* HOW DO WE ACCESS SELF LOVE?
From my own experience, children have been taught or encouraged to comprehend emotional intelligence from a cognitive and social perspective of communal growth. Due to what I feel is the unfortunate and uncomfortable history of humans constant attempts to teach equality through fear of other vs. love of self. The concept of biased beliefs stems from non- updated cultural and familial conditioning. Many parents and generations prior have built-in triggers, from avoidance of generational ideologies of hypersensitivity to change.
The idea or notion of the unknown becoming a form of intimidation to new experiences learned outside of the rehearsed paradigm, forged forth into what we label "traditions." I've worked with children from 6 months to 12 years old and the elderly in hospice care for more than five years; regardless of upbringing or socio-economics, the correlation of anxiety or depression came from what I witnessed to being the equivalence of emotionally being bullied and not feeling indeed heard or loved.
So, how do we begin to teach self-love from a place of survival intuition without creating more competition or greed?. Let's begin with tracing the pathology of pain that caused us to react to another's discomfort of misunderstanding in the first place. Not being comfortable is not an excuse or reason to intimidate others. But its widely and highly recognized as okay from our service industries to corporate politics and so on. Merely knowing or understanding does not validate how you feel or how another is feeling, developing insight from a place of collective perspective is a form of branding by society and lineage that we as humans have not yet conquered.
Acknowledging our fears and forgiving oneself for not being in control of what we have yet to learn. We are multi-functional beings, living in a world of flux and constant recreation of existence. We don't control all functions of the body any more than we create the air which we breathe, understanding that we have a choice of options based on what we are given. Those options were allowing our emotions to provide the opportunity of answers that serve as a way to comfort the contentment of what we try to keep balance within our physical reality. Can we genuinely overcome said trauma if we never allow the space to let it live out the conditions in which they were born?
Without a proper introduction to emotional intelligence and the establishment of clarity, kids and adults alike can misrepresent ancestral emotions as their own. When in each of our own perceived realities vary greatly, when trauma is imprinted on a child who is then taught to believe that even those who love us most can still and usually create the most damage to us, with or without implied intent. When most adults get frustrated, they shut down or lash out, and kids are sponges, they will mimic and transform into the energy that is transmitted and transmuted into the energy that surrounds them.
This, creating a system of lack and the by-product being fear of worth, opening us to a vulnerability which now days has been widely accepted & misconstrued as a weakness, which in turn manifests into embarrassment and later growing into a self-sabotaging ego. With the mentality that we aren't good enough compared to another's standards, children are not granted their full potential of growth through trial & error. This then grows and continually increases into what we feel is our mind, which is only an organ that processes images, sounds, touch, etc. to fit into outdated & arctic standards that lack empathy.
A history of toxic masculinity that tells boys it's okay not to be okay and for girls to sit and be pretty, the list of labels and titles could go on and on, but the point has been served. As an adult, I've come to ask others what their particular definition of "understanding" based on the quality of experiences and exposure with the world beyond their families, homes, or regional conditioning is?
Believe it or not, being consistent in presence, quality of time, ability to let go of what we think we know, and finally choosing to listen, is when we are acutely allowed to see past self and recognize the whole. I love without condition, expectations, or explanations; I do this because so many are misrepresented solely based on subcultural Expressions of soul-ego connection.
As a very openly gay, conditionally black, and outspoken individual, I can promise you no matter the level of power or title, and when one attempts to bury further a pain that was meant to be released, the most logically logical of minds revert to that defenseless child. As kids observe us, adults, they see the hurt and mimic the actions of those they respect, by forcing the same darkness back into a deep space of emotional instability. Feeling this as "normal" creates anxieties, because those who led us, now fear their truths and distrust love due to an onset of contaminated morals.
Centuries of paper laws and linear thinking has left us with the idea that we need permission to create. No such thing, when nature gives and loves without reverence, the spirit of Gaia does so freely. Even with the constraints of man's feebly contrived mechanics, based on the very source which we take for granted, a nurturing nature continues to provide the substance of life While working in hospice and listening to those who knew a cycle of their lives was coming to a close, I began to recognize the pattern of regret that was used to stagnate the enlightenment of God.
The only thing left was wishing the only regrets and hope's I ever heard were that of, "I wish I loved harder & freely, I hope they knew how much I loved them, I pray that they can forgive me." They were loved ones, friends, or others, but still, the sense of "I" was lost even in the approach of death. In that moment of death, fear of living didn't seem so scary anymore.
Life as a journey had much more merit and seemed to be met by exploring the world through the lens of love When the human condition, is allowed by faith to see past the belief of not believing, what was or had been conditioned to believe begins to dissipate. By breaking through the walls of conditioned history and romanticism of another's concepts of perceptions, the "I" within the theme is genuinely able to feel its own souls path of enlightenment. Collective consciousness can truly heal and begin anew, but the journey must start within the" You" residing in you.
With all due respect, I'm done with theory and conjecture . . . It's time for application, collaboration, and reunion with our souls' purpose while enduring the ups and downs of this ever-evolving world. By the grace of empathy, gratitude, and service to something higher than us, is how and when we begin to teach self-love.
Love,
JAH
@ Cover photo courtesy of Paulina E. Art & Photography instagram.com/paulinaeartandphotography
