I am loving and loveable
I wore this affirmation for longer than I actually wanted
to. Busy, busy, busy, no time to write about it and so finish it off and move
on to another. So we were stuck together, eyeing each other off and it all felt
pretty futile. Affirmations like this are the reason I get bored and eat
chocolate. In reality they constitute BIG work that encompasses a lifetime and
hence they can’t truly be embodied with the relatively small commitment of simple
intent.
So, after working with this for a week, am I now being loving
awareness and having it returned to me? Sometimes yes, sometimes no, therefore,
nothing has really changed. Still I will share what I have, because the journey
through intent is still worth striving to hold.
Let’s begin with, “I
am loving” - well, I learned that I can certainly fake that easily enough –
I suppose we all do it every day. I can smile at the ward clerk at the hospital
while she pretends I’m not there, I can respond gently to woman who has
undermined my friends’ marriage and I can wave happily at the local gossip as I
rush past her with a friendly, “Sorry I have somewhere to be”.
But inside, inside my response is anything but loving.
Inside I am tightening and resisting and holding and fighting the urge to tell
them they’re rude, or deceitful or insincere. But I don’t say anything and it’s
not because I’m loving awareness, it’s because
I know I must not judge them and that their
‘stuff’ is none of my business! So I learned this week that with turtles, loving
is effortless and full; with people, it can be hard work - and that work is
mine alone.
So now let’s move on to loveable. Now I feel like I’m in a bad
Hallmark card. I’m loveable? Really? And how am I supposed to measure that? How
many times have I extended kindness, openness and tolerance to people, only to
be used up and spat out? How many people have stood before me bearing flowers
that I later find out were really disguising the knife I would eventually wear in my
back? If I truly believed I was
loveable, would such betrayal disappear from my reality? Of course not! Loving
and loveable are inner states of being, not doing and cannot be measured by the
actions of others.
That is the bedrock of my problem with this affirmation
right there. To me it carries an implication that others will love me and if
I need that, I'm in dangerous territory. How people feel about us can
change in an instant, and at the deepest level, it doesn't have anything to do with us. Oh it is the easiest of work to find reasons to dislike people and then to justify it, but at the end of the day, the work to overcome it is ours alone. Take the ‘bad clerk’.
She annoyed me because I have, in the past, managed entire departments and poor performance
anywhere affects me as though I still am. The ‘other woman’ triggers me because
I want to trust the sisterhood to support each other rather than compete and
lie and women like her make it really hard to do that. The 'gossip' triggers me because she’s
untrustworthy and never lets the truth ‘get in the way’ of a good story and I
don’t want to go there, I don’t want to fuel other people’s hardships. So all of them were triggering my own issues - it was
all mine, mine, mine - and there will no doubt be more, more, more.
So my ability to love and be loveable is of course an inside
job, which I knew last week and still know this week. If someone can’t love and
appreciate me, then that is where their work is. If I can’t love and appreciate
another, then that is where my work is. Therefore, we only need to focus on being
loving and all our evolution will emerge from that struggle - and Oh what a struggle it can be! Life, as always,
is our Guru.
Thinking about it honestly, the only souls I know for sure
that find me unconditionally loveable are my dogs – but maybe I can’t even rely
on them; they do look at my dubiously whenever it’s dry food for dinner.
So, onward to a new focus of intent where I divined another
affirmation and received -
“I am beautiful and everybody loves
me”
OH NO!!!!!!!!
______________________________________________________________________________
There is my line and I’m not going to cross it! There is no
way I can work with that with serious intent – a comedy skit maybe, but not a genuine
focus. To me, that’s not what spirituality is about. Working to validate beauty,
inside or out and seeking the love of ‘everybody’ is fraught with ego neediness
and attachment. Geez, talk about taking up residence in a mine field.
One of the many truths we are bound to work with in life is
that not everybody is going to love you, or even like you. It is an unavoidable
reality of the human experience and actually how we help each other evolve! Our
work is to transcend it and not be hooked, rather than strive to eliminate it
altogether, which is impossible. That affirmation implies it is possible.
So goodbye Louise Hay, I’m breaking up with you. I’ve taken
my basket of affirmations, that I hand wrote on cards 25 years ago, down from
the shelf and am using them for this blog from now on. The first one is:
I am
a success. I allow myself to feel successful.
This suits me much better.
Success after all is in the eye of the beholder (yes I know so is beauty)
however, feeling successful is achievable, (yes...as is feeling beautiful). The
difference is; this affirmation does not rely on anyone or everyone else finding me
successful. It works from the inside, from my feeling, that is where the fire
is. I hope you’ll join me.
Namaste
Sally
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