love-o-meter

I’m like a bulldog on a pork chop tracking how it is I never truly had my relationship with myself as my top priority. My love-o-meter was always tuned to the outside, checking my emotional health by checking to see how much someone else loved me. Now, I was “spiritual” enough to spout the self love talk but did it really sink in? Me thinks not. In 1987 my New Year’s intention was to change my life. From that point on here’s what I have tried in my attempts to learn to love myself: diets of all kinds, one hospitalization, two world trips and two ten day silent retreats, numerous workshops, therapy, a degree in spiritual and counseling psychology and licensing as a Marriage and Family Therapist, a specialty training in Consciousness, Health and Healing, Certification in Cellular Memory Release, intense study of A Course in Miracles and A Way of Mastery, teaching a class called “Self Love is not for Wimps!”, etc. You get the picture. And yet the truth is my meter was still link to other, other du jour, any other, other to save my but from the dreaded aloneness. Yet two weeks ago I finally passed a threshold and moved into new territory. 

In this new territory the floor does not drop out as it did before. But as soon as upset does cross my doorstep, I almost always remember to check inside. Previously, I would be trying to get other to be fine so that I would feel safe. I would be scanning the environment, the energy field of other to see what adjustments I needed to make so that somebody else would continue to fill my void. Now when my energy plummets, I check inside and see what I need. I reassure myself. I see what my authentic response is, if any. When other was my savior, I realize I would say and do things that weren’t really what I wanted. Over the years, the level of falseness has diminished considerably yet there was still a faint residue. Now my love-o-meter is scanning for separation within ME not scanning outside to get my environment to meet my needs.

I realize it is common to see ourselves as anchored in another. First my mother was my anchor and of course that is natural as a child. Yet so many of us had countless critical needs unmeet in childhood and begin to seek resolution, often rather frantically, outside ourselves. In college my great love broke up with me for the umteenth time. So, of course, I did what anyone would do, I ran out into a vicious storm to the rock barrier of Lake Michigan and dramatically considered throwing myself in so HE would be sorry. Over time the drama lessened a bit but the emptiness was still unmet. So, for now, it is a slow crawl toward greater self love and acceptance, greater connection to Source energy. Am I there yet? Not quite but more and more light peeks out at the end of that long tunnel. I am beginning to feel a great sense of ground whatever life throws at me. Dare I say it, I really am beginning to accept this darling, flawed, dramatic, loving, sad, gorgeous, confused being and to love her unconditionally. From that foundation, everything else begins to come into alignment. Joy peeks out from under the covers. And the BIG love shows up more and more, the love that comes from a genuine soil.  Sometimes a feeling of love pulses out of me in waves of sunlight. And when it doesn’t, when the goo mixes with the poo, that’s O.K. too. That’s the time when my love-o-meter turns itself to full blast and baths me in that yummy blanket of care. At least, much of the time. And from there it is easy to “catch the world in a love embrace.” We are indeed born to be wild and free.