Self Love — the Bliss of Union

By Heather Fraser

The single greatest act of self love I have ever performed was to draw a line in the sand and say, "despite my fears, from this point forward I'm going to honour my SELF, and my gifts." To begin writing again and express my divinity was an act of self-love. It was also one of the most difficult things I've ever done. I knew my abundance was tied to writing, but the thought of having no job, and the prospect of an even further impoverished existence was terrifying. This had always been the fear that held me back from expressing my truth in the world.

I had been writing on and off for years, with almost every article I wrote being published. I wrote a newsletter for over four years that gained an audience around the world. I had also self-published a book of poetry, taught some workshops, did some inspirational talks, and some private consultations. All this in between working at jobs, and in a world I felt I did not fit into. It seemed like the only decision and choice I had never made was the one to simply surrender EVERY joyless thing I was doing to please others, tow the line, and make a living.

It's difficult to take a step in the direction of our dreams when we've had little, if any, examples of this courage in our own family of origin. Believe me when I say that every positive and negative belief we've ever learned, is directly rooted in what we saw, heard, felt, and experienced as children from our primary caregivers. But it's also much more than that which I'll explain later. With this knowing in mind, I wanted to break free and shatter the false beliefs and limits that had been set for me so that I could begin to create a life of joy, ease and passion, and in doing so, lay down a new set of beliefs of what was possible. I wanted to do this for my own well being, but also for my daughter, so that she would see her mother reach for her dreams against all odds and succeed, and in some strange and beautiful way, I believe it was her gentle, creative energy that urged me onwards. I also knew that by being the one to break through the deeply ingrained patterns and long held energy of survival, depression, struggle, and shame, that every relative — past, present, and most importantly, future — would be freed. I knew the task was monumental, that I might not survive it, but I leapt anyway.

This leap was not new to me. Over many years I have made it before, always for the same reasons, but always falling back in line with my inherited beliefs when things got tough, or when I felt I just wasn't strong enough to break the mould. And every time I would be filled even with more shame, humiliation, and self-judgment for not being able to live my truth and follow my bliss.

What made the difference this time however, was the realization that these limiting and false beliefs I was carrying around, that were absolutely the foundation and motivation for just about every decision I made, were unconscious. I literally had no idea why I lived a life of such impoverishment and struggle, when I had such a strong sense of joy, passion, spirit, and creativity. It wouldn't have made any difference how many articles I'd written, workshops I gave, or clients I saw. It was all built on a foundation of fear, abandonment, lack of self-love, and shame. And this is the energy I would always crawl back into.

It's so easy to miss our unconscious belief system as it's so close to us, so intimately a part of who we think we are. It can be challenging to slow down enough to take a good, hard look at our lives, and even then, we may still miss it, resigning ourselves to the fact that our problems and habits are simply "who we are."

One day, not long after I had left my job, I was having a bad morning. My daughter was doing everything in slow motion, and I knew we were going to be late for school. I was so angry, as there was no excuse for being late when we didn't live that far away. I talked with her in the car about how we had to work together to make sure our morning went smoothly and stress free, that I was responsible for making sure she was up on time, for making her breakfast, and packing her lunch, and that she had to be responsible for eating her breakfast on time and getting herself dressed and ready without me having to instruct and prod her every step of the way.

When I got home I was still full of frustration and anger and sat down to write in my journal to see if I could let it go. What ended up coming out was all my frustration and anger at having no career to speak of, no money, no relationship, no sense of community, and feeling alone. As I was writing, it all of sudden hit me that something else was powerfully running my show here. How could I be so full of love, creativity, beauty, passion, and joy and have nothing to show for it in my life? How could I be at this "depleted" place with all the gifts I had to offer the world? The old self-defeating questions of, "what am I doing wrong?" or "what's the matter with me?" all of a sudden fell away, and in that moment I knew there was something else going on here — something that had nothing to do with whether I was a worthy or deserving person. In that moment I was able to realize, that my life had been operating on an automatic pilot program that was not mine!

The question then is, if it was not mine, then whose was it? It's easy to jump to the obvious conclusion, the one I mentioned earlier, of the beliefs we picked up from our primary caregivers as children. And while much of that is true, there is more to it than that. Much more. Like generations more. Like lifetimes more, of a program that just keeps playing over and over again until someone stands up, and courageously decides to be the one to break the chain of pain and suffering.

So I asked myself, "what if the beliefs I've held for so long are not just my own isolated beliefs ingrained from childhood? What if these beliefs are Universal? How could we know if this were true or not? Would there be a way to prove it?" In my opinion, I say yes.

Imagine if six billion people are operating in a world with the same or similar programming. Imagine if everyone, everywhere is living and BELIEVING in this illusion of unworthiness and separation. And if it is our beliefs that create the very world we live in, wouldn't it make sense to understand that the way we are living, and what we are believing in is false?

Take a moment and ask yourself this question. Do we function as a world whose humanity is filled with a belief in survival, poverty, struggle, and separation, or do we function like a world whose humanity believes in thriving, prosperity, ease, and unity? Does it feel to you like there's a great imbalance here? Like many are thriving and living in relative ease and prosperity, and many more are struggling just to survive?

