When I was about 20 years old I momentarily pushed my pet hamster under water in anger because it bit me. I had bought myself a hamster because my best friend had a couple and it seemed like a really cool thing to have. I remember feeling disappointed that I got absolutely nothing back from my hamster… it didn’t make me look cool and neither did it love me.
In my late teens and early twenties I relied on boyfriends for my sense of identity. I made sure that I was never without a boyfriend or at least someone that I was chasing because I felt that without a boyfriend I would not have known who I was. Flirting and hooking guys in was a constant game and one I played even if I wasn’t particularly interested in the guy.
As far as my relationship with myself went I don’t think that I consciously knew such a thing existed and anyway, I thought that I was fine as I was.
What is startling for me to realise when I look back is that I wasn’t at all aware of how much I was struggling, even though I was binge eating, in desperate need of attention and pissed off a lot of the time. In fact I was more than pissed off, I was actually livid! At the time I was very clear about what I perceived to be the cause of my anger; I thought that it was ‘other people’ that made me angry, especially what I considered to be the ‘stupid ones’! I would feel so much anger building in my body when I was listening to certain people talk that I would imagine doing horrible things. This happened a lot and yet still I had no conscious awareness that I wasn’t ok.
It has taken me a long time to understand why I felt the way that I did, and that understanding has been supported immeasurably by the teachings that Serge Benhayon shares through Universal Medicine. It is because of this increased understanding that the judgement that I have towards myself has decreased: however the judgement that I still have towards others indicates that there is a lot more self-judgment yet to be uncovered.
I have come to feel that judgment comes from lack of understanding: once we understand why a person is behaving the way that they do, it becomes impossible to judge them. That’s not to say that we can’t be horrified at the appalling things that happen in the world, of course we can and indeed we are, but understanding takes any judgment away.
Looking back, I recognise that I was in anguish. I had chosen to disconnect from myself to such an extent that I had literally broken adrift from any kind of footing that I had.
I was lost at sea with no idea where land was. What is fascinating now for me to feel is that although it was a very painful time of my life, I had very little awareness of the pain that I was in and the reason why I was unable to feel the pain that I was in, was because I had chosen to sever my connection to myself.
I chose to disconnect from myself at about the age of 8 because I didn’t know what to do with the painful feelings that I had in my body as a result of being picked on at school. I hardened myself to give the false impression to others that it didn’t hurt, when in fact I felt like I was being suffocated from the inside. From that point onwards I continued to harden my body and bury my feelings in a myriad of different ways and eventually ended up so far from where I had begun that I forgot that I once had a starting point of Me.
When we choose to disconnect from ourselves we lose the ability to know how we are feeling because we are ‘not there’ to feel what we are feeling. If you’re not at home, then how can you possibly know who’s walking through the front door? Choosing to disconnect from who we are makes it very easy to abuse ourselves because we are literally oblivious to the abuse.
What makes our disconnection from ourselves even more harmful is the fact that everything, as in every-thing that exists outside of us, is set in motion first by our relationship with ourselves.
This is colossal because most of us have chosen to disconnect from ourselves at some point in our lives, which sets up a mirrored response in our outer lives. If we have a dysfunctional relationship with ourselves, then this will result in dysfunctional relationships with everything and everyone else. It’s basic maths, there can be no more or no less. But because we have chosen to pretend that we don’t know how life works, then we all scrabble around making out that we really can’t understand why life is so hard.
Women spend lifetimes talking to one another trying to fathom out what deep down they already know. But who’s going to be the one to stand up and call out the farce? “Not I”, I hear you cry, and we all know why. We are all involved in a cover-up of such gargantuan proportions that we have made a silent pact to not break the silence… and so we all keep the charade going whilst pretending to know nothing about it.
Deep down every single one of us knows that it is our relationship with ourselves that sets every-thing else in motion, but the responsibility of that feels too big and so we pretend that we don’t know.
