“True, we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving. There is always some madness in love, but there is always some reason in madness.” Petrarch
Photo by Ralph Daily
Do you love life? Or do you find it a burden filled with negative experiences? What do you do to create a life you can love?
There was a time in my life when nothing I planned seemed to work out. Each project came to an end before it was completed. Each relationship, which in the beginning held such promise, involved obstacles that we couldn’t surmount. I often thought, “If I just had that one true love, life would be a joy. It would be worth living.”
I think that this belief was connected to my mother’s unhappiness. She and my father were opposites, and he was a rather emotionally withdraw person, but she was outgoing and easily showed her warmth and love. But living with a man who couldn’t show his love in the way she needed him to wore her down. She once commented that the reason my grandmother was so happy was because she had always had someone to love her. My grandfather was always a very expressive, loving person.
Love Includes Respect
For years, I tried to find that perfect one. Once I was married and at another time I was in a long distance relationship for eight years. I really tried, but there was always some respect for me that was missing. My ex-husband thought that my passion for modern dance was a childish interest that I would eventually grow tired of. The other man wanted a relationship where he only had to spend ten percent of his time with me and could do whatever he wanted, regardless of how his choices affected me.
Photo by Joel Bombardier
A Spiritual Journey Connects Us to the Divine
Fortunately, as various aspects of my physical life fell apart or refused to materialize, I gave some attention to my spiritual journey. Some of the things I learned as I explored this divine connection helped me see that I did not need to stay attached to the negative feelings created when things didn’t work out the way I planned. I began to sense that I could feel happy about life even when its events didn’t please me.
Positive Energy Helps Us Manifest What We Want
Perhaps pursuing a career in dance was sheer madness, but dancing fed my life with constant joy, just as writing or walking in the forest does now. I began to understand that what I had planned didn’t work out because, sometimes, something better was around the corner. When I decided to complete my memoir and publish it, I had reached the point in my journey where I knew how to use positive energy to manifest what I wanted.
To Be Loved, We Must Love Life
What I had learned over those years was that if I wanted love in my life, I had to love life. I had to always find a moment, a thought, an experience, or a friendship that was uplifting and I had to embrace it with gratitude. Even when things didn’t work out, I could at least feel good that I had the courage to try. I learned how to turn the negative into a learning experience. Instead of seeing myself as a failure, I chose to applaud myself for the attempt.
Photo by coolal2111
Loving life is a decision we make. It is easy when we have all we need, are well-loved, and are doing what we love to do. My own life is so much easier now than it used to be. With some retirement money, I can afford to write, and with a loving partner, it is so much easier to feel and express love in the world, but long before either of these things happened, I had awakened to loving life. It was only after I truly learned to love life that my perfect partner appeared, drawn to me by what I wrote in my memoir and blog.
Loving Life Draws More Love to Us
When we learn to love life every day and be grateful for the good in it, we will draw more love to us. So how do we do this? Learning to meditate will teach us to be in the moment and to go deeper into our emotions to discover what lies at our core and the cause of any fears that are limiting us. Learning to release our psychological fears will free our minds of the blocks the fear creates and allow truly helpful information to come true.
We Love More Easily When We Are Balanced
We also need to learn techniques that balance our energy, such as chakra balancing, Reiki, or Emotional Freedom Technique. These techniques also help heal the body as well as the mind, for true balance includes both. Balancing our energy brings us to a more centered place emotionally so that we can more easily see our wisest choices.
Knowing how to work with our bodies and minds empowers us, and feeling more empowered makes it easier for us to love ourselves. In order to love our lives, we must love ourselves, and thinking positively about the chances we take. Seeing value even in our failures reminds us we are basically worthwhile and good. To love life, we must believe in ourselves.
We Must Love Ourselves In Order To Truly Love Others and Life
No matter how many people love us, if we don’t love ourselves, we are lost. Loving ourselves is the most powerful aspect of life. My mother didn’t love herself; she thought that was selfish. She thought she had value only if she helped others. I rebelled against that because I saw how unhappy she was. At first, my rebellion was very selfish, but as time went by and I discovered that loving and taking care of myself made me a more confident person, I also began to understand how to give to others from a place of love, not obligation.
Loving the sheer wonder of life and reveling in our spiritual connection to it makes life truly worth living. It connects us with All That Is. Please comment.
© 2014 Georganne Spruce ZQT4PQ5ZN7F5
Related Articles: Relationships-True Love and the Transcendence of Duality (Eckhart Tolle), Loving Awareness: Jack Kornfield and Eckhart Tolle, Accepting Who Your Are and Learning to Love Being Alone Are Essential to A Happy Life, Learning to Love When Life gets Hard
Awakening to the Dance 