Hello Everyone!

This is Sophia and I am bringing to you this week's weekly reflections. This week's quote is the Buddhist saying: Explore the universe looking for someone more deserving of your love than yourself. You will not find that person anywhere.

Loving ourselves does not come naturally to many of us. May be it did at one point but we learned to unlearn it. Our environment, our own mind, the influences that we took in, showed us that it was useful to not always love ourselves. How is that? Well, being ourselves- being our curious, quirky, fun-loving self- may have ruffled some feathers. People around us did not like that, did not approve of us for that. So we learned: Ok, it is better not to behave in that way or act a certain way or express yourself in a certain way because if you do that, it causes upset. It causes some sort of rumbling around in our environment. So we learnt to put away that part of ourselves on the back burner, hide it in the closet, put it away under the bed, however you want to visualize that. But we covered it up. And that is totally understandable. We want to be loved, we want to fit in, we want feel appreciated and approved. And for that we do all kinds of things.

But this turns gradually into all kinds of negative patterns. Self-doubt is one example of that” doubting ourselves. (yeah) Also, it comes out in criticizing ourselves, being disappointed in ourselves, having unrealistic expectations of what we can do with our time, our capacities, capabilities. And, it turns into deceit. We cheat ourselves. We deprive ourselves of what we really really need from our own self. We don’t give ourselves the love, the appreciation, admiration, that we all deserve. So, our whole life becomes covered in this layer of dust. The dust of disapproval. The dust of frustration. The dust of misery. Our life becomes painful, it becomes a struggle. It becomes difficult.

Well, today, I want to invite you to take a look at that part of you that has been causing trouble. In other words, some aspect of you that you are disappointed with, frustrated with. I will do this with you. There is something that I find in myself that is causing me impatience and something that doesn’t make me feel very good. It is this inertia. I have this tendency to not take action, specially when there is an action that I can take, that’s going to expand me, that’s going to push me out of my comfort zone and bring me new experiences- something I have not done before. I am very excited about this. But I a m dead scared. I do not dare to do that. It is just so scary an idea. And in retrospect, I am tired of that. I don’t like when I am afraid. I don’t like when I don’t do the things that I really want to do, but I am afraid to do them. And this leads into postponing things, not taking action right away. So today, I decide to forgive myself for that pattern, for that behaviour. So, I accept that I am afraid, and I release that fear, I let go of it. And I love myself for that. I love this characteristic of me, of who I am at this time. And I also know that it is not necessarily who I am, but it is an experience that I am, at this moment, going through. So I let the fear of new experiences, of going out of my comfort zone, I let that fear go, I release it, I forgive myself for that and I love myself for that. And doing this video reflections right now, is an example of this shift inside me, this transformation that is happening inside of me.

So, invite you to do the same. Take a look at something in your life that is upsetting you. Start with one aspect that recurrently has been causing problems. Is it that you are impatient?
Is it that you are frustrated about something? Whatever it is, just one thing about you. Not the whole box of things that you dont’t like about yourself, just one aspect that you are impatient with, that causes problems. And see if you can write that down. Or say it out, that is even better or do both. And allow yourself to forgive that part. And to love that part of you that has been yearning for attention, yearning for your love. And see how that feels. See if that makes you feel freer, if it makes you feel more clear, more clarity and focus comes into your life. See how it affects you in becoming more at peace. You are at ease with yourself.

So try it out. You are welcome to share that with me with a video blog or your messages. And if you want to keep it all private that is, ofcourse, totally fine.
So, good luck, have fun. I am sending you mountain love from the Blue Ridge Mountains. Big hugs. See you next time!