Do you judge or criticize yourself? Does it sabotage your happiness, success, or well-being? Self-judgment is a learned habit. Thus, luckily it can be unlearned. We picked it up at some early age from family, advertising, religion, or a cultural lineage carried on sometimes for generations. After years of non-love for ourselves, that may not be so easy. The secret is letting go of our non-love, but how is this done?
By David Ellzey | DavidEllzey.com
As I look out at the cold wintery woods from inside my friend’s warm home here in North Carolina, I catch my breath after teaching The Sedona Method and advanced course “What’s Love Got to Do With it?” around the world, from New York City, to Holland, London, and North Carolina.
Certainly, the topic of love is a universal one, but the issue of self-judgment and non-love of ourselves is just as universal, yet less addressed.
Do you judge or criticize yourself? Does it sabotage your happiness, success, or well-being? Self-judgment is a learned habit. Thus, luckily it can be unlearned. We picked it up at some early age from family, advertising, religion, or a cultural lineage carried on sometimes for generations. And What’s Love Got to Do With it? Everything. However, it’s not enough to simply say, we should be more loving to ourselves. After years of non-love for ourselves, that may not be so easy. The secret is letting go of our non-love, but how is this done?
While teaching around the world I saw face after face go from heaviness and suffering to lightness, openness, and peace as people recognized the freedom and love found in letting go of self-judgment and self-punishment. This happened as they discovered the lie of being “bad”, imperfect, always wrong, or unloveable.
Imagine, I mean in this very moment, seriously, this very moment, what it would be like to have your eyes rest on this page without a mental background of “you should be in any way different than who you are in this moment.” You should be more productive, better looking, more responsible, and the million additional thoughts of, “I should…” If these thoughts didn’t exist for this moment, can you get a sense of the relief and how the mind quiets a bit?
When we let go of our non-love and negative self-thoughts, our true nature is revealed: a quiet presence, love, a peace beyond description. From this place we deal more patiently with our teenagers, eat more healthy, have no fear to tell those we care about that we love them, or drive in traffic with more calm. In short, life changes in all ways when we love ourselves and when we accept that the source of love we have been seeking is right here within ~ waiting for our attention.
But you know all this. Self-love has been preached for ages. So what am I saying that’s new? I’m saying you can actually let go of the non-love, then the self-love is natural, organic, and forever, because the underlying love is your true nature.
Lester Levenson, founder of The Sedona Method, said, as did many-a-wise-sage, “Love is the foundation of our existence”. Consider, right now, letting go of your self-judgment. If this seems hard or impossible, please take what you’re reading seriously. Click here for more about this technique of inner freedom, The Sedona Method.
Read what Norbert Martin, from Switzerland, said after the Love Course and the Sedona Method, “At the outset of this course, I experienced a shift in consciousness, a great broadening of courageousness. It was a real surprise to discover a new strength … just springing from within. Not only has this shift persisted until now, a month after the course, but it is still expanding.”
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This article first appeared at AllThingsHealing.com