Fear is everywhere. The mainstream media feeds it to us and many feast on it as if it is their last meal as their world crashes into an unknown abyss of darkness. Their hearts fail in the sense that their heart is drained of the will to live or go on. The energy that gives them life feels as if it has vanished into nothingness as it flees from this imminent doom that is destroying all that is good. It seems impossible to look up and see the sun rise again from the dark night. The media is a tsunami of hopelessness as it spreads fear across the world.
How then is it possible to love in troubled times when there seems to be nothing to love including ourselves? The answer is simple but the action is difficult until we are the masters of it. Several years ago I was confident that I loved myself through and through, until I attempted to tell myself that I Love You Craig. The first day that I looked myself in the eyes in the mirror I felt sick and called it a lie. But I thought that was just me being uncomfortable doing it. So I did it again the next day, but this time my face turned white as my body became cold as thoughts began screaming through my head calling me a f#%^#ng liar. My goal was to do this for 15 min but I quit after 10 min when my body began to shake and vomit. This could not be. I knew that I loved myself and I would make it happen. On the 3rd day I knew that I could do it, I would be able to sincerely look myself in my eyes and say, “I Love You Craig”! There I am standing in front of the mirror ready to do it, but the words wouldn’t come. I couldn’t say anything nice about myself. I was speechless. I had to force myself to look at the mirror instead of the floor. Every time I did look in the mirror I physically began to vomit because the lie went so deep. I forced myself to stand there for 30 min as a cold sweat began running down my full body. Questions like how can anyone love something like me? and on and on the sickness went.
It took 1 1/2 years to tell myself that “I Love You Craig”, and now I do it several times a day just because it feels so good. I learned to love myself during troubled times, like divorce, bankruptcy, devastating illness, a single parent with custody of 4 teenagers, being evicted from the house because the landlord took the rent money and used it for other things, overwhelming depression, more bills than money, and the list goes on. Everything crumbled around me as my dreams burnt into ashes again and again. And yet I believed that happiness is real because I had felt it before. I began to tell stories of good things that I was doing. I chose to tell the lie that I do love myself and that it is ok to do it. And then one day in these troubled times I realized that I DO LOVE ME! and that feels good!!
I wanted others to love me first so I could love myself, but that didn’t happen. Instead as soon as I thought that it was happening then the relationship came to an end as they told me how wonderful I am but they felt like they needed something different. Gradually I learned that yes we all deserve love but only our own self-love.
Many in times of turmoil and trouble attempt to close their hearts as they try to hide from the inner pain only to find that it grows into anger and fear and destroys all that they hold dear. And then there are those like you, like me, like us that choose to open our hearts to the healing light of love. And then these miracles begin to bloom in our lives: Love is the answer, It fills our hearts with passion for life, It calms the troubled soul and casts out all fear, It causes the flowers to bloom and gives the birds a reason to sing, It bonds the mother and child and father too, It is the life energy that flows through all living things, It heals the broken soul as we surrender to our own self-love, It gives us strength when we are weak, it is the only way to live in happiness, It is the most sacred gift, It transforms the dross into gold and worthless sand into diamonds, It takes the caterpillar and guides it to be the most spectacular butterfly, It takes chaos and turns it into Divine order, and so much more. We discover in troubled times that Love Is and then that Love Is More.
Love is more…. which is the title of part two to the book Love Is. It is in troubled times that we search for more than the illusions of happiness that seem to fail with every step. Yes we deserve love, but not from another, we deserve love from ourselves and in this it becomes impossible for another to steal it away from us. It is ours and no one can take it but we can give to everyone we choose.
With love, Craig R Durrant
