Most of us cannot even relate to this language – ‘Self-Love,’ it sounds like narcissism, like self-indulgence, somehow over the top and too much. And yet, when we look at its pure manifestation, it is the most important quality we can develop.

In truth most of us are rather removed from loving ourselves much of the time. We are in too much tension. We are burdened by conflicts and stress and there is an inner dialogue going on that does not let us relax. We are our worst critics and we rarely give ourselves a break.

If this describes you at least some of the time, ask your self, “How is it working for me?”

It’s a revealing question because it is not judgmental. It just invites an observation, a greater awareness of what works and what doesn’t. And if the way you have been conducting some of your life doesn’t work – change it.

That is where Self-Love comes in. Do you deserve to be happy? Please don’t answer this question so quickly. I know you want to say Yes, but look at your behavior, look at the way you have been treating yourself in those parts of life that are not easy for you: has it been an expression of Self-Love?

Are there areas in your life where you could be kinder to you? Where you could open yourself to a greater love than you have known? Go there. Pay attention to these aspects of your existence. These parts of you are like children starving for love.

You can use this imagery: is there a little boy or girl self in you that has his or her needs not met? This is true for most everyone and usually we try to ignore this inner need. It’s unpleasant to deal with and so we choose to lose ourselves in distractions.

But have you noticed, this inner voice will persist. And it’s better to listen to it now, before it grows a cancer or manifests in some other great conflict that cannot be overlooked.

You have the choice – make it now. There are so many ways to love. But how can you love if your heart is not open to you? Only as much as you love yourself can you love others and allow yourself to be loved.

It starts with a decision we have to repeat often at deeper and deeper levels of our being. A decision to do whatever it takes to gain freedom from the conditioning of old pain. This decision opens the door so we can remove what stands in the way of love, our stressful thoughts and emotions. And as we clear them, this inner well of infinite goodness, the Heart, opens and we can drink from it and its life-giving nectar can flow from us into the world.

We will become a light in this world, an increasingly awakened being, no longer conditioned by the inheritance of fear. Being love leads to giving love and giving love leads to receiving love. And the cycles of stress and fear are transformed into the ability to live and express what we truly are in the core of our being: pure love.

It is beckoning you. Will you listen? Will you do the work of clearing the conditioning of fear that keeps you in stress? Take a step today and another tomorrow and gradually but inevitably you will come to know the infinite source of love in your heart. It is the heart of God, your heart, the pulsing, alive core of your universe. It is calling to you to come to know your true Self.

And how can you do it? Associate with those in whom this flame of love burns brightly. Love and devotion are passed on this way, person to person, in a deep and fulfilling relationship where trust can build and the kind of friendship that can last for life times.

There are teachers like that. Seek them out, for that is the fastest way to get to know you. Love and let yourself be loved and all other things will fall into place. As the sun in your heart rises, all the shadows will dissipate. This sun is already rising.

People often wonder how to reconcile the Buddha’s teachings on non-attachment with those on love. How can we love others without being attached to them? Non-attachment is a balanced state of mind in which we cease overestimating others’ qualities. By having a more accurate view of others, our unrealistic expectations fall away, as does our clinging. This leaves us open to loving others for who they are, instead of for what they do for us. Our hearts can open to care for everyone impartially, wishing everyone to be happy simply because he or she is a living being. The feeling of warmth that was previously reserved for a select few can now be expanded to a great number of people.

–from Taming the Mind by Ven. Thubten Chodron, published by Snow Lion Publications

How does it start? Some day you have an experience and your world shifts. Suddenly – or gradually – you come to realize that Spirit is true, that there is a dimension of grace you can enter. At that moment God steps out of a book and becomes a real presence for you (even though you may not relate to a God, which is fine.)

The result is: You have entered spiritual life.

This experience can be a moment of deep inner peace, of being fully alive in the here and now; it may be an experience of emotional harmony or a great opening of the Heart. These are the kinds of decisive experiences after which your life may never be quite the same.

Then we go on a journey. We lose the experience and want it again. A yearning has been awakened. What can we do?

We learn about spiritual practice. We sit still for hours, turn our bodies into pretzels, make pilgrimages to teachers or shrines and especially read lots of books. It is all good.

And where do we end up when we finally arrive where we are going?

We end up once more in deep inner peace, being fully alive in the here and now; we feel again that emotional harmony or that great opening of the Heart.

We return to where we began, in grace, in the breath-taking presence of Being or God. Inside ourselves. In the core.

We end up where it all began – wiser, much more solid, our mind peaceful, our Heart vibrant, big and alive.

The journey is a cycle from you to you, from now to now. You get lost in the middle, even while trying to find yourself. You want to shorten the time it takes to get back to what you are seeking. You are confusing yourself by your seeking.

There are 10,000 things to do while trying to get back to that place of pure grace. Most go in circles. Which are the few that take you straight back to yourself? Which ones dissolve the internal tensions that keep you in internal exile from grace? Which ones can nurture you so deeply you get the stamina to face your own demons – and not in 10 life times, but now?

This journey is not a walk in the park, you may have noticed. It is the greatest adventure bar none open to human beings.

On this road you will have to face any terror your mind can dream up and overcome every habitual pain and confusion.

And the payoff is eternal life. No cheap goal by anyone’s standards.

So again the question: what can take you there? What can give you the access to the pure essence of this highest goal?

Perhaps not surprisingly it is the pursuit of the experiences that began it all. The experiences you will be established in when you have arrived, when you have crossed the ocean of confusion and pain to the other shore of divine bliss.

