Based on Love: My Personal Philosophy
The first days of realizing I can live and express myself however I please!
Decisions have always been hard for me to make. Which is strange considering I feel extremely lucky to have experienced a life that has worked out for me. For the most part. I’ve gone with the flow for some key life choices and I’m grateful that it’s taken me to places I would have never gone had I not been accepting of what’s come my way. However, this free-flowing attitude does come with a cost. Throughout the years it’s caused more than a few moments of imposter syndrome, panic attacks, crippling self-doubt, etc.
This led me to the realization that although “go with the flow” sounds easy and carefree, it’s actually quite hard to do. Going with the flow started feeling a lot like bouncing around from job to job, all while trying on different lifestyles. After years of living this way and being slowly suffused with the shame of imposter syndrome (this being the strongest of my insecurities in recent years), I was gifted a book that provided the opening of a new paradigm shift within my mind. The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now by Meg Jay caused me a significant amount of distress by the title alone. I was 28 and feeling like it was a cruel joke from the Universe to receive this book at such a late (relax!) point in my journey. I had wasted so much (again, relax) time!
Dramatic is my middle name so I felt what I needed to feel for a bit until the lesson hit me like a ton of bricks. Regardless of your age, the sooner you get to work with the process of elimination, the sooner you find the work worth doing. I felt galvanized. How many people could say that they figured a small part of life out?! However, while I understood the message, upon further reflection I failed to see the connection to concrete action that could translate to real progress in my life. I had reached a crossroad where the life of a creative was calling to me. I ultimately ended reading the book feeling exhausted by the prospect of all these choices to make, but not knowing how to make them? How can I possibly know the best direction to take in life?
I can only call what happened next divine intervention, for there could not have been, in my opinion, a more perfect book to read than the one I read next. A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles by Marianne Williamson provided the answer to all of the questions I came away with after reading The Defining Decade. And that answer is Love. In this book, Marianne Williamson (yes, the same one who campaigned to be president) provides the lessons she learned after immersing herself in the work detailed in A Course in Miracles, a self-study program of spiritual psychotherapy. She states that through her studies she was able to learn the following about love:
“Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we have learned here...Love is the essential existential fact. It is our ultimate reality and our purpose on earth.”
How do I go about making the next choice in my life? Base it on love.
It was so simple, I decided to expand it and ultimately adopt it as my personal life philosophy.
Live my life based on love.
My philosophy is not new. As you can see, it was crafted from the information I collected through reading and researching new ideas that could benefit my state of mind. But it is simple. Which was enough for me to start feeling as though I could, at the very least, trust where my decisions were coming from. By framing my decision-making process through the lens of love I am able to feel a sense of peace no matter the outcome. Yes, even in difficult situations. Love changes the game! From a spiritual/metaphysical perspective, love is amazing energy to work with because it is so high on the vibrational scale of energy. Anything done in the energy of love is elevated up to its level. So much of our conditioning makes us feel more accustomed to lower vibrational levels of energy like worry, anger, jealousy, and even depression. However, as Marianne Williamson talks about in A Return to Love:
“Love requires a different kind of ‘seeing’ than we’re used to - a different kind of knowing or thinking.”
It was the shift that I needed. A way to guide my mind into a territory of thinking that is nurtured and properly tended for my highest good. Yes, I will still feel the lower vibrational emotions when things that elicit those responses happen. However, the active work I’m doing to implement living from a place of love allows me the ability to respond authentically from that energetic space more frequently. For example, at the most basic level, I’ll tell myself “This cheese is delicious, but it will hurt my stomach and I love myself and my stomach, so I’m not going to put her through that.” Here I’ve chosen love of self through my love of bodily comfort/stasis over the deliciousness of cheese. It’s a hard choice, trust me, but it’s one I’m glad I’ve stuck to. Along with everyone around me!
Living my life based on love ultimately means that I’m thinking from that place as well. It feels strange to construct and operate thoughts from this place. However, several of the spiritual perspectives I’ve adopted posits thought as one of the most potent things in our lives we can control. Reading The Defining Decade and A Return to Love one after the other created new pathways for my thoughts to go through. I came away with an understanding that there are so many ways to go and that you can go in a way that will naturally uplift the energy of everything you do. Thinking positive thoughts and speaking well to myself was not something that came naturally to me. I have taken immense steps out of my comfort zone to this end. But I’ve learned along the way that I’m weaving my own philosophy into the fabric of my being. It’s become important for me to feel as if I’m actually made of love. The thought makes my imagination run wild and brings me so much joy I could burst at the seams!
I’m convinced that this is the way to live. It’s come to a point where you can’t tell me differently. I always say that karma is swift with me so I tend to be decent. Living this way makes it so my karmic balance stays in the black with no spiritual debt which is a special kind of freedom. I know that I can go to sleep at the end of the day with the assurance that I’ve made choices aligning with my highest good.
What are some ways you can shift your life to one based on love? Do you have your own personal philosophy? I’m dying to know so comment below!
Basing my life on love is honestly the best thing I’ve ever done. The support I feel is unparalleled.