Love and Betrayal

Loving yourself is easy. So many people overcomplicate love! So many people spend years in therapy, and money on self-help books, trying desperately to "love themselves", and to feel deserving of self love. I would argue that you already love yourself. And listening to yourself is the key to self love. It's all in how we honor  and respond  to our deeper selves.

 

Loving yourself is about how you treat yourself. Do you block your emotions in order to protect your relationship with another? Do you take better care of your relationships than you do yourself? Do you sacrifice  yourself in order to maintain peace and harmony in a relationship? Do you listen to that silent whisper of self, telling you to find a new job, despite the ease and security of your current situation? Do you avoid doing things that scare you? When we do these things we neglect ourselves.

It's in these things, often difficult things, that we simply treat ourselves badly. Not for lack of self love, but out of fear. But when we do these things, we betray ourselves.

And what does love have to do with health? Gabor Mate, the author of When the Body Says No,

speaks eloquently on illness and betrayal of self. Disease, he says, is that part of you that really loves you, trying to get your attention, trying to guide you back to your real and loving self.

A few years ago I attended a workshop with a medical intuitive. He could "read" peoples illnesses simply by looking at their faces. Not only could he discern illnesses with an accuracy rate of 97%

( he participated in a research study verifying his abilities), but he could discern the emotional conflict that helped to create the illness.  All illness, he claimed, is created when we make decisions that are not in our best interests. In other words, resistance to self creates illness.I believe that when we mend our relationship with our true self, our bodies will often ( but not always) heal on their own.

There is more to health than genes and lifestyles. I would say the most important thing that we can do to stay healthy,  is to stay in touch with our true self, that communicates to us through our emotions. And, our emotions communicate with us through our nervous system. Being firmly present in the body, ( not the mind) helps us to stay in touch with our true, deep, and loving self.