So going back to me in my twenties, I had chosen years earlier to cut myself off from myself and so it naturally followed that I also cut myself off from most other people. Because I was unable to feel what I was doing to myself, then I was also unable to feel what I was doing to others. As a direct result of choosing to abuse myself, I was also able to abuse others, and I did. The aggression that I showed myself was reflected in the aggression that I showed to those around me.
Every single thing that was in my relationship with myself was reflected back to me in my relationships with others. It was all there for me to see, if only I had chosen to see it. But I didn’t.
What I have come to learn from my own experiences since attending the workshops of Universal Medicine is that if I want to change any-thing that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first. Others can only get as close to me as I get to myself. If I want to be loved for who I naturally am, then it is my responsibility to love myself in full first. If I want to stop judging those around me then I must stop judging myself. Life is maths, nothing can exist outside of us that doesn’t already exist on the inside: we can’t conjure something up out of nothing, it’s just not possible. Likewise, if there is something going on outside of us, we can’t throw our hands up in the air and say “Ain’t nothing to do with me.” Again basic maths – if it’s on the outside then it’s on the inside.
No-thing more, no-thing less.
Our relationships with others become the most incredible tools to see what needs addressing in the starting place of every-thing, and that is in our relationship with our self.
When we have each returned to our true relationship with ourselves, one that contains love and nothing else, then so too will our world be a reflection of that love.
By Alexis Stewart, Dedicated Student of The Way of The Livingness, Partner to an amazing man, Mum to a beautiful boy, Yoga Teacher, Disability Care Worker, Sydney
Further Reading:
Returning to our essence
Being Chinese – Being True to My Self
Is that all there is?
Self-judgement is a poison that prevents us from feeling the natural beauty of who we are.
The more I deepen my awareness and relationship with myself the more I can read the hidden gems in this blog.If we have a dysfunctional relationship with ourselves then it makes complete sense we will have a dysfunctional relationship with everyone else, so it then surely is our self responsibility to rebuild a body of true love so that we can reflect this back to humanity. Is this how we will change the world by self responsibility?
I really like coming back to this blog to use as a reference point to understand just how deep the disconnection to ourselves can be. When we have a lack of understanding for ourselves it would make sense that we then have no understanding for others. This is how misunderstandings with each other happen which can cause huge problems not just within relationships of family and friends but country to country.
I know there are still judgements towards myself and reading this today reminded me that there’s more understanding to be had. The things I judge about myself are as a result of a reaction to something, a tension I am (for now) unaware of. Having this as a basic understanding really helps to go deeper.
Quite simply if we are not feeling the love within we are not going to be able to see it or feel it anywhere else.
This is a brilliant read about disconnection to ourselves as we are encouraged to look outside of ourselves from a very early age. And from there we just get lost in a world that wants us to perform to a certain set of standards which are ideals and beliefs that are constantly dropping.
We don’t seem to mind that we are becoming more animalistic in our behaviours and yet we consider our selves to be the more intelligent species.
Thank you Alexis, and may I also share that, life is in its fullest when we understand our responsibility’s and my feeling is that we are absolutely responsible for everything! So when we live in a level of Love, Sacredness, Harmony, Joy, Truth, and Repose, as a responsibility we can then deepen in these virtues as we are living with them, with a Deep-humble-appreciative-ness of them. So we are then Students of our own lives, or lost and confused to our Origins and Location. And at this level of appreciative-ness we are in the complete understanding that we are more than this physical vessel. So appreciation is about who we are, not what we do, then it must be in the be-ing-ness!
“Deep down every single one of us knows that it is our relationship with ourselves that sets every-thing else in motion, but the responsibility of that feels too big and so we pretend that we don’t know.” There we go we have everything we need to know in this one sentence, thank you Alexis – deep down we do all know we are far more than what we currently admit.
I agree with you Anonymous, I remember a Universal Medicine practitioner telling me I was playing dumb when actually I knew exactly what I was doing. I had been caught out in the game I was playing with myself and everyone else, as when you play dumb you are left alone as someone of no consequence so I lived under the radar of life. This is called existing or just getting through life, but it’s not truly living. So many of us opt for this way of life not wanting to say ‘boo to a goose’ But where do these feelings of playing dumb and not being ‘good enough’ come from?
