February 2011 Knowledge Newsletter 

Dear Friends,

February is the month where we celebrate Valentine’s Day and focus our attention on matters of the heart. Many will be thinking about loved ones and demonstrating how we feel by sending cards, gifts, and spending quality time together. But how much time are you going to spend on loving and honoring yourself? Loving ourselves is just as important, if not more so, than demonstrating our love for others. Let us explore some ways you could do that.

Opening the Heart

You could buy yourself chocolates, take yourself out for a nice dinner or have a bubble bath with a glass of champagne. While these may be out of the ordinary treats I am thinking of ways we could be loving and honor ourselves every day of the year.

How often do you beat yourself up or say you are an idiot for making a mistake?

How often do you put the needs of others in front of your own?

How often do you honor what your body needs?

How often do you let people set on your boundaries and fail to get the respect you want and deserve?

When did you last treat yourself to something you would not ordinarily do like a massage, a facial, time alone, etc.

How often do you go along with what others want without saying anything when that is not what you want to do? 

Are you feeling  like there is something wrong with you because some fellow did not send you flowers or chocolates for Valentine’s Day nor take you out for a nice dinner?

I am sure you can think of many self incriminating reasons for not having someone to adore you.

If you are not doing these things for yourself then you are not being very loving to yourself. Maybe it is time to stop making yourself wrong and start loving yourself. Make a vow to yourself today that you will devote time everyday to doing something loving for yourself.

Write a love poem to yourself appreciating all your wonderful qualities. Write down how much you appreciate exactly the way you are and why. There is nothing wrong with you. You are perfect just the way you are whether anyone acknowledges this or not.

Loving ourselves is a daily job that no one is going to do for us. We may want them to but that is not a guarantee that they will do it. So if you don’t love treat yourself well, you may be the one to loose out. Surprisingly, so will the other people around you because when you feel fulfilled and loved, you response to others will improve.

More than likely you have only experienced conditional love in your life no matter how many times someone has said I love you. By loving yourself completely you have an opportunity to experience unconditional love. That is a very different experience.

When we crave love from others, we sacrifice our own needs to get love and acceptance. This starts with our family of origin and continues into our adult relationships. When we love ourselves we don’t need to sacrifice anything. We can have it all.

When we love ourselves we know we are worthy of self respect and respect from others and won’t put up with anything less. We know we deserve this not because someone told us so but because we exist in human form. God does not say I love you if you do this or that. He or She loves us just the way we are and honors the uniqueness in each of us.  

I'm going to go through this life calling myself Beloved and rolling out the infinite advantages that kindness offers.  The voice I'll listen to inside will be loving or I won't listen.

The Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön advocates self-love as a practice for helping us discover our own "awakened heart" or sense of ease with everything.  She reminds us that our habits and ideas of ourselves are just fragments and fictions we focus on. They are not the story of our True Self, the abundance and love always available.  She says, "All these trips that we lay upon ourselves-the heavy duty fearing that we're bad and hoping that we're good, the identities that we so clearly cling to, the rage, the jealousy and the addictions of all kinds-never touch our basic wealth. They are like clouds that temporarily block the sun. But all the time our warmth and brilliance are right here."

Chödrön teaches a form of meditation in which you stop trying to change certain parts of yourself. Instead you surround the unwanted aspect of yourself or your life with compassion.  In this way, you come into the present moment with what is.  You stop avoiding or resisting. And when you face the "monsters," they reveal a truth that is wholesome and instructive.  Seems to me, that "love your enemy" thing begins at home.

I'll go a step further. I've watched some of my career coaching clients reject traits about themselves. "I wish I weren't so analytical," or "I wish I weren't interested in so many things," they say. They assume a design flaw. But I assume a design clue. I know their precise nature is the foundation of an astonishing destiny. There are no accidents. It's all seeded and purposeful. Yet we will only discover the advantages when we investigate with neutrality and acceptance.

