise your hand when I ask “Do you love yourself”?

I would wager that very few can genuinely love most aspects of themselves.

WHY? This is THE existential dilemma that most human beings face at some point in their lives.

What is love?

Well, we all know the word. And most of us hanker for it. Generally, especially as we reach adulthood it is confused with carnal love. I would like to  make a distinction between  love (4th chakra) as a part of the spectrum of feelings,   and emotional love (2nd chakra) (sensations)  that is part of our ego neediness /procreation/security/physical intimacy, identification with others, etc.,

Love as in feelings is exemplified in empathy, appreciation, and acceptance, in this space the mind is quiet and there is no criticism or moral judgment of oneself or others.

It is a place that by definition stretches beyond the confines of the ego, It is the bridge between the soul and the human being.

One cannot inhabit the heart without connecting with emotions. To be in one’s heart is to have the emotions free flowing through ourselves. – Complete beingness

Human being or personality?

A human being is a description of an integrated human body where all three centers (physical, emotional, and mental) are communicating with each other, and as a result, there is a state of partial ‘beingness’ and flexibility.

The human behind the mask

A person-(ality) is a description for an organism that exhibits a level of rigidity within its overall system arising from mental/emotional conflict. Ie.  Rigidified and constrained in its physical, emotional, and mental expression. To the extent that, that human is identified with the surface layer we call a personality there will be very little ‘beingness’ in its day-to-day existence.

What are emotions?

Emotions are a label that describes sensations generated in our bodies as a result of hormonal release and nervous system electric discharges to activate muscles, alert the sympathetic/parasympathetic immune system, and prepare the internal organ to respond to fight /flight action.

The initial emotional impetus will be from memory arising within our DNA (genetic,) or an imaginary response based on previous experiences. (ie. last time there were snakes in that field. Today I am weary as I walk through it). It could also originate from the olfactory sense of smell. ( Pick up a pheromonal scent from a potential partner to subliminally gauge if our immune systems are compatible for procreation.

The purpose of emotions is to safeguard our bodies from external threats,  defend ourselves, procreate, bond with, and maintain relationships that in turn will aid our safety as well as the safety of our family.

Emotions? there is just one emotion  FEAR. Although there are many flavors.

Fear is a healthy response to our environment which will lead to positive action. Fear has been weaponized against us! we have been taught to suppress emotions through mind programming and fear is the weapon to keep us in check and docile. The result is that most of us have a prevalence to respond in the world via reactive fear as a backlash to the suppressed thoughts and emotions that control our day-to-day actions.

Humanity has been highjacked!  We have been indoctrinated to listen to the mind programs fed to us from infancy to obey, not question, be an individual, or think for ourselves. To this end history, religious education, and ‘do as you are told’ have been firmly implanted to give us a version of reality that will keep us subservient consumers, as well as ignorant of how the financial, economic, and political systems truly function.

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For the majority of people, their experience of fear is prodded into action by the mind programs For controlling and suppressing behavior.  This fear, operating at a subliminal level,  is experienced as a reaction to thoughts or emotions considered unacceptable (by one’s programming) in ourselves or others.

Spirituality

Spirituality or the connecting with the spirit dimension is another way of saying dis-embodied. We live in a world where large amounts of people are seeking ‘Spirituality’ in a desperate bid to find themselves /inner peace or meaning in the belief and/or that somehow they can escape death.

As I shared in the last article, there is no escape from the ego, the body dies and it’s lights out for the computer.

I said dis-embodied and this is the sad part, most of us are disembodied for large parts of our lives, which is precisely why we go searching for answers. What we find is more of the same since ‘spirituality’ refers to beyond the body. If you wish to find yourself, to know who you are, the answers are ALL in your body! including emotions, suppressed or otherwise.

Bagua circle walking
Be in your body.

Purpose and meaning will be found in the menial activities of life. Not in ‘spiritual’ books. The caveat is, that whatever activity you embark on, do it to the best of your ability, by working with your body (ie. BE in your body).

There is a soul fragment bonded with each human being and it can only communicate via the heart. Hence true spirituality is, connecting with our hearts and allowing the soul fragment within us to experience life to the full. All that stands in the way are the mental limiting beliefs and the suppressed emotional traumas, from this and past lives.

Awareness of Self

I keep going on about the ego. But what is it about us humans that allows this self-awareness/reflection of self? How do you know that you exist right now this second as you read my words? Dismiss the explaining words in your head. How do you know you exist?

You can be aware, focussed, and concentrated on a task yet be in your body and aware not just of the environment but the direction your task will take you towards. or you can be reacting to present circumstances aware of your thoughts, perhaps reactive emotions. trapped and identified with them. In such a state, only you exist, at the mercy of your mechanism.

For me, this awareness can either be in the background (my body is running on automatic) my other senses along for the ride, or, take center stage, when it is center stage the world stops. If you like, a consciousness within me is in charge, when it is in the background it observes the workings of the machine without interfering. Somewhere between the two is my sense of self, which in my case, is emotional/heartfelt.

This awareness is the result of all 3 centers, mental, emotional, and physical operating in tandem. it wasn’t always like that of course because we are all damaged growing up in this culture. Our suppressed emotions and the subsequent deadening and sense of disembodiment are at the core of this lack of continuity of sense of self.

