Brotherly love
As I flicked through my daughter’s holiday photos on Facebook I was filled with an enormous sense of pride, gratitude and love. It was a very strong maternal love, and it made me reflect on all the different types of love I’ve experienced in my lifetime so far. All of these different aspects of love have led me to the understanding of unconditional love and the primary need for us to learn to love ourselves so that we can love our fellow human beings.
Working with the different energies of the magnificent beneficent celestial beings we know as angels helps us to learn which energy belongs to which Archangel’s spiritual flame. When working with pure love, we call on the Archangel Chamuel and connect with the energy of the beautiful pink Flame of Adoration. If you read Archangel Chamuel’s channellings (particularly from the book : The Beloved Archangels Speak, Shasta, 1953) you will sense the love and the absolute adoration that the angels have for God and for us and one another, and you can really understand why all the teachings of angels and masters are that we must first learn to love ourselves.
Loving ourselves is something that human beings seem to find extra-ordinarily difficult. Even though we may feel unquestionable love for others.
One of the affirmations that I have chosen – in my course – for working with this is:
“I live my life in loving service being the best me I can, becoming wiser in the perfection of divine truth, becoming happier in the joy of unconditional love”
(taken from Sandy Stevenson’s book The Awakener).
Let’s talk about loving our self a bit more.
For example, if you are one of those people who constantly beat themselves up, constantly berating yourself and being impatient with yourself; find a photograph of when you were young. Perhaps choosing one from when you were about 3 or 4 years old, when you were at you absolute cutest. Put it somewhere where you can see it frequently, like on the fridge with a magnet, or in your handbag or in a beautiful frame on your desk; somewhere obvious where you will notice it often.
That lovely little person is still you. You may be 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 or 50 years older than that, but that little person is still inside you, that child is within. The child that sometimes needs more care and more nurturing than we remember to give. When a situation arises where you are cross with yourself, telling yourself off and being rather unkind, look at that photograph of you as that little child. The picture may remind you of your own child, or your grandchild, your niece, nephew, or your godchild. If the same situation that made you berate yourself so harshly had happened and it was the child’s fault, what would you say? Would you be as harsh to that toddler as you are to yourself? The answer is probably no, of course you wouldn’t. You’d probably pick the child up and say words of comfort like: “don’t be upset – it is all right – don’t worry – come here let me give you a cuddle – I still love you”. But we don’t do that to ourselves. We are not kind to ourselves very often. It is so much easier to say the things to ourselves that we would never dream of saying to a friend or even a stranger, and yet we treat ourselves so harshly. It is not fair is it really? Not very loving.
So perhaps one of the best ways to help others, the best way to be loving to others, is to first learn how to be loving to ourselves.
Have another look at the little boys in the picture, arms around one another, gazing out to the sunset. They have no perception of their future. They are simply being the best friends/brothers they know how to be. Loving one another in perfect harmony. The mystery is – how do we nurture the ‘brotherly love’ they know now, and help them it hold on to it and help it to grow?
