My son, who might be the wisest person I know (in part because he’s young enough that he hasn’t yet forgotten the things we were all born knowing), has been saying to me lately: ” Mommy, I love you in your whole life!”
He’s 3-years-old, and so he mixes up some sayings and his grammar isn’t always perfect. So, I think this is a mash up of me telling him, “I love you forever” and “more than anything in my whole life,” or something like that. Either way, it translates roughly to “a lot.” But if I take what he says to be literally true, that he loves me in my whole life, then that means he loves me in my entirety, exactly as I am right now, AND he loves me in every single moment of my love that has already happened (even before he was here as my son), AND he loves me in all of my life that is yet to come. Wow! Wow…
If I could love myself in that same way, completely love my whole self past, present, and future, I would be free! I invite you to practice seeing, truly seeing, holding with compassion, and loving all parts of yourself…in your whole life. This takes tremendous courage. Fortunately, you’ve got tons of that.
“Everything worth having costs something, and the price of true love is self-knowledge.” — Daphne Rose Kingma
You may begin like this: Close your eyes and turn your attention inward. Arrive in your body, in whatever space you’re in, in this moment. And bring your whole self with you — the parts that you like a lot, the parts that are harder to look at, the light, the shadows — all of you. Allow your inhales and exhales to elongate. If your mind gets restless or uncomfortable and you find you want to run away or shut down, remember the bottomless well of courage we each have, draw on that, choose to stay, and just continue to breathe.
You may place your hands over your heart and breathe into that space. Imagine a warm, glowing light under your palms. With each round of breath that you breathe, the light grows a little bigger…and bigger…and even bigger until it fills your whole being, and all parts of you are equally embraced by this loving light that comes from within. Open your eyes, and proceed with your day.
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself you have built against it.” — Rumi
Krystal Barschig 