Author: Barry
Company: Hewlett-Packard Company

Love

Everyday we use language – words -  to communicate to those around us.  Words are funny things as they are affected by the consciousness and intention of those who use them. Today I would like to speak to you about a word that we all use and that we all have an understanding of.  This single word can heal, renew and affirm or can control, hurt and afflict. It can create a lot of confusion or misconception.  It can be used as a weapon or as a sauve. People have stopped wars because of this word while others have started wars in its name. 

What is the word?  It is the word LOVE.  

How does this word have so much power? Where do we begin to understand it? It is clear to me that the place we begin to understand the word love is in our own personal relationship to it. To really begin to understand the word love, we must learn to have a loving relationship with ourselves. It may come as a surprise to you but love for yourself is the key to loving others. It is a simple truth that LOVE begins with you. When your relationship with yourself is based on love and respect, your relationship with everything in life will change, including your relationships with the people you love.

To begin exploring Love we must ask a simple question and be honest with our answer. How do you feel about yourself? Do you love, respect, and honor yourself? If the answer is no, then you can begin to understand all the times your heart has been broken. When you don't love, respect, and honor yourself, then you allow other people to treat you without love, respect, and honor. The challenge is to learn to treat yourself with love, respect, and honor. Once you do this, there is no way that you will accept anything less from others. Once you have given yourself permission to love you, you can be clearer about what you need to be happy in a relationship.  This means that if someone wants to play an important role in your life as your friend or lover, husband or wife, then you already know what kind of person you want and need. It is obvious if that person is not what you want, and you have this awareness right from the beginning. 

Why? Because you have learned how to love yourself and be true to yourself. This personal integrity means that you no longer choose to lie to yourself. This gives you clarity and you are able to be clear about what it is that makes you joyful.

Integrity is knowing what you really are, not what you believe about yourself, what you would like to believe about yourself or even what you pretend to be. When you are true to your integrity you never consciously go against yourself. You are honest with you, and able to notice when someone shows you disrespect. When someone treats you disrespectfully, you have the clarity and courage to say, "Hold it. I don't like the way you are talking to me." You put up a boundary right away because you will no longer allow yourself to be abused. You create a clear system of boundaries with other people, and you also respect the boundaries that others put on you.

Armed with self-love, if someone wants to be with you, that person has to come from a place of love and respect, not from fear and disrespect. If you are already in a relationship that doesn't honor you, then you can enter a period of healing and cleansing so that both of you return to love and respect, beginning with yourself, and continuing with each other. You begin with yourself because you need to have love in order to give love; you need to have self-respect in order to give respect. Relationships need to be based on respect. If there is no respect, sooner or later there is going to be a broken heart.

What do I mean by respect? If I'm in a relationship with you, I respect your choices; I will not try to control your choices. Because I love you, I allow you to be what you are. I don't have to agree with you, but I respect every belief you have, every choice you make, because I love you the way you are. I am not trying to fix you or correct you. I also respect my own life, and I will not allow you to control my life. If you don't respect me, I will still love you, but that may be the end. The only way to save a relationship is to recover the respect, to learn to communicate better, and to create new agreements with a new set of boundaries.  In this way, the relationship can be healed. Healing a relationship takes two people who recognize that there is work to do. You cannot heal the relationship alone but you can change how you chose to work within it. 

It is important to note that self-love is something completely different from selfishness. Selfishness says, "If you love me, you have to put up with all my emotional garbage, you have to put up with my anger, my judgments, and never leave me." To tell others that you love them and then to abuse them is not loving - it is selfishness. How can I love you and abuse you at the same time ~ For me to keep you, even if I'm abusing you, is an act of selfishness, not love.

Having integrity and self-love gives you the power to break all the ties you were programmed to believe.  You can reject the lies that say, "I'm not good enough; I'm not beautiful enough; I'm not strong enough; I can't make it; I can’t do it." When you love yourself, you are no longer afraid to face responsibilities in your life. You will make the choices to face problems and resolve them as soon as they arise. Why will you chose this? Because you can trust yourself completely to make choices that support you, and you know that you will never set up circumstances that go against you.

With self-love, you enjoy being with yourself in your own presence. You enjoy what you see every time you look in the mirror, and the big smile on your face enhances your inner and outer beauty. You will no longer have to follow a false image of perfection or try to prove that you are good enough for love. You no longer live your life according to other people's opinions. You will no longer need other people to accept you or tell you how good you are, because you know what you are. When you love yourself and are experiencing selflove, you aren't afraid to share your love because your heart is completely open.

It important that you know that today can be the day when you experience the beauty of yourself. Today can be the day when you reconnect with your own spirit and begin to express all the love in your heart. Allow yourself to focus your attention on what you are feeling in this moment. Celebrate and feel the desire to be alive, the desire for LOVE and JOY, the desire to create something wonderful to share with others – to live life of abundance and awareness. Your job is to choose to be happy, and to share your love, your joy, and your happiness with those around you.

Celebrate and know the healing power of LOVE.