Who Benefits?

One of my best tools for self-love is this simple question: who benefits?

I get political with my self-love. I think about everyone who benefits from my self-hatred – all the CEO’s getting rich off our collective insecurities, the systems of oppression fueled and bolstered by the lies we internalize, abusive people who manipulate our self-doubt for their own ends.

This is the way I see it: if I’m not enjoying and spending and reveling in and claiming my own aliveness, someone else is using that life-force energy for their own agenda.

And remembering this gets me back on track real quick.

Think about it: when you’re busy calling yourself a failure, criticizing your body, or telling yourself you’re not enough – where is that energy going? Not into your deep passions or desires, not into your creativity, not into your voice (which the world definitely needs, by the way).

And no shame or blame around this - it makes sense that lots of us struggle with self-love, body image, and positive self-regard. We live in toxic systems that tell us lies about ourselves and the world and do all sorts of things to turn us against ourselves and each other.

But self-love is our work. And I believe that work is one of the most important journeys we walk in this lifetime.

I don’t believe any of us are here to objectify, judge, or criticize ourselves. I believe we’re here to step into our bodies and into the current of our aliveness. We’re here to claim and enjoy and spend our life-force. We’re here to choose ourselves.

I know we’re all on this journey together, and I send all my love, support, and encouragement to my fellow travelers, along with my own commitment to never give up on this self-love quest. I hope all of you join me on that journey. 

Self-Love and Life-Force

I’ve come to understand that one of my primary life tasks is to figure out this self-love thing – to come into right relationship with my real self, find peace and okayness in that realness, and revel in the experience of having this life and being this self.

I believe we all come in with and are in possession of a dazzlingly gorgeous life-force, an animating energy that is the magic that lives within each of us, transcending any measurement or definition.

To me, self-love means enjoying this life-force, this core aliveness, connecting to it with intention and not making our experience of it conditional on anything else.

My sense is that so many of our troubles with self-love are a result of being asked by the dominant culture to spend our life-force (in currencies of energy, attention, creativity, time, money, etc.) in ways that deplete rather than nourish us and separate us from our life energy rather than deepen our connection to it, often in service to arbitrary, culturally-defined standards of goodness and enoughness.

I’ve found that self-love is not found in convincing myself that I’m “good enough.” More often I’ve found it in stepping into spaces and connecting with energies that render the idea I could be anything other than good, enough, and okay nonsensical and absurd.

So when I’m struggling to love or care for myself in the ways I want (because that happens in a culture like this one), I don’t try to convince myself of my worthiness. Instead I ask: how can I step back into the current of my life-force? Where is aliveness in this moment? (remembering that because I’m an organic, cyclical creature, aliveness might mean rest). What is there to enjoy right now in my life and self? What would it take to remember that my life and self belong to me and are for my joy?

But mostly, I just try to stand in who I am – who we all are – incarnations of consciousness, energy, imagination, miracle, and mystery. And really, what other than love could meet us here?

Claiming Creative Energy

For several months now, I’ve been swept up in a tidal wave of creative energy, a force that seems to be steadily rising in both power and momentum.   Which is awesome (and super fun!) but also sort of feels like bad timing, mainly because I’m in the middle of moderately concerning health crisis that will presumably, at some point in the near future, require ample doses of rest, slowness, and restoration.  So what am I supposed to do with all this energy that wants to act, build, and expand?  Couldn’t we have saved it all for a more convenient time?

But then a friend helped me see how I was needlessly making this into a mutually exclusive paradox.  Because while creativity often pushes me outward and forward, this is not the only option.  Creativity also pulls me inward.  And channeling my creative energy into my own healing, internal process, and personal catharsis is a perfectly suitable use for it.

I share this because it reflected back to me an important lesson and an obvious truth I was missing.  Basically, I am a worthy recipient of my own best energy, and my creativity is not just for the world; it is for me.

It is entirely okay to give what is most energizing and electric in our lives to ourselves first.  It does not need to be channeled into some external, productive something; it does not need to be for others first (or ever); it does not need to result in a tangible, sensible outcome.

So rest and creativity want to co-exist in my life right now, and that’s brings an interesting set of questions: Like, how can I both rest and create at the same time?  How can I invite creativity into my healing?  What new and unexpected thing will be born of this seemingly paradoxical fusion?

So where are your creative energies taking you, friends?  How is creativity blazing your trail or lighting your way?  What is it calling forth or asking of you?   What unexpected, beautiful, and mysterious spaces it is opening up in your life?