‘I have come to feel that judgment comes from lack of understanding: once we understand why a person is behaving the way that they do, it becomes impossible to judge them. That’s not to say that we can’t be horrified at the appalling things that happen in the world, of course we can and indeed we are, but understanding takes any judgment away.’ I have been feeling this lately, what I am realising is that the more I understand why someone maybe behaving in a certain way, the less judgment there is for that person and the more I am able to see their qualities and to have love and appreciation for them rather than judgment.
I love how you say it is basic maths because it is. So that dispels constantly looking outside of myself for who I am especially in anything I do – whether it’s badly, or well or just the fact of the behaviour. It means I can never judge myself for what I do is not who I am. But I do have a responsibility to choose what energy to run my body and my life.
Alexis, I have really started noticing how true this is; ‘Every single thing that was in my relationship with myself was reflected back to me in my relationships with others.’ I have become aware that if I feel connected, accepting and loving with myself that my day flows and I have beautiful connections with others. If I have low self-esteem, eat foods that aren’t supportive and get emotional – then my day feels hard and there seems to be issues with people in my life.
My question has to be where does the feeling of low self- esteem come from that we then want to eat foods or some sort of drink that are not going to support us? We all get these negative thoughts that pop into our heads but do we stop to consider where they may be coming from and that we don’t actually own them, even though it feels as though we do because we are experiencing them. Is it possible we are being caught up in a game of duplicity because we have dropped our awareness of reading our surroundings?
Alexis, this is beautifully simple and makes complete sense; ‘I have come to feel that judgment comes from lack of understanding: once we understand why a person is behaving the way that they do, it becomes impossible to judge them.’
Bringing in observation and understanding changes so much as you share, ‘I have come to feel that judgment comes from lack of understanding: once we understand why a person is behaving the way that they do, it becomes impossible to judge them.’
Thank you for sharing that the key to unlocking the many layers of judgment that we have with ourselves and others is in understanding and with this we can gradually unpick these layers and start to heal the lack of connection that so many of us have struggled with over lifetimes.
I love this, this is so simple but absolutely makes sense; ‘If I want to be loved for who I naturally am, then it is my responsibility to love myself in full first. If I want to stop judging those around me then I must stop judging myself.’
Yes, what is being reflected for us to look at in ourselves, it is important to heal self, and so reflect something different to the world, ‘if I want to change any-thing that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first.’
Alexis, I have found this to be absolutely true; ‘Others can only get as close to me as I get to myself.’ What I have found is that the more I develop the relationship with myself, appreciating my qualities and feeling confident in myself, the more I allow others to get close to me and the more open I am.
Yes it is only when we re-connect to ourselves that we become open to developing truly loving relationships with others.
Alexis, this is really interesting to read and makes me realise that all of our relationships offer a reflection and a chance for us to learn and change; ‘Every single thing that was in my relationship with myself was reflected back to me in my relationships with others.’
‘Choosing to disconnect from who we are makes it very easy to abuse ourselves because we are literally oblivious to the abuse.’ And this is the start to abusing others as well, without us even being conscious aware of it.
Yes healing the abusive ways that we treat ourselves is reflected in the relationships we build with others as our relationship with ourselves is foundational to all others.
‘ if I want to change any-thing that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first.’
This wisdom is the key to anything that we don’t want or like in our lives. Since experiencing true love everything that is not that stands out like a sore thumb and asks me to go deeper in the relationship with myself.
You speak the truth Alexis.
‘I forgot that I once had a starting point of Me.’ I would say yes I forgot to live from this starting point of Me but in hindsight i can say that deep down I still knew there was a solidness from where I did say no to really going down although there was a deep disregard towards my body and abuse going on from this chosen disconnection.
“If you’re not at home, then how can you possibly know who’s walking through the front door?” Love this sentence.
Only when we disconnect from our true selves are we capable of harm, when we stand with our true selves we stand with God.
I could not help but smile – ‘Life is Maths’…. which makes the importance of this subject so very real. We are blessed to have a Way of the Livingness that does the Maths, and with it my life does add up!
