Give and Receive Love
Welcome to the second day of our mindfulness Spring Cleaning. If you missed the first day, be sure to catch up here. While the first day we tackled our skeletons in the closet, both of our potential and our failures, today we are going to open ourselves up to the ability to receive and give love. Too often in our efforts to improve ourselves we start pushing ourselves down. Talking down to ourselves or simply allowing people around us who don't seek to build people up, but tear them down. It is important to remember we don't need to do anything special to deserve love. You do not need to earn love through achieving a certain goal or milestone in your life. We all are worthy of love. It is an important thing to remember as we sometimes push too hard to get ourselves to where we want to be in life and then expect love as something of a reward, not something we should have all along. To open ourselves up to receiving love, we will do a morning and evening component to this exercise.
Morning - Open Yourself to Receive Love
Start with your mindful breathing giving yourself deep and cleansing breaths. Breathe in for a count of 5, hold for 4 and exhale for 3. Repeat this breathing cycle 5 times or until you feel ready to begin. Bring your attention to your heart, in the left center of your chest. Feel a warm light start to brighten from your heart. It gets brighter with each beat. When your heart reaches its height of light, notice that other beings are around you made up of the same light. These are guardians of your life and can follow whatever spiritual practice you follow. These beings want nothing more but for you to be happy, safe and loved. As they surround you, they start letting their light enter your body. Streams of warm light start entering your body and you feel the warm connection of love not just for yourself, but for the earth and for everyone in your life. Feel the warmth of being loved.
When your body feels like it can't take anymore light, start sending it back out to the beings and to all your loved ones. Feel your love reach out to them, no matter how far away they are. Imagine now that as they receive your love light it creates a two way highway and their love is also sent to you. You have a rotation of giving and receiving love flowing between the two of you. Repeat this exercise with as many people as you would like in the visualization. Feel the awe and gratitude build in your body as you give and receive love. When you are ready, open your eyes and start your day.
Evening - Basking in Your Power
To continue with our evening exercise from yesterday we are going to stay in the same vein as dealing with past regret or shame. But we are going to give it a new approach this time. Instead of anchoring ourselves and holding fast against the destructive memories of the past, we are going to count our blessings. We spend so much time in our lives ruminating over past mistakes, yet our past glories we are almost embarrassed to mention or remember. No one likes a braggart and no one wants to be seen as resting on their laurels so sometimes we never even allow ourselves to enjoy our successes. Tonight we are going to change that though. Tonight, we are going to take time to embrace some of our past actions that made us feel proud.
When you are ready, get to your comfortable spot and start with your mindful breathing, in through your nose and out through your mouth, letting your belly fill and drop with air. After several repetitions of these breaths start to think about some of your prouder moments. This can be limited to the past week or month or it can be your lifetime achievements, whatever it is, find a couple key moments where you are truly proud of yourself. Let yourself fully relive the moment. Feel every applause, every congratulations, really feel the joy of the moment. Be aware of any other feelings as they pop up. If feelings of shame or embarrassment come over you, remind yourself it is your right to be happy. Just as you don't have to earn love, you don't have to earn happiness either. Tell yourself you are allowed to want to be happy and to pursue happiness. Let those feelings of shame and guilt melt away and hold the glow of your past achievements for as long as you would like. When it is time, slowly return your thoughts to your breath and your body and experience yourself in this exact moment. You are allowed to seek happiness and you are powerful. You have accomplished many things and will accomplish many more. Let yourself drift to sleep.
Contact us at info@bullionite.com with your questions or comments. Visit our blog at https://www.bullionite.com/blog-index for day 3 in our series and other mindfulness exercises.