The essential practices are to step directly into the Promised Land. To stop the 10,000 distractions – and yes, even those that are labeled ‘spiritual practice’ – and enter the Heart, which in its unlimited richness is always waiting for you to come home.

Always waiting. Still waiting. YOU are in there, still waiting.

And I know, so many will read these words and not understand. So let me say it again:

Your Heart is available to you this moment. It is as far from you as the Now. It is the central core of space, as the Now is the core of time. The core contains everything. Why not return to that core in you now?

Oh no, so many say, “I have to continue my sadhana, my spiritual practice” and they wind their legs around their ears and sit their bottoms flat and read the 20^th book that tells them the same thing they cannot hear: It’s inside you now!

So go there! But you can’t. Your thoughts and emotions get in the way. You follow them rather than your hidden instinct that says “Stop it all. Stop. Listen to what he is saying. Let it come in. Maybe there is something to this…”

There are 3 skills you need: Clear the mind quickly and effectively. Bring your confused emotions to harmony. And drink from your Heart the Essence of love that you are secretly aching to feel.

It is the best kept secret in the world. It is secret because we keep it secret from ourselves. We have become lost in a trance state. Somehow we can say the words and believe them; “It’s all inside.” And still we don’t look. Still we don’t become still enough to feel the ravishing Heart Essence. Still we are lost.

I sit with people and I see myself in them, the way I was: tense, the body shifting, the mind not at rest. There is no space for peace to get in. There is no rest in pure love.

Not yet.

But if you want it, stop. Stop now. Make a huge foolish decision to love yourself absolutely! It makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.

This is a question many are debating, but it’s not a question for me. I have experienced it. I know. There is no doubt in my mind and the more I speak to other cancer survivors, the more stories I hear: Yes, definitely the body has the ability to free itself of cancer. It’s abilities are amazing.

When I was 23 I was diagnosed with Hodgkins disease, a deadly cancer that was untreatable at the time. I got a second opinion, and a third, and everyone said the same. I walked around under a death sentence. If you’ve been there yourself, you know how I felt… It was a very dark moment.

And then, suddenly one day, standing in the middle of a city, I had a deep internal spiritual experience. It gave me not hope, but the unshakable certainty that I was not going to die from this cancer. A great wave of profound unconditional love flooded my heart, which had been burdened almost to breaking by this threat to my life. And my heart opened again. And at that instant all the fear and stress and terror left and never came back.

I was at ease. The mind became peaceful again, and my emotions came into balance and harmony.

And right after that moment of freedom a prayer arose in me. I prayed from the bottom of my heart that one day I would be able to share with others this love, this life-giving, exhilarating, all-embracing love. It arose from within me. It was all around me. I was bathed in it and it didn’t depend on anyone, so no one could take it away.

That is the pure divine love every single one of us carries our hearts. It is the fundamental essence of who we are, and it is available at all times in the very core of our being, the ‘Heart cave’ in the middle of our chest.

This pure universal love in us is the most healing force in creation.

I knew it, I had experienced it, and my cancer melted away. It was an experience of grace which to this day I do not understand completely, but I know it was real. I am here after all, am I not? That’s quite real to me.

I knew then that I had work to do. It was a long journey to find the answer to my prayer. After 35 years of study and practice I began to share what I had found: the best and quickest ways we can discover this gift of healing and love in us.

No, I am not promising miracles. I am promising that you can free yourself of what burdens you, what shuts down your heart and what obstructs the healing in you.

And it is clear to me now that we can do it. We can open to this love in us. It is here. It is not out there as we have always assumed. It is here in the depth of our hearts from where it can heal us. And we can remove the stressful thoughts and emotions that obstruct it! And no, you don’t have to have cancer to do this.

This amazing way of freeing yourself of stress, fear and pain and of opening to universal love, is now at your finger tips in a wonderful online course. For 6 weeks you will get daily HeartSourcing meditations that train you systematically to live more and more out of your heart. And you will learn to unburden your heart with skills, that for me are nothing less than miraculous.

I sat in a cave in the Himalayas, meditating. And I noticed I couldn’t escape from myself. I brought all my ‘stuff’ with me into that cave, my stressful thoughts and emotions, and they just kept recycling. Meditation is great, I still do it every day, but I found it is slow compared to the new skills that we are gifted with now.

So if you want to clear your mind, live happily with your emotions and create the best internal environment to heal whatever is wrong with your body, this is as good as it gets. I know my prayer was heard. And I know there is a way we can live in love, in a solid way, as a lasting state, not a momentary glimpse that vanishes again all too soon.

This, and life itself, is the blessing I received and I would love to share with you as much of it as I possibly can.

….

PS: If you want to find out more about the Course: “Complete Wellness and Deep Healing; How to heal your life through the power of love” please go to BecomingWhole.com.

Fear is the mind killer. It makes us into slaves of all the stressful emotions that spring from fear. It stifles our immune system, which can make us sick and keep us from healing.

The cure for fear is love. Love gives life. Pure, unconditional love is the medicine for what ails us in life. It springs from our spiritual heart.

Pure Love is the best of all drugs. Here is how you can tap into the infinite source of  Love in your Heart.

Enjoy!

Listen, my friend, this road is the heart opening,

Kissing his feet, resistance broken, tears all night.

If we could reach the Lord through immersion in water,

I would have asked to be born a fish in this life.

If we could reach Him through nothing but berries and wild nuts,

Then surely the saints would have been monkeys when they came from the womb!

If we could reach him by munching lettuce and dry leaves,

Then the goats would surely go to the Holy One before us!

If the worship of stone statues could bring us all the way,

I would have adored a granite mountain years ago.

Mirabai says: The heat of midnight tears will bring you to God.