As long as there's this split, we remain a collective of human beings enslaved by our own power. Our power to create. There is no question here about whether we create or not. The question is how do we create? We create by what we focus on, and what we focus on is what we believe. Belief precedes reality. There are no exceptions to this rule. And how do we know that what we believe is working in our lives? Take a look at your life, like I did. On a scale of 0 to 10, what would you score each area? Every area of my life was zero. For me, this was the dramatic realization I had to come to before I could understand that I was the only one who held the power to change my world and to shatter these archaic beliefs. This is called self love. When we come to know the power of who we really are and begin to use that power for the betterment of all, we step into our destined role of master creator.

What realization will we need to come to before we begin to understand our true power? What realization will our world need to come to? Hopefully it won't have to be a painful one. Imagine a human collective, you and I, one by one waking up to this knowledge. Imagine each of us, our daily existence beginning to improve moment by moment by realizing our power to change our beliefs about who we are and rewriting our scripts in a language unique to our own hearts and lives.

Like my own belief in failure, struggle, survival and loneliness, I literally unconsciously believed that I was who I believed myself to be, and every single are of my life proved this beyond a shadow of a doubt, despite all the love, joy, and beauty, that lived inside me. Because of my belief, my heart became my inner, sacred sanctuary with a big, huge KEEP OUT sign on it. Instead of being able to throw those doors wide open and share all that was in there with others, I kept it under lock and key where my true self lived unexpressed, my gifts unavailable to the world.

With a heart felt prayer to my higher wisdom for guidance on this massive "aha" moment, I discovered a valuable secret about self-love, one I'd like to share with you.

Perhaps secret is not the correct word, for it's never really been hidden from us, only overlooked, due to the numbing amnesia of a mass consciousness choosing enslavement over freedom because we never knew we had the power to choose what to believe in. It's more like awakening to something that's been greatly misunderstood for centuries — the belief in who we truly are.

In the world I remember as home, the one I've been longing for all my life, the one I now realize we are all here to create together; self-love was a non-issue. Because we were never separate from our Source or our hearts, we never had any desire or reason to do anything joyless, empty or unsatisfying. It was impossible to even consider, because our programming, our beliefs, were such that anything other than joy, harmony, love, abundance, beauty, and unity were literally UN-believable.

To live our lives fully expressing our gifts, fully expressing our love, fully expressing our joy, fully expressing our bodies, was our way of life, and in living this way — believing this way — peace and harmony abounded. This was a world created by self love. We knew this and believed in nothing else. Everything emanated from this central core within our hearts, where feeling deeply was how we prayed. Our prayers were not spoken through words, but silently and powerfully expressed through our heart-felt feelings of gratitude and reverence for the All. Expressing our gifts, no matter what they were, was the only way we knew how to connect with our god-self, to feel our hearts overflow, and in turn keep the ever-flowing river of divine prayer circulating in our lives. Living this way, our lives were our holy prayers, our hearts the key to serving each other. This is the wisdom I remember. And deep within your hearts, I know it is the wisdom you remember too.

So what happened? How did we forget? Why did we forget? I truly have no idea. Though I can't help thinking that what happened when we went to sleep is really no different than what is happening now as we begin to wake up. Perhaps it was an agreement made collectively, one of grand proportion, to experiment with our power of choice and belief. To see what we could do with it. It's impossible to experience the light without the dark. Perhaps we all agreed that this was the only way to know who we really are, and in the grand awakening that is slowly sweeping across the world, perhaps we knew this was the only way to move consciously into Oneness and beyond the world of duality forever.

Wealthy or impoverished, our true freedom will remain an ever-elusive dream as long as there's a single human suffering or struggling for the dignity and basic right to thrive, not just survive in this world. When we, as individuals begin to understand the true meaning of self-love, and begin living from this place, we will automatically give up the drama of our current existence and begin paving the road to freedom. I know I have walked upon this road many times before, in other worlds, in other lifetimes. I know I have been condemned, and even killed for voicing these ancient ways that teach of sacred power and freedom for all. And for eternity I will continue, for that is the way of self-love.

Copyright 2009 Heather Fraser — www.heatherfraser.com Ontario, Canada

About Heather Fraser

Heather Fraser, born December 30, 1962 in Toronto, moved to Africa at the age of 9. It was here that Heather began to understand the connection to all living things and come to know the grace and wisdom of both the natural and esoteric world. Her healing, infinite journey of transformation has lead her to the richest, most sought after destination anywhere — home — to the soul. This place of deep awareness and self-acceptance of her special gifts of sensitivity, empathy, and intuition has given her all the passion and inspiration needed to write and teach what she has learned about honoring the Self and nurturing the soul — the true purpose of our existence. Heather specializes in counseling, re-educating, and profoundly validating those that are highly sensitive, intuitive, empaths, helping them to accept these traits as the gifts that they are and to express them proudly and shamelessly.

She is a gifted, prolific, successful published writer, poet, and speaker with a readership spanning the globe, as well as a Reconnective Healing Practitioner, a Level III Touch For Health Practitioner, and a former Holistic Nutritional Consultant, RNCP. Heather is the proud mother of a daughter she names Sage, who is also a highly intuitive, sensitive empath. They live together in Ontario, CANADA with their lazy cat and hilarious lovebird. For more information, or to contact Heather, please visit her website at www.heatherfraser.com