Love is My Power

Love is my Power

I used to have a prestigious job and make a ton of money. I was a TV writer and I could always depend on saying “CSI:Miami” to impress anyone I met. I used to have the top agents in Los Angeles, the dream agents. I paraded around these agents like a badge of honor. I only had to say their name to elicit “oohs” and “ahhs” from anyone in the industry.

But it all began to unravel. I got fired from the fancy job. I spent the money. I couldn’t do what my agents wanted me to do so I lost them too. All this coincided with the reawakening of my spiritual beliefs. I was learning through graduate school in Spiritual Psychology and through meditation the truth about myself and my spiritual existence.

I was discovering energy and how it worked to clear pain. I discovered I could co-create my experience by taking charge of my belief system. I worked to let go of judgments and limiting beliefs I’d held all my life. I integrated my subpersonalities though Gestalt Therapy (giving parts of you a voice). I meditated to connect to myself and my life path. And I did it.

At 36 I finally learned to love myself.

I can’t tell you how incredible this feels. (I hope you already know.) For the first time, I felt cared for on a deep level. I felt warmth spread through my body that was usually reserved for Christmas or chocolate cake. I could look in the mirror and meet my own eyes with affection. For the first time. In 36 years!

Since then, I have been building this ability to love. Applying to people I previously didn’t appreciate. Applying to my mother with whom I’d struggled to love for decades. Trying on its different permutations. Loving the unacceptable, despised parts of me. Loving homeless people. Loving the trees and sky. Loving the innate goodness in each person. Loving Christmas and chocolate cake.

I once asked my teacher how she was so compassionate and wise – she treated each person she met as sacred, each word they said as valuable, leaving out nothing and no one. She said, “When I look at people. All I see is the hand of God.” So, for years, that is how I tried to look. Looking for the beauty of each moment. Or the lesson in each challenge. Looking for the hand of God.

What is amazing is that I found it. I peeled the layers of childhood and adult traumas. I fully grieved the losses of friends and boyfriends. The loss of love I felt from the self imposed belief that I wasn’t worthy of love. I peeled and peeled and finally got to the core where I could stand in front of the mirror and look at myself with bright eyes seeing the divinity within.

Which brings me to this morning…

This morning as I was meditating, a part of me was terrified and crying. Since I’ve worked extensively with Gestalt, I knew it was the part of me that felt she had no power. That self who missed her fancy job, loved the badge of TV writer and had imagined she was TV royalty when she had hot shot agents.

I sat with her as she cried. I told her I loved her and she was safe. She was angry that I wasn’t trying harder. That I had refused to take a show that didn’t feel right. She was embarrassed that we’d been fired, clinging to the humiliation like a new badge. I just sat and listened compassionately. I had heard all this before. She wanted the money and the safety and the prestige. I assured her she was valuable without it.

Finally, her sobs subsided. Her pain released. Her need to prove herself relaxed. And I sat with her giving her love and acceptance. And she began to accept it and fill up on it. And then, she giggled delightedly. For no reason. And I realized: she thought those things were important. She thought that power, money and being a success were the keys to being happy. But she was wrong.

I wasn’t happy when I had all those things. I was terrified of losing them.

I realized this morning that all of those things eventually could and would be lost. My health. My wealth. My outer vestiges of success. I can’t take my closet of clothes into the great beyond. I can’t transfer a healthy bank account to the Heaven Branch. Eventually, I will have to let go of all those false trappings of power and achievement and then, what will be left?

Luckily, what will be left is a deep and profound acceptance of myself. A love that viscerally tingles through out my body and tickles the people I meet. A love that reconnected me to my mother so freely that I could tell her ‘I love you’ after not speaking those words (or feeling them) for 25 years.

Love that was available to me the whole time, but that I couldn’t find because I was looking for money and power.

But love is my power.

The ability to forgive myself for anything. The ability to see my beauty through my imperfections. The ability to appreciate each divine creation for what it is. The ability to feel connected to supposed strangers. The sweet nectar that reverberates through my body allowing me to enjoy every moment. And see the hand of God in everything. Love!

And I’m pretty sure I can take it with me when I go.