You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love & affection.
~ Buddha

February is such a delicious opportunity to dive into self-exploration around your relationship with love and receptivity! Right now, I am right smack in the middle of a year long counseling training program and this theme keeps coming up as I excavate even deeper layers of false beliefs, habitual patterns, fear, wisdom and inner-awarness around my own barriers to receiving love and support (from within and without.) I’m interrogating those barriers (with tons of tenderness) and I am inviting you to join me.

Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. ~Rumi

I am ready to lean into the shame and terror that keeps me from being able to really receive love, support, appreciation, really being seen, etc… Historically, I have not known how to just receive (without offering to give back, trade or financially compensate, etc.) without feeling small, ashamed and afraid that I actually do need support and no one will show up for me. I tend to take on more than is energetically sustainable for me and use impatience or self-reliance to protect myself from feeling unlovable, unworthy and “not enough.”

I love giving freely. It feeds my soul to care for others. I have a hard time being on the receiving end of others unreciprocated generosity and care. It actually feels really dangerous and threatening, like I’ve done something horribly wrong when I don’t give back or even the score. For far too long, I have had a pattern of avoiding this uncomfortable experience by constantly stepping into the role or the giver. This month I am interrupting that pattern and it feels all kinds of exciting!

I am so ready to embody a greater level of empowerment, actualization and comfort in my own skin. I have the sense that the more I can fully receive, what I have to give will be even more potent + I really want to be able to take in the kind of love that I know how to give. It’s gonna take some practice. Yoga is the daily practice of life.

So here I am coming out of the closet with all my shame and discomfort no-longer dressed as self-reliance and confidence. I am breathlessly clambering into my fanciest threads of compassion, self-love and rigorous honesty to help me make my “coming-out” debut. Guess what? I’m kinda lovable. And. So. Are. YOU. You know what else? We’re totally worth it and the momentary uneasiness of stepping into deeper champers of our hearts and allowing more love in is so worth the long term growth and transformation!

Why I am sharing all this with you? Because I know I’m not unique and I’m certainly not alone. This month can be the month that we take the leap to fall madly into the deepest love we have ever known! Not with something or someone “out there;”but with the one who is reflected back each morning in the bathroom mirror. I’m entering into a deep soul-level commitment to continue to show up, to forgive, to be tender with and nurture my relationship with my Self. (Yes, even the insecure, limited-thinking parts.) I’d love to take you with me on this journey! Wherever you are on the spectrum of self-love, let’s dive in even deeper. It starts with one daily step. What will yours be?

I love you!

P.S. “Out there” is an illusion. The microcosm is a reflection of the macrocosm. There is nothing that exists within your body that does not exist in the Universe. There is nothing in the Universe that does not exist within your body.