I had no idea of what I truly felt, I saw myself in the box of good helpful ideals and beliefs outside of my self, I was so disconnected from me that there was no one at home, slowly over time I am learning to connect more to my body and hence feel more of the me there, and in learning to be honest instead of good so much has come up that had been buried from my view, that can now be acknowledged felt and healed, we are so blessed with the outpouring of immense healing love for this new era in which we live.
“judgment comes from lack of understanding” understanding the basic maths that energy is in everything and when we are aware of the energy in and from ourselves or others we can read the truth.
Once we have an insight and deeper understanding of ourselves, the self critique and judgement begins to be a thing of the past. With less self-judgement, we have more awareness of what energy is running others and can meet them in their essence rather than the old and crippling judgemental way .
“I have come to feel that judgment comes from lack of understanding: once we understand why a person is behaving the way that they do, it becomes impossible to judge them”.
Just like you Alexis, for so much of my life “I was lost at sea with no idea where land was” and was continually feeling ‘sea sick’ from being tossed around by life’s seemingly never-ending challenges. Finding my way to Universal Medicine has offered me an anchor, a foundation, in life and that I have accepted willingly. And as a result if a ‘storm’ does come my way I may rock a little but this beautiful foundation holds me steadier then I have ever been held.
It is very brave to come out and talk about your judgement-habit, because I have noticed that although most people do it, it tends to be hidden in the depths of our thoughts, without much exposure to the real world, as judgement is often regarded as justified and this is what the conversation tends to be about – the justification of the judgement, and not the dismantling of the judgement itself.
If we find ourselves justifying something then this is a sure sign we’re on shaky ground. Anything borne from truth never needs justification.
The only way we can come to abuse ourselves is to go into disconnection with our body and that is exactly what the society we have created wants us to be. With that I do not say that society is the cause of this ill behaviour, but our common shared belief that creates this energy in the first place and feeds us back through the many ways we today find in our societies. Although we do recognise it is a problem it is OK to become obese, it is OK to develop diabetes, it is OK to sport hard and extend our limits every time, developing hard and tense bodies, not to forget about the many injuries we get from it, it is OK to playing games on our mobile phones, it is OK the loose ourselves on social media, it is OK … I could go on for some time but maybe you got an understanding of what I mean.
Indeed “we have made a silent pact to not break the silence…” and to not disclose the energy that is behind this false world of creation we try to keep alive while in truth it is very abusive and absolutely not who we are and are from.
Great blog with gems of wisdom like ‘judgment comes from lack of understanding: once we understand why a person is behaving the way that they do, it becomes impossible to judge them.’ It is indeed all about allowing a deep understanding that all behaviors come from somewhere, a deep hurt, a disconnection, whatever it is, it is for us to without perfection stay open hearted to the other person…and ourselves. From there change is possible as you, Alexis, have experienced.
Indeed Caroline, no way we can judge someone when we understand that we are all one and the same, equal brothers that are on our path of return in learning how to live together as a soul on earth. We all have our own history in that and are finding our way with it. Therefore this understanding is so important as it will bring us closer together while the judgment is creating boundaries that leave us to feel alone and that we all have to do it on our own. But this is not the way we are designed to live. The only way to crack this creation we live in is to do it together as one.
[…] Related Reading: How love benefits your health Building love in our life Our Relationship with Ourselves is the Start of All Things […]
I love the way you express Alexis, I have read other blogs of yours and loved the wisdom that you have shared, especially “if I want to change any-thing that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first.” It all comes back with us how our relationship is with our selves first and foremost, I have felt excluded from people most of my life, living in the background, and this was reflected in how I lived with my self, totally excluding myself from myself.
I love this blog Alexis, there are so many gems you’ve shared here. I would like to highlight this one, ‘ Life is maths, nothing can exist outside of us that doesn’t already exist on the inside…’ Wow, so true and it makes so much sense.
“….judgment comes from lack of understanding” If we could get to grips with this as a society, our world would become a much more harmonious place to live.
