When we give our love to our self, our Self will give our love to the world, and when we give our love to the world, the world will give its love to us.
I’m very slowly reading the book: Calling in “The One”: 7 Weeks to Attract the Love of Your Life
I know that the title of this book makes it sound like it is a book for attracting romantic love into your life (and it is about this), but it is also a book about committing to love yourself. So whether you’ve:
already found the love of your life,
don’t care about finding the love of your life,
are looking to find the love of your life,
this book is still for you if you want to be the love of your life.
When you realize YOU are “The One”, seven weeks to attract the love of your life is plenty of time. Since you are already here now, all you have to do is bring forward your tender, true heart. The seven weeks simply comes to be part of a life time of love work. As Rilke writes:
Like so much else, people have also misunderstood the place of love in life, they have made it into play and pleasure because they thought that play and pleasure were more blissful than work: but there is nothing happier than work, and love, just because it is the extreme happiness, can be nothing else but work.
I encourage you to begin this work of
loving yourself,
to continue this work of
loving yourself,
and to fulfill this work of
loving yourself.
Take the space and time for love and know that it will be worth it and it will be difficult. And although in my experience learning to love myself has also meant learning to be in solitude, don’t feel that you are alone in this.
Seek out the support of others:
- Find teachers, counselors, friends and strangers to help you.
- Read Calling in “The One”. And please, when you get this book, don’t just read it but commit to the practices as well. When I put pen to paper or commit to new visions or actions in my life, this is when transformation happens.
- Find a few people who want to move through this book together to support the solitary work of self love.
- Make a commitment to care for yourself.
Katherine Woodward Thomas shares this personal story in the chapter On Making Commitments:
As I stood at the corner, waiting for the light to change (what a great metaphor), I was having a silent dialogue with myself. I was trying to figure out what was missing in my attempts to stop hurting myself by my addictive, compulsive behaviors. Tears began rolling down my cheeks as I realized that no one had ever fought for me in the way that I was being called to fight for myself. No one had ever done to the wall to ensure my safety and well-being. No one had ever risen to heroic heights in order to make sure that i had a chance to thrive in life. In that moment, I made a commitment to take a stand for my life. I would fight for me. I would go to the wall for me. I would be my own heroine. And the light turned green.
Commiting to work on loving ourself is not a luxury it is a practicality.
It is as critical (and vastly more) as making sure your car gets worked on, your social obligations are met, you eat three square meals a day etc.
It is the first and most enduring act to reduce the violence and suffering our world knows.
In 2004 after a very challenging and introspective fall I made a small hand-made book for family and friends of a selection of journal entries from this time. I called the book, The Space Between. The last entry I included was from December 14, 2004 and was as follows:
There is no question that I love strongly. And although this makes me susceptible to suffering, I trust it. I begin to redirect my life toward unknown ends. I loosen my grip on the future. And as I feel my anxieties and tensions more viscerally, as faint but persistent trembles throughout my body, my heart quiets, stretches itself, and takes its seat with courage, and of course, love.
May you all know the whole of the love that you are.
Art and Poetry by Marylou Falstreau. To see more, and purchase, her beautiful paintings, cards and posters click here.
