How Self-Love Shepherds – Kindness Challenge Week 1

Self-Love was the topic for Week 1 of the Kindness Challenge! In my post, All You Need is Love, Sweet Love, Lionel Richie and the Commodores’ song named Sweet Love was on repeat in my head while writing my surprising and healing self-love experience.

While reviewing my notes I discovered an extra piece of essential self-love knowledge. I realized self-love is the act of sincerely listening to my personal truth; all of IT, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Respectfully listening loosens and frees the bad, accepts the ugly, and salutes the good.

This sometimes brutal, sometimes reassuring honesty reflexively aligns me with the truth of my soul. Self-love means loving my peace filled soul messages as much as loving my unhealed battered, broken parts. The self-loving causes a deliberate, meaningful, feeling of alignment. From my mind’s eye, I can almost see a golden, flexible protective cord that gently shepherds all my tender and true pieces.

The good, bad, and ugly pieces exist no matter how I treat myself but the shepherding action of self-love comforts, contains, and direct the parts toward wholeness. When I criticize, dismiss, or judge these same parts the golden safety cord isn’t activated and the parts become fragmented, hardened and dangerous like shards of glass.

The negative energy directed toward the parts causes me to feel disconnected and so I am. Until I remember to welcome self-love once again…

 

All You Need is Love, Sweet Love-Kindness Challenge Week 1

My Week 1 Kindness Challenge of Self-love had a theme song. Lionel Richie and his Commodores have randomly and quietly been singing lines of Sweet Love to me over and over and over. I inwardly smile each time this mellow song finds its way into my head. It was comforting, supportive guidance. Let me acquaint you with a few lines from this week’s theme song:

 

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Sweet love (Sweet love, well)

I know you’re searchin’

I know you’re searchin’ for a little love

The Commodores were correct, I was searching. Searching for my definition of self-love by starting with questions.   What is self-love?   What actions are self-loving?   When am I feeling self-love but don’t embrace it?   What is the difference between self-loving and self-centered?   When I am self-loving what does my life look like and feel like?   Does my life improve if I live from and with self-love?  Or does my life not improve but instead naturally align to my spiritual truth?

These questions revealed my truth of self-love. During the week, I experienced self-love as a healing balm, guiding wisdom, and a bunch of good feelings! Each morning, I gently reminded myself to feel self-love. I took a moment to imagine an inner emotional landscape being bathed in self-love.  Of course, it felt enjoyable, but it was so much more than that.

It created a world where unhealed emotions, like depression, fear, and hurt came to soothe themselves. The wounds and traumas that birthed these feelings felt safe, loved, and cared for enough to heal. They were called to the self-loving energy and instinctively opened to heal naturally.

This healing experience had the human sensation of the welcoming effects of the first warm summer-like day. When you feel pulled by the sunlight and warm air to drink it all in by taking a walk or sitting outside. It’s a feeling of refreshment, peace, and relaxation. This is how my unhealed feelings felt in the presence of self-love.

I need to go further with this…my repressed parts, or at least some of them, awakened. I felt unnamed hurts that were always carried with me, loosen up and bathe themselves in the presence of self-love.

My energy of self-love wasn’t only healing the suffering it was guiding me toward activities that were self-loving instead of activities that were distracting or mere habits. When I allowed my attention to follow this feeling of self-love it was like it was waving flags to focus my attention toward the self-loving choice. Each choice was an island and self-love confidently, happily, and purposefully waved her flag, next to the most self-loving choice.

I followed self-loves accurate lead. I needed relaxation and soothing by watching Blue Bloods. This family police drama allows me to spend time with a tight-knit family that supports, connects, and cares for each other. Their struggle and insistence on doing what is good heals and acknowledges a part of me.

Thru this relaxing moment with Blue Bloods, I sensed a very young child part that was ready for healing. This young conscientious part must accomplish grown up tasks that she isn’t developmentally equipped to comprehend. Being a pleaser, she insecurely attempts them while searching the adult faces for validation. The adults don’t fill her needs. This innocent moment in time sets the stage for a lifelong unconscious feeling. An unhealthy sensation of anchoring her little feet and stretching herself to live life years ahead of her emotional development. This adult pleasing part always feels emotionally unbalanced and insecure.

This week the young, stretched thin, insecure part of me was raised to consciousness and acknowledged. The energy of self-love pumped a healing balm thru me thanks to the requests of this week’s Kindness Challenge. While this part isn’t freed from the unbalanced and insecure feelings, yet, it is enjoying being seen and out of subconscious hiding. I can only assume that self-love’s energy will fully heal it.

The Commodores, singing this soothing and healing song of Sweet Love to me this week, offered self-love’s silent healing powers a sound and vibration. I guess the Commodores share the wisdom of the human soul and the Beatles….it turns out, it’s true…All You Need is Love!