Warren was in a treatment center for alcoholism in his forties.  He’d learned that having a Higher Power and telling the truth about himself were key steps to recovery.  The Holy was his Higher Power.  He thought that speaking the truth about being gay would make the Holy hate him.  The religious messages he’d received as a child told him that. Out walking at the treatment center one night Warren heard someone say to him, “I told you to love one another.  I didn’t say what sex.”  In that moment his life was shaken up.  Warren says, “This was larger than I could see the edges of. Love is so much larger than I’d imagined.”

Warren had a choice – to listen to the truth he’d heard and trust the larger truth that he is loved, or, to keep living with old patterns.

Growing into love invites courage, trust and risk to go beyond the edges of how you have been conditioned to think of love.  Like Warren, we each live with old messages in the in-box of our brain that we are not good enough or acceptable.  The journey to embrace who you are leads to discovering that you are loved for your existence! 

The result is that, like Warren, love of self opens us to loving relationships with others.  Transformation happens.  We discover life and love that is much larger than we have ever imagined.

• Admit the truth of that moment – speak it out loud or write down why you do not love yourself
• Imagine hearing, “I love you for who you are; for your existence!”
• Trust that life itself needs your love of self and the Holy invites it
• Invite love and love of self into that moment, that day
• In your meditation repeat phrases like “Love” or “Come, Love; Come” very slowly as you listen to your breath and body
• Offer thanks each day for something loveable about yourself