And there you have 2 very important clues towards self-fulfillment, peace and contentment.

I don’t wish to throw the baby out with the bath water ‘Spirituality’ as a rallying cry is an important concept primarily as an ideal for humanity to find its way back to their hearts as well as a road map to describe the ‘Reality’ we all partake of. However, ‘Spirituality’ in its true sense (according to ~Charley/me) has been infected and distorted with all manner of child-like wish fulfilments by immature souls inhabiting fractured and underdeveloped egos.

This might be a good place to add that beginning next year. I am working with small groups of people who are ready to jump in to release the blocked parts of their psyche holding them back, and now is a good time to research and possibly apply. Self-discovery retreats 2025

Self-hate, dislike, abhorrence, disgust, lack of self-worth, etc.,

Finally! we come to the second part of this article, for this is the biggest stumbling block to inner peace and connection with our hearts. First of all please bear in mind that all self-negativity arises in the mind, where mental programs are accumulated by osmosis from the world around us or, as a direct experience of our interactions with other humans, and occasionally from our experiences with Nature.

Invariably, growing up means that our bodies grow with minds filled with rules on behavior, emotionally crippled and our heart connection increasingly stunted. We learn very young to suppress certain emotions and we learn pretty young to be self-critical. Children are very loving and connected with their hearts from infancy, yet gradually and surely, their hearts fade into the background with the passing of years.

Love and companionship

Our journey is to recapture that heartfelt connection. We hope to have it with a partner. Unfortunately, by the time we are adults we have a black hole of yearning within our emotional body. We seek others to love us, and occasionally we find comfort in the uncritical, non-judgemental acceptance of an animal.

However, our well-entrenched lack of self-worth, dislike, disgust, and or abhorrence is like a bottomless pit, no matter how much love, and attention others give us it will never be enough.

Ever since I cleared all the emotional traumas and beliefs that were holding me back I had assumed that I truly loved myself, yet in writing this article ~Charley has dissuaded me from such a fantasy. Yes, I truly do love myself, and this is important to understand and appreciate, about ourselves. NO One escapes undamaged, a tree that has grown gnarled will always be so.

The get-out clause is to love ourselves whilst accepting our weaknesses and imperfections. We can not rely on others loving us, somehow we need to learn How to love ourselves, for only we can feed the deep yearning in us. To be able to truly love another dispassionately (not out of neediness) begins by loving ourselves.

Ok, so easier said than done! Here are several exercises and steps that will in time reward you with success. Let’s assume that you are already working on connecting with your breath and body. This is one of my earliest articles on the body.

Self-help approaches to self-love

Whenever you accidentally physically hurt yourself acknowledge the pain and sensations, take a moment and focus! YOU have done this to yourself, accidentally for sure, yet your awareness was elsewhere, and your body suffered. Experience regret, place your hands on the area of hurt, be the pain and sensations, soften your gaze, feel and empathize with that part of your anatomy, and treat your body as though it were a little child that hurt itself, give it focus, and attention.

 Here is a little exercise write two columns one for everything you love about yourself and one for everything you dislike ( you don’t have to show this list to anyone, give yourself permission to write it all out and give them a star rating from least to most.

Once you have written them all out keep it somewhere accessible to you. each morning you could contemplate one of the lines of what you dislike or hate, permit yourself to explore the surface emotion generated, experience it in your body, and allow it to generate tension. Once you have truly experienced it consciously, explore the mind program behind it, the criticism/judgment real or implied. What memories does it raise from your past? Where did you pick up such a belief?

There will inevitably also exist an underlying and much deeper emotion. Embarrassment? Loss? Loneliness? Shame? Longing?  Emotions of rage and envy are reactions to a deeper pain.

I wouldn’t expect you to experience the whole of such emotional intensity. For now, I would hope for you to acknowledge and experience that your present behavior is related to long-forgotten disturbances.

The Inner Smile

In my early days, I found the following exercise invaluable to learn to love myself. It is a strange way of talking, ‘ learning to love ourselves’. and yet that is what we must do if we truly seek contentment and inner peace.

The principle of the Inner Smile is simple, each of our internal organs has a relationship to an emotion, and when it is suppressed that emotion operates in the background it affects our health and controls our behavior in relationships. Invariably given long enough it will be an organ that becomes imbalanced.

The remedy is to consciously connect with love in each organ, then link them all together as we experience the love reflected to the whole of the organism.

Internal Organs

It is easier to start the smiling process by focusing on the eyes, we soften our gaze and lightly squeeze the outer edges, and ditto for the mouth as we allow a little upward movement of the lips into a smile.

We take our smile and regenerate it as appropriate, to each of the internal organs in turn, the heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys, and liver. With time the smile will turn into a feeling. This will do for now. I will make a video meditation of it in the near future.

To end this particle. let me reiterate, we are all in a state of conflict because we have taken on board beliefs from others on how to be around people, what our bodies should look like, how to dress, cultural standing about work, wealth, etc.,

We then criticize ourselves for not being good enough. Be aware of how you criticize, judge, and or demean others, because invariably that is how you react to yourself

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