Love is a gift…are you willing to receive it?

“Love is a constant surrendering of your protective ego, so that the Heart can open even more and show you the unknown beauty of its depths.”

-Mastin Kipp

Love. We think about it. Dream about it. Write about it. Sing about it. We. want. love. We want to live a life we love. It all starts with love. Living a life we love in a body we love starts by loving the life we live. It starts at our heart center, the source of love, the divine essence of who we are.

Place your hands over your heart in a gesture of compassion. Close your eyes. Do you feel that? Can you feel each heartbeat pulsating? Can you feel your breath rise and fall? That’s YOU. That’s who you are stripped away from your job title, your finances, your weight, your height, your name, your sexuality. That’s LOVE. When you take away all the extras and go to a space where you can just feel and be and are…that’s love. That’s who we are at our core.

I talked this past Sunday in class about coming home to yourself and your heart center. And I invite YOU this week amidst the chaos and holiday stress, to come home to yourself by coming back to a space of awareness and breath. I invite YOU to take your pause, just as you did a moment ago, and come back to your heart center–to love–any time you feel overwhelmed, anxious or stressed. That pause affords us the freedom of choice over our next word, thought, attitude and action. It also reminds us that we can exist in a state of BALANCE no matter what is going on inside us or around us. For every inhale, there’s an exhale. For every challenge or struggle we face, there’s a (new) lesson to learn. What we give, we receive. BALANCE.

Coming home to our heart center is a challenge at times. Maybe you believe you aren’t lovable. Maybe you think you don’t have anything to offer the world. Maybe you live by the I-am-not-whatever-enough principle. All of the voices that tell you that are wrong. And, not only do they stand in your way of creating new beliefs about yourself, they also block your heart from opening so that you can give and receive.

This season is one of giving. There’s a Universal law I’ve been talking a lot about in class: “What you give is what you get. No matter what.” It’s the law of Karma and no truer is this law than in matters of the heart. You see, giving and receiving go hand and hand, even when we don’t fully accept what we receive, it’s still given to us. But, what if this season instead of giving yourself permission to party hard, self-hate or skip workouts–what if instead of giving yourself more possessions–what if you gifted yourself with love…real, saturated, self-love? Would you allow your heart space to o-p-e-n? Could you see yourself with new eyes, if even just for a moment? What if you could gift yourself compassion? Would you allow yourself that gift? Could you be open to looking upon yourself as you would a child who is figuring out the world around them? This season you can gift yourself with anything you choose: partying, food and clothing, or, healthy eating, workouts, love and gratitude. The only question is what do you want to receive? Give that. And know that you’re worth it.

This year I’m asking for peace. I’m asking for FREEdom. I’m asking for the openness that allows to me breathe deeply and without fear of where the next breath will come from. Just a knowledge that it will come. Always. As full as the last …if I allow it. That’s what I want to RECEIVE. But, in order to receive that openness, I must be willing to create (re: GIVE) s p   a   c e . This means I need to release blocks. I need to let go of what no longer serves me. It means I have to tell the voices in my head, they’re wrong. And I’m done. For real this time. It means moving on and taking steps forward. It means I’m making space for the newness I desire in my life by acknowledging that I’m not throwing away old relationships; just redefining my bridges. It means crying when I need to and opening my heart space to fully experience both the bliss and the pain. Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of crying. And, it wasn’t until I got a couple good cries in that I started to release some of the pain I was carrying. It wasn’t until I was ready to give myself that gift that I was able to receive what I asked for. As much as I resort to holding things in, when I finally have breakdowns I realize just how cathartic crying is. In some ways, our tears are commemorative, even if they come to us out of pain. They remind us where we’ve been, what we’re looking for and where we want to go if we’re willing to give what it takes.

What are you willing to GIVE this week? What is it you want to RECEIVE?

Can you give yourself that gift?

This week I bow to you, the brave one, the one with the bright, divine light just waiting to be known. This week I bow to your heart center and see it’s the same as mine. That we are both love. This week I wish you a joyous, love-saturated holiday, filled with gifts only your heart can measure.