I want you to consider self-love as an act of service. Frankly, I just can't see how you will offer your world your talents, contribution, and presence without it.  Self-love is a necessity. It's taken me years to realize that I cannot live my life-mission and beat myself up at the same time. I cannot darken myself and expand my love exponentially. When I am judging myself, I am making myself unavailable to a Universe that wants to wash through me with big hurly burly waves of love. I am denying an inspired power that can effortlessly cure cancer, write screenplays, ignite wealth, heal broken hearts, or just about anything else.  I don't know my exact part in the play that way, but I do know I want to be a lifelong servant to the Creative Flow. I wish to receive and carry out the impulses of divine love. And that all begins with self-love.

S often we neglect or ignore parts of ourselves that need expression and do you have any idea of what this costs you in the end. It makes you angry, leaves you feeling like a failure, full of fear and you miss out on the adventures of your life. You never get to discover who you really are and what you are capable of.

Don’t loose out for one more day. Start doing what you always wanted to do today. Don’t let anyone one discourage you.

Forgive yourself for anything you have failed to do in the past, for all the times you made excuses why you could have what you really wanted. Trust that you have what it takes whether others encourage you or not. Listen to your inner guidance that will always give you the right advice and point your nose in the right direction. Remember where there is trust there is no fear.

When we get in touch with our souls we discover we are love and nothing else. We don’t need to justify our existence or anything else we do. In our need to please others, we make ourselves less and don’t own all of who we are. Loving yourself completely means loving your body just the way it is, loving everything you do each a even things you consider bad habits. This is what makes you uniquely you. 

Why not be your own best friend? You may not have all the answers but at least you will have to answer to no one and you can have your full support at all times. Allow yourself to walk in your full power and still feel loved. Own all aspects of yourself your gifts and bad habits, which you have criticized or denied. Value yourself more than others. Listen to your own intuition. Stop lying to yourself because you don’t want to face the truth or make changes. 

 When we love and accept ourselves, we feel at peace within. We are no longer dependent on others to fulfill our emotional needs. We can still have partnership relationships but they will not be based on need. We will not expect our partners to fulfill the needs of our inner child because we have taken on that task for ourselves.

When we open our hearts with love for ourselves and others, we will feel terrific inside and out. We may not get any immediate perks but in time we will attract many loving people into our lives because of the law of attraction.

To feel loved imagine yourself sitting or lying in a bubble of small red hearts. See the hearts flowing into your heart circulating around your body being love to every cell of your body. Just bath in the feeling of total unconditional love. You can also see a flow of little red hearts coming out of your heart and being directed to whoever you would wish to send them to. If you have no one in particular to send them to just see them flowing to the who planet and all living beings on it no matter who they are or where they live. Do this daily. In fact many times a day would be even better. Before you get out of bed, in the shower or bath, during your lunch break or after dinner, or sitting in your car in traffic.

The perks of doing this is that will not only feel more loved and loving you will receive blessings because of all the love you send to others. whatever we send out comes back to us in multiples so don’t hold back on sending out your love.

Write love poems to yourself and others. Make a commitment to do this daily for 6 months and see how your life changes.

We all deserve to be loved unconditionally but few of us ever experience unconditional love because most people have relationships out of need which they call love. These relationships are ego driven. The ego always wants to maintain the status quo and does not like when you change your beliefs systems

I have provided much for your consideration. If you need my help with any of the changes you are experiencing, please feel free to contact me. I am available for personal, telephone and webcam readings, empowerment coaching, regressions, and healing either by responding to this newsletter or calling me at 505 474-6363 or 514 312-2451.

I can teach personal or webcam classes if you gather a group of 6 or more people. Choose the class of your choice from the list on my website under Class Descriptions. My online classes, guided meditation CD's and my books Discover Your Psychic Abilities and Your Soul: The Roadmap to Your Life are always available at www.sharoncheney.com.

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May your life be filled with love, peace and abundance. Blessings to all,

Sharon Cheney