Your job here is to love your own heart.
To deeply learn who and what you are, and to fall in love with all that you find.
You see, you most likely don't *really* know who you are.
You see in yourself a world full of assumptions, projections, "should's', 'should nots' and shadow figures.
Due to all of these shadow figures, you then assume you do not love yourself. That you could not possibly love yourself. You develop a complex that tells you that you are these shadows, and that these shadows are wrong and bad. That they are to be rejected. Hated. Scrutinized.
Armed with this faulty information about who and what you are, you go out into the world and see faulty versions of everyone else.
You know deep in your hearts that you are to love your fellow man. You carve that unity. The oneness. The relationship and the community.
But your perception of the shadow blocks you from finding this unity.
You go out, see others shadows and struggle to love them, just as you struggle to love them within yourself.
You see shadow, and what is being reflected is how you treat you own shadow.
This does not necessarily mean that you share the shadows you see. That what is being reflected to you through another is something that is within you. All you are seeing is how you react and respond when you are faced with shadow.
You act out against others shadows with the same degree of anger, hatred, rejection and fear that you do with your own.
When you act out in this way, with fear rather than with love, it generally triggers a deeper sense of hate and rejection within your inner world.
You hate your shadow, you hate the shadow of others, you react with fear and judgement, and this causes you to react with more hatred towards yourself. Which in turns, deepens your shadow, and consequently your fear and rejection of your own shadow.
Beginning to see the loop here?
The Wall Against Loving The Self
On top of this, most of us wait until we act 'appropriately' before we even consider giving ourselves permission to love ourselves.
We withhold love from our beings when we feel we have done something that is out of alignment with who we think we should be. We hate ourselves when we act from shadow.
This is especially true for those who are empathic.
You may find that you really want to love everyone, that you clearly see that those around you are hurting, but that this pain causes you pain, the shadow in them still reflects the rejected shadow in you, and thus causes you to 'react' rather than to love.
You want to love, but your fear of your own shadow blocks you.
So What Do You Do?
The critical solution here, is to love yourself when you are mean to others.
In this, rather than beating yourself up for not loving the other - which simply creates more violence - decide to love yourself deeper. Decide to love yourself more when you act out.
Turn towards your own heart not with condemnation, judgement, criticism or a laundry list of improvements that need to be made, but with compassion. Kindness. Understanding. Grace.
The key thing to realize here, is that by beating yourself up for reacting with fear towards the shadow of another, again, simply causes your own shadow to grow. Which creates more and more reason for you to act out with fear rather than giving you a reason to come from love.
This action - this loving yourself when you are not loving toward others - is what will eventually give rise to your ability to love others when they are in shadow.
When you love yourself in the midst of your shadow, you heal.
You heal your shadow, and this is what gives you the ability to love others when they are expressing their shadow.
Love is the only thing that begets more love. It is not possible to become more loving by hating or beating up on yourself.
All love is self love. So start with loving your own heart, especially when you are triggered and not 'acting right' toward others.
You must start with loving your own shadows back into light.
This will crack your heart wide open, and then you will have what it takes to love all shadows back into the light.
It may feel counter intuitive to love yourself when you act out, like you are giving yourself permission to be mean or angry or reactive.
But again, ONLY love heals.
Love soothes.
Love brings that shadow back into light.
It is the perpetual rejection of the shadow form that keeps it 'alive.'
So give it a try next time you are reactive.
In this, you will find that you discover yourself. You will discover your beauty. Your light. Your energy. Your true gifts and talents.
You will discover that everything you were trying to hate and punish yourself into becoming, are simply natural aspects of your being.
You will discover for yourself your limitless Divinity.
Then, you will know how to love others. You will understand at your core that all love is self love. You will KNOW that love is the only thing that truly exists.
All from loving your own shadow.
How about that, hey?
<3
