Is Love What Is Missing?

My journey to loving myself began with a body that was very unhealthy. I think often when one gets really really sick the connection between the Spirtual part and the body part of us crosses into each other naturally. The following is what I learned about this very connected subject and that while we see them as “separate” ideas they really are not.

I was pretty sure at the time I began my learning journey that if something didn’t drastically change, I might be facing not living. Through that experience, I came to realize that any health issue (including weight, which was an indicator of how unhealthy I was) is rooted ultimately where mine was. In not loving myself. L. O. V. E. Love (As M. McConaughey would say it!) -the most significant missing component. I know this as surely as I am writing it. That may sound like a stretch, but keep reading, and I will explain why I feel this so strongly.

As you have learned in the previous chapter my journey to loving myself began with a desire to live. I was pretty sure at the time that if something didn’t drastically change I might be facing not living. Through that experience, I came to realize that any weight or health issue is rooted exactly where mine was. In not loving myself. L. O. V. E. Love (As M. McConaughey would say it!) -the largest missing component. I know this as surely as I am writing it. 

I think it of course, is easier in the face of a serious medical condition to make this correlation. But even when I hear talk about weight loss, I find that self-love is the seriously overlooked aspect. I have often joked that diet is a four-letter word beginning with DIE and providing a T to sacrifice yourself on. It just isn’t comfortable or easy. Naturally, neither is a serious health condition. It is difficult to feel all that lovey-dovey when your body seems bent on being “against” you so to speak.

But why? Have you ever stopped to consider that both healing and dieting should be? And if it isn’t loving, then aren’t we all starting the diet or the healing journey from a negative place?

So, let’s break it down to the very basis of the thing…Dieting and healing are naturally driven by the desire to change our bodies, starting in a position of pain and/or dissatisfaction. Granted, the change will be for the betterment of the body of course. But forging forth with emotions (I will explain soon why emotions are important) such as resentment, dissatisfaction, dislike, frustration, disdain, and possibly even hate, the diet/healing may not have the best chances of a good outcome, quite honestly.  Emotions such as those, when held against any aspect of our body, are not an energy of love and it is not possible to hold differing emotions at the same time with in the emotional body. Therefore, if the above-listed emotions are the feelings behind the motivation to change, then the change is propelled by negative or weak energetic force.

When a low-energy emotion underlies a desired change, the results may not turn into what is expected. Even if you get “excited” about a new diet, a quick fix, quick cure, a life hack, or a miracle pill, the underlying energy to sustain your diet will still be anchored in your overall dominant emotion about your body. To change the outcome in the long term, you have to understand how your feelings profoundly affect you. I am not saying that you won’t find a short modicum of success with the “excitement” phase. You will. But when the excitement fades, your body most likely will return to the previous state if no spiritual work is done to alter the dominant emotions that you feel on a regular basis. You may have already experienced this a few times if you are reading this! This is why yo-yoing weight is so commonly experienced. Why cancers often return later.

If you back any endeavor from a low emotinal energy baseline, it will not sustain the desired results. To believe that it could would be the same as saying I want to launch a rocket into orbit, but I am only using half of the fuel required to make it there. But I am going to get really excited at first….. – Welll…. – You will get part of the way. But the law of gravity, not unlike the laws governing emotional resonance, or vibration (“weaving” – will soon expound), is going to bring you back down when you run out of fuel. Or, in this case, when you run out of excitement. And this is why so many body endeavors are a constant cycle of lift-off and crash. 

Unfortunately, each “endeavor” leaves you with less faith in yourself than you started with.  The reason for failure is so simple. The short-lived excitement did not change the way you truly feel. And I am certainly not implying that you should not be excited, you absolutely should and need to be. But lets see why tweaking the excitement towards loving yourself might be a superior approach. After all knowledge is power, and there is hope! So much hope!

What if we anchor our efforts in love? Love is powerful. We know this. Love is a theme in every great story. And yet, it is one of the last things we discuss in regard to the well-being of our bodies. Especially if that body isn’t what we deem as being optimal. But I promise that if you put forth a small amount of effort each day toward this idea of loving yourself, the results will enrich every aspect of your life. In a year, you will hardly recognize your body, let alone your life. Love changes everything it touches. 

Where to start? I can tell you from experience it will probably sound easier than it actually is. Like really a whole lot easier. You probably won’t jump straight into love regarding the aspects of your body you aren’t enjoying. (If you are able to call me with the formula!) Consider the last time you felt sincerely proud of, and comfortable in your body. There may be aspects of your body that you have always wished were different. You might see it as too sick, too painful, too tall, too short, or too whatever. But one thing I sincerely believe is that your body was perfectly made for you. That you chose it before you came to this earth. That may seem like a stretch to you, and we will not try to tackle all of life’s mysteries. We are going on a journey of learning to love the body we have and work with it, not against it. 

So let us embark! We will take baby steps. Beginning with the realization that it is not your body’s fault that it is not perfect. And your body is certainly not against you. Quite the opposite! Your body is 100% on board with your survival. In fact, in every moment, it is doing everything it can to ensure you live. This might sound like a very basic idea but have you considered how quickly it would end for you if it did not have this position? You do not consciously control your heart beating. What if it decided it was tired of you bullying it? Doesn’t it give you a different perspective of appreciation that it loves you even when you don’t love it? Talk about unconditional. Let’s start there and work towards changing some of your feelings about your body. Just from the is appreciation that it is on your side 100% of the time. (Even when you don’t feed, rest, or love it well.) 

