Meditation is an especially powerful practice for growing in self-love. No matter how the monkey mind jumps around, we still remain the observing consciousness. Consciousness operates under the law of grace, levitating our heart and soul higher and higher to the source of love itself: Pure Spirit.

I am one with the great power and presence that is God!

More good than I can even imagine is expressing as me right now!

Today I say yes and halleluiah to my health and wholeness!

The energy of excellence is infused into every activity of my life!

The essence of pure Spirit inspires every aspect of my Being!

One of the most direct ways to create a loving relationship with oneself is through genuinely accepting ourselves just as we are. This doesn’t mean we don’t see the ways in which we have yet to grow; what it does mean is that we can look into our own eyes, into our own reality of being and find there our essence, which is pure love, regardless of our human flaws. We contact this essence directly through our spiritual practices.

The soul does not care about what society values. It doesn’t measure self-worth by the size of our bank account, the size of our hips or biceps, the square footage of our home or how many cars are parked in our garage. These are not spiritual milestones, but they can be millstones choking our spirit. When we don’t materially possess what we feel we deserve, compassionate patience dissolves illusions of entitlement and self-blame. We quit picking on ourselves, we quit tinkering with surface improvements and begin digging deep into our interiority. With compassionate patience, insight becomes the inner authority we listen and respond to.

Do you seek how to make yourself free, or how to be free from yourself? Contemplating the difference is an interesting revelation of our motive for entering the spiritual path. After all, enlightenment is not a commodity to be coerced into one’s consciousness. It is not a quantity of something, it is a quality of being yearning to be discovered and expressed in, through and as you. In our fast-paced society, if we aren’t scrambling to attain or possess something, we label ourselves as lazy. However, when we live in a consciousness of trust, knowing that an invisible hand is always taking us in the right direction, we are serene, creatively active yet patient.

All of life in this material world presents itself as a struggle between opposing forces. Our job (and we do choose to accept it!) is to see through the duality to the one Power, the one Presence back of everything. Once we learn that it’s all about balance and it’s not a balancing “act” but a balanced state, much of the turmoil just drops away.