Finally, the month of love (February) has arrived. Despite the colder temperatures, the concept of love seems to warm you up. You just need to allow yourself to focus on something you probably crave way down in your heart…LOVE. Given recent global tensions, love would be a welcome relief, wouldn’t it? However, in your busy life, it’s more than likely just forgotten about. 

One of the most important aspects of your spiritual growth is learning how to love yourself, the inner spirit, the “True Essence” of your being. Many people make the mistake of feeling that their ego is their true self. However, the ego is nothing but a mechanism designed during childhood to protect you from fear of others around you who are in control. 

Ego Self

At a tender age, you realize that to get what you want, you need to please others. As a result, the connection to the Divine and the spirit world that you came from slips away as you try to “fit in” to your new material world. Your personality begins to take shape, and you begin to feel separation from Source and spirit.

In your desire to overcome fear, you seek success in your life. You become educated, begin a career and start a family. You search for material gain, power, control and love from others. You search for a feeling of self worth derived from the outside. You become more self-centered, and your ego-self grows.

Your physical self is really a misbelief of an expression of pain, loss and discomfort. After all, remember that you are, like everyone else, just an actor in a big play of creation, an illusion, and you’ve been appointed a role in that play. What you’re experiencing in the life you currently lead isn’t your true self, or inner spirit.

Search for Deeper Meaning

At some point, some people begin to realize that there is more to life than material possessions, power, control and a physical self that experiences pain. A few begin to seek what lies beyond the material, search for deeper meaning and begin to awaken to greater spirituality. 

At this point, if you have chosen to walk down this spiritual path, you ask yourself what you can do for others, how you can help others and how you can serve the world around you. This is a stage in your spiritual growth where giving becomes quite meaningful, as your desire for material possessions, power and control becomes less important. 

Service

You realize that you can give to others from a sense of love and compassion. You give purely to help others with no expectation for anything in return, just because you want to be of service. This is the highest and most pure form of giving and where your true spiritual growth accelerates. You continue on your path in humility and devotion.

As your focus on service strengthens, your love for humanity begins to emerge, taking you on a quest to find Enlightenment. You seek greater spiritual understanding, read spiritual books, begin regular spiritual practices 

A Greater Reality

Soon, you begin to awaken to a greater reality, one that includes love of mankind, as well as a dawning connection to Universal Love or Cosmic Consciousness. No longer are you alone in this material plane, for you begin to understand that you are just learning lessons as a spirit and in fact are currently an actor on an ever changing stage. 

You understand that you are in fact spirit temporarily housed in a physical body, here for a short time learning from all the experiences you have while in this body. This is where you begin to realize that the love of your “true essence” or your inner spirit is key. This self love is not an arrogance, but in fact a love of your spirit, all spirit with you and the Great Spirit with whom you have always been connected. 

Unity

Love yourself, love all humanity, love spirit and love Source Energy. This brings you to an awareness of the Divine and Unity Consciousness. You have allowed your ego to recede away, and there is no more sense of just “me” or “I” versus “them.” 

This just leaves an awareness of a “Oneness” or a “Singularity” where everyone and everything is interconnected and interrelated. You still live “in the world,” but are no longer of the world.” You have become Totality. 

Choice

At every part of your spiritual journey, you will always have choices, Truth (spirit and unity) or illusion (material existence), material or eternal. Your ego will always try to exert its hold over you, for that’s its job, to protect you from that “mean, cruel” world in which you exist. 

You will always have choice, for you have free will, however, choose wisely. Every act you make is a spiritual act, so long as you do it in awareness. 

Find your path and your inner peace by learning to love your inner self. 

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Tags: Meditation, spiritual awareness, spiritual development, spirit, spirituality, unity consciousness, divine, source, light, love, living spiritually