I work from home. Lately, I’ve found it interesting to work throughout different parts of the house, to see how they feel – whether I’m more or less productive, inspired, comfortable etc. This week I’ve been working in the kitchen. As I sit at the dining table for hours, I watch a hummingbird. This is the same hummingbird, day after day. He has very interesting behaviors. Most importantly, he spends most of the day flying up to my kitchen window. At this time he flutters up to the glass, and beating his powerful wings hovers in mid air in one spot for about a minute. He will then quickly fly away onto a nearby tree branch, and then come right back up to the window just a few minutes later. Occasionally, he will find a hummingbird friend and they will chase one another through the sky. He will then flutter right back to the window.
What I realized wasn’t so much that he was here to converse or connect with me, as I had originally thought. He flies up to the window, because he sees a reflection of himself in the glass. Whether he thinks it’s another hummingbird and finds it fascinating, or whether he thinks he’s looking at himself and finds himself fascinating, I do not know. What I do know, is that he is infatuated with himself. He entertains himself, doesn’t leave himself, returns like a faithful lover to his image day after day, hour after hour and minute after minute.
The discussion I want to bring forth today is: Are you present with yourself? Do you realize how much love is within you? Do you realize how much love is trying to move through you? When you give your power away to other people, by not focusing on your priorities, by not feeling gratitude for all the things you have in your life, by not honoring your feelings and boundaries, and most importantly not experiencing devotional self-care and self-love to yourself, you deprive yourself of the experience of the Divine.
The divine lives in you. To seek fulfillment and union in your lover, your job, your hobbies, food, substance abuse or anything that is not your deepest inner core, is to cheat yourself of a divine experience. How can you fall deeply in love with yourself? How can you stop working around the clock to fill everything around you up, your relationships, your projects, other people’s expectations, but not stop for a second to fill yourself? If you feel anger, laziness, resentment, sadness, emptiness, what external power are you giving your self-love away to? When we exist in self love, we exclusively exist in one moment: the here and now. The divine is here, and now. By connecting with where you’re at and what you instinctively are feeling and then acting on it (are you tired, hungry, do you need to feel productive, loved, peaceful, refreshed etc?) you develop a deep sense of self love.
Self love is developed when you listen to yourself. This is the key to a divine experience. Find yourself, within yourself. Just like the hummingbird in front of my window has fallen in love with himself, and faithfully comes back to his own reflection, we too must come home to ourselves. I encourage my readers to use all of their anxious, angry, sad and empty feelings to ask themselves where they need self-love. Listen for the answer and then fill yourself with love to transform your experience, to be happy, to be free.
