Being gentle with ourselves....
An important part of our awakening process and spiritual practice is learning to be loving and gentle with ourselves. Through being reconnected to God's divine love, we begin to unwind from the Ego agendas when we rediscover our true nature is love and gentleness. These Ego agendas can include pushing ourselves hard within work and relationship commitments, berating and beating ourselves up when things go wrong, criticising ourselves harshly and ignoring our deepest feelings.
The way we were raised as a child may have had a large impact on our gentleness. If we became upset, scared or showed our emotions we were told to "toughen up" or "get over it". We were encouraged to push ourselves harder through school and to de-sensitise from the problems we experienced and emotions we felt deeply. The gentleness we displayed as a young child or even adult was disregarded and we started to become detached from the powerful qualities of kindness, compassion and gentility.
When I look back at my life before I awoke to the truth of my spiritual and divine nature, I remember the times when I dishonoured myself, de-sensitised from my emotions, ignored my own needs and sacrificed my happiness for the sake of pleasing others so they would feel more comfortable and happy. I began to view gentleness as weakness.....This in turn lead me to experience skin problems, resentments towards others, anger and victimisation. The truth was, I didn't recognise my inherent self worth as a Divine child of God who carried and reflected the exact same qualities of love, peace and light as God. I was so fortunate to meet a wonderful mentor who re-opened my internal sight and awareness to my inner world and soul conciousness.
Through Reiki and daily Meditation I kept reconnecting to my true original nature as a soul and brought through more tolerance, kindness and compassion for myself. This was especially important when I occasionally hit a "bumpy patch" in my spiritual development and things became difficult. The gift of gentleness was powerful through those experiences when I realised that I really needed to be easy on myself and not push or extend myself unnecessarily. This in turn conserved my energy, reduced negative thoughts towards myself and others and even brought me a deep sense of peace and strength. Gentleness is a precious divine quality that brings us back to our true original nature. It is that soft place within us that naturally wants to extend love and appreciation for ourselves and others. Ask yourself, how are you being gentle with yourself right now in your life? Where do I judge myself and be hard on myself for not doing enough, or being enough? Take a moment now to go within and reconnect inside your heart and soul to feel and be in that wonderful presence of love, compassion and kindness for yourself.
