What does it Mean to Love Your Life?
What does it Mean to Love Your Life?
Lately I’ve been musing about the connection between love and pleasure. Love has many forms and applications, as does pleasure. But self-love, self-compassion are concepts we surely recognize as central to understand and most importantly to practice. I’m always curious why the practice of self-love and compassion is so hard for many to keep on their radar – myself included, at times.
Selfishness and Unselfishness
My experience of it includes confusion around selfishness and unselfishness. We’ve all had it drummed into us that to be selfish is bad, and to be unselfish is good. On the surface this is probably true. As we mature and develop, hopefully we grow out of that younger developmental state of egocentric preoccupation of “me versus the other”. We can handle “me and the other”. We can see beyond the self. We can balance our own needs and priorities with those of others, and that of the world around us. So far so good….
So What’s the Struggle?
But… if you struggle to know your own needs and boundaries; if you’re caught in a cycle of saying yes to the demands of others and the world, it’s not so easy to discern selfishness and unselfishness. I’m of the belief that often when we’re saying yes to others there’s a hidden deal. The hope is that the other will then feel obliged to take care of us and love us. Maybe this isn’t unselfishness but emotional dependency that includes the hope of avoiding the responsibility for your own life. Can you imagine how much pleasure gets lost in this confusing dance?
Loving yourself and your life requires a clear understanding that this is YOUR life. As Mary Oliver the poet names it – “your one wild and precious life”. It is the only thing YOU are ultimately responsible for. It can feel daunting to face this reality. But when you do - and for many it’s a deep process of awakening, bringing an attitude of love to the venture – it makes all the difference. Love and care always make a difference!
How Do You Care for What is Wild and Precious in You?
What is precious to you? How do you love and care for what is very precious to you? Think about how you name and care for the wild element in life – your life and the life around you?
Do you value and appreciate it? Do you relish its unique particularness? Its expression? Its very presence? Do you seek to protect it and nourish its growth and its wellbeing? Do you seek to understand its mysteries which includes its particular form of wildness?
Wildness – What Lives Outside the Box
Wildness is our creativity, a force which seeks movement and expression. Wildness is our vitality. Wildness is instinct and intuition that lives beyond the concrete and tangible realities. Wildness is our sexual, sensual, erotic nature as well. Wildness is often the soul speaking to us with an invitation to step outside some self-imposed box we’ve limited ourselves within.
When you fully accept that your life is your responsibility, knowing this includes the need to be loved and nourished, then pleasure has its own rightful place. Then pleasure requires a rightful degree of selfishness. I invite you to consider pleasure as part of self-responsibility - the art of loving and nourishing your life.
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Madeline combines her experience as a gifted teacher and facilitator with her exquisite sensitivity to guide us into unlocking pleasure. In her gentle way she helps us to make friends with our bodies, softening the places where we feel resistance, shame and pain and learn how to tune into the myriad sensations of pleasure. She embodies her teaching and the expression of her own pleasure is contagious. Madeline creates a safe space to (re)discover that we are wired for pleasure and can overcome the negative conditioning of fear, trauma, and messages of “not good enough”.