A deeply inspiring read Alexis – how easy it is to blame outside of ourselves and bury our hurts rather than address them and then bring responsibility to our expression – knowing whatever we point the finger at, we are usually stuck in the same thing ourselves.
“if I want to change any-thing that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first”.
Reading this again I’m reminded of how vital relationships with others are, so that we can learn more about our relationships with ourselves. If we spend a lot of time by ourselves and/or with others who are providing the same reflection back to us, it can be easy to stay comfortable and never allow ourselves to be or feel challenged. The more we build an honesty with and acceptance of ourselves, and a relationship with our bodies, the easier it becomes to receive reflections from others who’ve perhaps mastered areas that we haven’t, and to be inspired instead of confronted by that.
“I chose to disconnect from myself at about the age of 8 because I didn’t know what to do with the painful feelings that I had in my body as a result of being picked on at school. “…”Choosing to disconnect from who we are makes it very easy to abuse ourselves because we are literally oblivious to the abuse.” – These two sentences by Alexis feel like true gold and have really unlocked something in regards to why we disconnect from ourselves in the first place and then can so easily fall into self-disregarding acts that further numb the pain of both things like being picked on and for disconnecting and shutting down our natural expression in the first place!
Having lack of self-worth will always reflect in the types of relationships we attract to ourselves, and how we act in those relationships. It’s only when you start to see your part when ‘hooking up’ with someone, do you start to get a greater understanding of how and why things played out the way they did.
“I had chosen to disconnect from myself to such an extent that I had literally broken adrift from any kind of footing that I had.” Yes and that can explain how there can be evil in the world. We disconnect from ourselves and anything and everything can come through us without us remembering it is actually not ‘us’ saying, doing or thinking a certain thing.
“Others can only get as close to me as I get to myself” and when we see our reflection in the mirror, what are we met with? Is it only what we see on the outside, or can we feel who we are within?
Often when I look into my eyes in the mirror, I get a deep sense of not only who I am but who we all are on the inside.
Like a rat (or should that be hamster?) stuck in a maze lined by mirrors, we get upset, scared and outraged at what is about to be done to us, never realising that everything we see is just a reflection of what we choose. If we just stopped railing at the outside, we might realise we have complete power inside.
The thing is, we are understanding machines – perfectly designed to live aligned to the truth of God and the Universe. It actually takes a choice to be angry, judgemental and appalled. The more you catch yourself in these moments the more you can see it’s simple as you show Alexis to stop reacting and grow.
Such a huge point of reflection this offers. Sometimes I get really frustrated and can feel this underlying sadness and anger come up and it shows me that there is healing to do and to start to be honest about the relationship I have with myself.
‘…every-thing that exists outside of us, is set in motion first by our relationship with ourselves.’ This is HUGE! All my hurts have been people reflecting back to me what I already had in motion. It’s not to say that people can’t be unloving towards me if I truly love myself, it’s that what they’re expressing doesn’t resonate in my body and I am free to see that what is going on isn’t to do with me. It’s not a comment on how good or bad I am. It’s them being in a place at that moment that isn’t connected to love and that if I respond from love then they’ve got an opportunity to reconnect with love.
I won’t let their choices into my body as a hurt, I’ll see what is going on with an understanding that lovingly understands what is taking place and see it’s not personal. Seeing it’s not about me
A beautifully strong comment, it is awesome to feel the claiming of yourself here. It also shows the simplicity that is born when we take these steps back and allow people their space and ourselves the space thus being the beholder of love where there is nothing to do but live in the grace of God.
If reflections either ‘hurt us or make us feel good’ then one thing that is being reflected for sure is that we have disappeared into the realm of ‘good and bad’ coupled with the illusion of identification.
Nothing is more powerful than what is been reflected by another. Either way (if it hurts or feels good) it’s honourable to accept what is been reflected.
When we ‘connect to our inner essence first, and then move and live from that connection’ then that is the absolute most we can ever do towards inspiring others to re-connect to their essence. It is our bodies that recognise truth through movement and then move themselves back to truth.
