Love as a healing force

I have practised and preached the importance of self-love for years now, but this experience (cancer) has really magnified the importance of living in love. Self love is not just a concept or technique. It’s not just an experiment with self esteem or spiritual discipline. Being forced to look at life and death, in this very personal and urgent way, has made me realize that love, both internal and external, is the ultimate operating system.

It is so difficult to define love. Everything I have learned about love has been distorted by experiences and judgements. Earning love, being accepting and receptive to love and feeling worthy of love is very confusing. It’s very hard to not confuse self love with romantic love; my automatic response to the questions, instantly brings up relationships with other people. Intellectualising love raises issues of betrayal, disappointment, cynicism, humiliation, vulnerability, anger, resentment, fear and pretty much all negative or painful emotions.

Another big obstacle, is the question of worthiness; the belief that love needs to be earned or manipulated. Am I clever enough, beautiful, sexual, kind, successful, charismatic, fun, charming, funny or interesting? How can I be loved, if I am not lovable? Don’t you need to impress people to earn their love? Compete with others to maintain that love? Hide your faults and weaknesses to justify that love?

I can’t understand love by looking at my self as the object of love, through the eyes of others. I try to turn it around and analyse what it is like for me to love others, and then imagine feeling that way about myself. This is also difficult, because once again, my mind wants to rattle off a list of attributes or conditions that I admire. No, it’s unconditional love that I need to define.

I try to focus on love without thinking about myself or other people. I recall feeling love when:
Floating on my back in the ocean.
Looking into my sons eyes when he was a baby.
Stroking a cat.
Listening to music.
Staring into a huge fire.
Watching a sunset.

This a just a small list of many times I have felt love, and it’s helpful to remember such things when I want to remind myself of the feeling, but it’s still not getting at what unconditional love would be. I really want to find a place within myself where I can generate and maintain that sense about myself and about my life. Love can evoke many emotions, but what I want is to feel it as an energetic frequency, operating my awareness or my sense of self. I want the lightness, joyfulness, radiance, creativity, security or the sense that everything within and outside of me is in perfect order. I guess that what it is that I am aiming at is a state of fearlessness and connectedness.

When I am in this place of love, that is - when I am love, I know that I am a source of healing; I am the creator of my experience. I change myself, others, my perception and experience, on an energetic level. To be able to step back from the physical and intellectual perceptions, I can relate to myself and my world in a pure and uncontaminated way. I think a 3D view is like looking at life through a pin hole, whereas an energetic experience is all encompassing, pure truth or the totality of reality.

Much, if not all, of our lives is emotionally motivated or driven. At any given time, we are operating somewhere between fear and love. At the fear level we include anger, greed, depression, insecurity, hatred and disease and all of the base emotions. Love vibration is trust, acceptance, protection, joy, creativity and of course healing. If the human body was purely physical matter or form then I could accept that healing would also be a matter of physical manipulation. But, the body is energetic - not a solid mass. Healing must also be energetic.

Hard science has repeatedly proven that stress (fear) creates or influences disease. Isn’t it logical that love would also create and influence healing? That brings me back to my initial question, “What is love?” How can we use love to heal, if our belief or interpretations about love, is confused with pain?

To try and understand love I need to withdraw from memory or intellect. To do this I need to imagine love as energy within my body. It’s tricky as the mind wants to commentate. It wants to justify my worthiness or value. It wants to confirm or argue if I am there yet. It taunts me with how silly this exercise is or how self-indulgent I am. I try to breath in a command to fill my heart with the energy of love. I breathe out any and all resistance. I try to observe and surrender. Behind my closed eyes I see energy patterns and light. My body fills with feelings like champagne bubbles and waves of movement. I affirm over and over that I love my body, I love my life, I love myself, I love all of life. In time the words disappear, my body becomes weightless and I expand into a beautiful, vibrating, floating lightness. I feel love and I become love.

Call this a meditation, an exercise or a practise it doesn’t matter. It works and it’s powerful and it stays with me when I return to normal awareness. Throughout the day I check back in with myself and pull it up again. I remind myself that this is my centre of self; I need to be present and grounded from here. This is who I am when I am being my true self.

At first this might appear to be a form of self-hypnosis. It seems like a place of retreat or a place to escape reality. I’m not too interested or concerned about any of that. I am only interested in the outcome or the result. Everyday I notice that I am more connected with reality; more accepting of it and more comfortable within it. I am aware of the air flowing in and out of my body. Food tastes wonderful. I am aware of the smell of flowers and the tone of people’s voices. I sense people’s presence and don’t feel inclined to question their agendas or make judgements about them. I could easily rattle of a list of things that are now more meaningful and enjoyable and lovable, but really it’s everything. Everything good is magnified and everything not so good seems to have a purpose or a place or no interference. I am light and energized and joyful most of the time or at least comfortable and safe.

I am especially in love with my body. I feel like my body and my mind are having a most wonderful friendship. I am in awe of my body; loving, nurturing, relaxing, playing, studying, nourishing, touching, moving and pleasing it. My body feels more alive than ever; speaking with me and working for me and with me. I feel strong and healthy and vital.

It’s not all internal and definitely more than an attitude or perception. People are responding to me in fun, kind, friendly and supportive ways. Work and general tasks seem to flow easily. Information and assistance seems to just show up on request. Because I am feeling so good I feel that I am radiating out this energy and igniting it in other people and everything I react with. This then returns to me and I feel that I am operating within a cycle of creative influence.

It might be hard too understand that love can influence the external world. It is much easier to see the principle at work when we look at how fear influences our experience. I will use anger (explosive fear). Anger changes our physiology; raises blood pressure, increases adrenaline output, tenses muscles, impedes digestion and elimination and makes the body acidic. This is just a very small list but these things are the most common and most noticeable. Anger prepares the body to run or fight, in doing so, it shuts down or slows down many bodily functions. The mind becomes less able to be rational, it interferes with our sleep and leads to exhaustion. We are much more likely to abuse people or even act in a violent and destructive way. Often, we will self-harm; become drunk, take drugs, punch walls, crash cars, binge eat or destroy property. Anger disconnects us from other people and will often ignite hostile reactions from other people. We sabotage our work or home life, and if left unchecked it can sometimes lead to losing a job, divorce, loss of friends, health problems, financial problems and social problems. In effect, our internal anger creates external circumstances and life can become hostile, destructive and aggressive. Internally anger creates illness, disease and degeneration. It’s so easy to see how anger creates creates physical changes, external events and experiences and yet few of us appreciate the power of love as a real and vital force in creating health and well-being. Emotions DO have physical clout and not in a subtle, wishy washy way, but as a powerful, dependable and effective force.

Copyright Sonya Green 2008 www.reinventingmyself.com
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