Meditation on Loving Yourself to Love Others, Because There’s No Difference/Separation

You know how a new way of seeing or hearing something can shift your thinking and change your life?  A phrase from movement therapist, yoga teacher, and author Donna Farhi might do that for me.  She talks about “the One All”, which is a quick way of saying all humanity is linked to each other and the Divine.  What you need is what I need.  We depend on each other.  We are interconnected.  What is more, we are all born from a Divine Source.  We each bear Divine DNA.  EACH and EVERY one of us is thus infinitely precious, of inestimable worth, and is immensely loved … NO doing required.

With that said, and keeping in mind that “yoga” is simply a microcosm of and code for “LIFE”, check out what Donna says: “Yoga is fundamentally about befriending yourself, knowing how to be loving towards yourself.  As the One All, how could you not be loving towards the One All?  [Yoga is about] befriending others, because there are no strangers anymore – there is no separation.”  In keeping with Donna’s words, this occurred to me: Love is indiscriminate and gratuitous in that it sees and embraces individual people as their WHOLE and TRUE selves, and recognizes collectively we are ONE humanity who are all sisters and brothers of a Heavenly Parent, who belong to one another in the most life-giving way imaginable.

With this in mind, I invite you and I to love ourselves fully and freely.  Love ALL of ourselves wildly and indiscriminately, EVEN the parts we don’t like and want to change, because while guilt, shame, hate, and ignoring NEVER lead to lasting change, LOVE is the fertile soil from which beautiful things grow and transform.  And, as you fall more in love with yourself, notice how your heart is softened and warmed towards others.  Realize how we are both each uniquely precious gifts AND very much alike when we get down to it, each wanting to be loved and valued.  So, lets practice loving ourselves to love others, it’ll change the world.