In my meditations today (upon my prior post “LOVE … as Yourself“) I found myself pondering how I personally treat myself. After meditating and posting on healing last week, one off the main things I came out of it with is the need for each of us to allow inner healing … and that healing can only come as a result of Love. Consequently, inner healing can only come from creating a space within ourselves for God’s Love to heal us in the way, shape, and timing that God intends. These revelations led me to my meditations this week, on Self-Love.

The first quote in my prior post, by Osho, is pretty much straightforward … the importance of Self-Love doesn’t really get spelled out more clearly than that.

The second quote, from the Bible as said by Jesus, refers to loving your neighbor AS you love yourself. This would imply that you actually love yourself. If you hated yourself, and treated yourself like a failure, or some horrible monster … well then, treating others as yourself doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Therefore, it seems fairly safe to say that Jesus is saying we need to first love ourselves and then, as an outpouring of that love for ourselves, love everyone around us in the same way.

This makes perfect sense to me as these spiritual breakthroughs have been unfolding for me in time. When I learned how to create a beautiful Inner Space (to spend time taking care of myself on a conscious level) that naturally carried itself outward to how I interacted with people around me. I went from someone who was somewhat shut down, and therefore defensive on many levels, to being someone who is just completely open; freely giving love to whoever I come across.

One COULD say that the most important part of this commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves … is that we first love ourselves. If we do not love ourselves, or allow ourselves to be filled with God’s love for us, then what we will be giving to other’s is not true love … but rather something that is in some way, shape, or form OTHER than LOVE … something motivated out of selfishness, greed, manipulation, etc. It might FEEL like love to you, but it in truth is not … you are seeking what you call “love” in order for your own gain. True Love, Unconditional Love, comes from God … in order to give that to the world, we have to first love ourselves … we have to open our hearts to God’s love so that we can be healed on those levels … and ABLE to then bring that Love into the world.

I would venture to say that the amount of true Love that you are able to give, is in direct proportion to the amount of love you have for yourself. So learning how to love yourself, is really where it all starts – in terms of bringing God’s Love, and Healing, into the world.

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Religion4All is an idea: that every human being (no matter their race, religion, sexuality, social status, lifestyle, or any other possible factor) is LOVED by God; just … as … they are.

We all are loved by God, and NO religion or person has a monopoly on it. Every single person on this planet is loved equally by God … SO many are cut off from God because they are told they don’t belong. God loves everyone … we ALL are beautiful creations … we don’t need to cringe when we hear the words “God”, or “religion”, or their judgments … God LOVES us all!

There is no requirement to change in order to be LOVED by God, or to LOVE God. God is LOVE, and LOVE is God … period. There is no one who God loves more than anyone else … there are only those who choose to LOVE more … to love God more, and consequently then to love each other more. In doing so, we grow closer to God … and know God.

By opening our hearts, and minds to God (free of boundaries like religion, or social trends); by LOVING God … we are exactly where we are meant to be. If we maintain that openness, never allowing any person or event to make us close our hearts, we will be guided by God to be who we are meant to be.

In that space of openness we can then live a life of LOVE, and be guided to where we are meant to be … forever in LOVE.

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