Have you ever been wrongfully accused of doing something you have not done? Did those accusations made you feel poorly? That is what you are doing to your body when you are having negative thoughts and emotions towards it. You dictate what is going into your body, not only in a physical eating and drinking way but in a “feeling” way as well. Your body perceives in real-time every feeling you have regarding it. Every word you verbalize or say internally about it, it records, accepts, and matches. I’ll explain how. 

Let’s look at love and your body on an energetic plane. Everything vibrates, which, in essence, means that everything is moving at its cellular level. All matter, or all things physical, are vibrating. Our perception of this “vibration” of energy is actually the way in which we perceive all matter. The rate of this vibration, or frequency, creates the shape and solidity of the physical thing we observe. Our senses are the tools we use to “perceive” the energy vibrations of physical things around us. Even the rocks and the air around you have measurable vibration. 

Intangible things also have vibrational frequencies. The air you are breathing has a vibrational frequency. Your thoughts have a vibration. Your words have a vibration. And they are producing feelings in you that match their vibration. The cells of your body hear “the vibration” of every word you produce from your mind.  And they feel and believe fully the information they are receiving. Like good little soldiers, they go about the task of making your thoughts into emotions and turn that into a true picture of reality for you. Think of your thoughts and emotions as “commands”. If your “commands ” for your body are negative, you will receive negative results in terms of physical manifestation. If your “commands” are positive, you will begin to see more positive manifestations in your body. 

So if you are looking in the mirror thinking, “Geez, look at that fat belly.” That thought produces within in you the feelings of what? Disappointment, irritation, maybe disgust? If so, you have simply solidified that aspect in your undesired physical apperance into reality. How? Because your feelings match the reality you already do not like. What the cells of your body receive as a message is this: “We’re receiving a low-frequency command to stay as we are.” It takes you literally. It will show you exactly what it is receiving from you regarding the energy vibration.

Let’s talk about rates of vibration or energetic frequency in more depth.  Love, as we all know, feels good. It motivates, encourages, and supports. Whereas despair, in comparison, feels tiresome. It procrastinates, it “can’t,” and it undermines. Love is one of the higher rates of vibration . In the book Power vs Force, D. Hawkins calibrates the energy measurement of love  beginning at 500. The energy level of despair calibrates is 50.  If you imagine it as an energy vortex, as this chart depicts it, the energy of love is 10 times more powerful than the energy of despair.

Love, as you can see, is among the higher vibrations of our “feeling” energy influencers. So it easily stands to reason that a body whose cells are being influenced by the emotional energy of despair is moving and metabolizing much slower than one that is steeped in loving emotional energy. It is illogical to think that it could be otherwise.

  The definition of metabolism is “the process in which the body changes food, drink, or fat stores into energy.” The vibrational rate, set by our thoughts and emotions, directly influences the speed at which this bodily function is conducted. Which in turn directly affects the bodies ability to defend and repair itself.

A simple and often overlooked step to increasing your metabolic and healing rate is simply to elevate the emotions that you experience because they are affecting your body. Which is every single feeling you indulge in. And I say indulge because it is a choice. It may not always seem like it is. But it always is.  Consequently, a “healthy” metabolism finds support from “healthy” emotions such as love, appreciation, gratitude, etc. With this understanding of how your metabolism is influenced by your emotions, the next step is taking responsibility for them. 

I know! Adulting sucks! But you really have no choice if you are going to live in the body that you want. Or in the life that you want, for that matter.  I know that you might like to blame someone, anyone else, for the things you perceive as “wrong” with your life. And it stands to reason that you would. Go back and look at the Power vs Force chart. Blame falls around 125 while Guilt is clear down around 30. I would actually prefer you feel blame than guilt! There is much greater energetic power there to use. However, blame does, in essence, still give your power away. You are giving your power to whatever, or whoever, you are blaming. You must “own” your power for it to actually be useful to you. Also, there is not enough energy at that level to change things about your body in a significant way. I would prefer you only pause in blame (for just a minute) then take back your power and move on up into anger or courage. You must take full responsibility for your energy, which is to say full responsibility for your emotions. Which all stem from your thoughts and self-talk.

I don’t want you to misunderstand me, so I want to say it again. If you find yourself feeling guilty about eating that whole cheesecake, I don’t want you to stay there! Blame is on the way up the scale. By all means, feel free (for about one minute) to stop off in blame. Blame your mother, blame your spouse, heck, blame the cat (it won’t believe you anyway). Then take your power back!! And start moving further up the emotional scale. Take it up to anger and toss a pillow around, heck, just stomp it to death! Then, move on up to hope. If you can get to hope, you can get courage. And from there, you can get to appreciation and love. Get close and then find any reason to feel love. You can do it. I mean, the sun came up today, didn’t it?! Anything is possible!

Begin practicing the ability to move your emotions on purpose. Refer back to this scale from time to time. (Download and print it. If you have difficulty doing that email me and I will send it to you.) Practice moving your emotions on purpose using your thoughts. You can do it. Seriously, it really isn’t very hard. In fact, it is ridiculously easy. With only a couple of thoughts, you can move fully, and heart-poundingly, into anger. Just one memory can transport you there. This is what actors are getting paid millions for, aren’t they? The ability to move through emotions on purpose with no external provocation using only thier mind to influence their emotional state. Only with the desire to do so. Right? They aren’t such special snowflakes (ok, maybe some are a bit pretty). However, if you cut them, they bleed too. So if they can learn to direct their emotions, so can you!

Study the chart. Start recognizing and being aware of your emotions. Then, start to practice moving up and down the scale on purpose using your thoughts. You will find it far easier than you think. We are emotional beings. It is how we are meant to navigate this life experience. Now get to practicing!