Our bodies are magic! They know the order of the universe and are so obedient even when we fight them with our wayward ways. A wonderful comment reminding me I can trust my body because it knows love in each cell.
This blog highlights our true responsibility as human beings- that is to have a deep connection to our inner essence first, and then to move and live from that connection in all our relationships. I have recently experimented with letting go of judgement thru greater understanding regarding some co-workers that I previously reacted to when they acted cruel and dishonestly and it has been amazing to see how the tension between us instantly dissipated and we started to reconnect without me saying a word initially.
God is love and love is God and we are here to forever build grander and more glorious versions of God. What a spectacular purpose! Who could possibly want to do anything else?
Whenever we feel a lack of love in our life, we must look within and choose to see what is there that we miss.. And how this plays out in our daily life. For we can always build a deeper love with ourselves. Forever unending.
The moment I came to realise that “Every single thing that was in my relationship with myself was reflected back to me in my relationships with others” was one big ouch moment, but it was also a pivotal moment in my life as I knew that I was being presented with the truth. And from accepting the truth and making a commitment to build a relationship with me, my whole life began to slowly change into the life that deep down I always knew was there waiting for me; all I had to do was say yes, and I did.
This is unfortunately true, we need to remember how horrible it is to be on the receiving end, ‘we categorise and subsequently dismiss so many people that we come into contact with because we deem them either of no ‘use’ to us or of ‘no consequence’. Each and everyone of us has a purpose and we are all needed in the greater plan.
and yet Kelly we categorise and subsequently dismiss so many people that we come into contact with because we deem them either of no ‘use’ to us or of ‘no consequence’.
“Our relationships with others become the most incredible tools to see what needs addressing in the starting place of every-thing, and that is in our relationship with our self.” How beautiful it is that we have reflections to share in and explore via the relationships we hold and how exquisite it is to have the opportunity to uncover more of who we are within these relationships too. What I also love is that these reflections don’t even necessarily start with our close friends and family but with everyone, the butcher or sales assistant, but whomever we connect with can offers us another level if understanding at any time.
Quite naturally what is lived on the inside manifests itself on the outside as we build our worlds, moment by moment, choice by choice. Its this science that explains so clearly why the Way of the Livingness is and has been so life changing for so many.
It is only by living anything that we bring it into existence.
” Our relationship with ourselves is the start of all things ”
Rebuilding a true relationship with ourselves also builds a true relationship with any other.
And we can’t build a true relationship with another without first building a true relationship with ourselves. And if our relationship with ourselves is superficial, then so it follows that our relationship with everyone else will also be too.
The biggest take away for me from Universal medicine is that I have never had a relationship with me. As you said so honestly Alexis
“As far as my relationship with myself went I don’t think that I consciously knew such a thing existed”
To be honest reconnecting back to me was very hard to do because of all the pictures, ideals and beliefs that were blocking me from the reconnection. Dismantling the blockages has at times been hard and painful but the rewards have been so worth it. I am rediscovering what a beautiful, delicate and sensitive woman I truly am.
It is true Mary, the ideals and beliefs have us thinking this and that about ourselves. I remember when first attending Universal Medicine courses and Serge would talk about us all being Love, there was a part of me that still believed that everyone else was except me. I used to think it would be great if that was true but it felt very far removed from where I was at that point.
and now Julie?
Understanding brings truth and truth brings understanding.
” I have come to feel that judgment comes from lack of understanding: ”
This is so true , for understanding brings truth to any situation , therefore no judgement.
When I was young I felt the word responsibility seemed heavy and burdensome but now see the great simplicity and truth of the word. Responsibility is our surrender to the what is from the wisdom shared from our bodies it is then our responsibility to simply listen, connect and move from this wisdom that brings the divine expression to the world and it can be seen, felt and reflected by our movements made in our day to day life. Simply awesome.
I agree Alexis, it is colossal, with most people having chosen to disconnect from themselves at some point in their lives, and so abuse can then easily come in, ‘Choosing to disconnect from who we are makes it very easy to abuse ourselves because we are literally oblivious to the abuse.’
I love reading and re reading your sharing Alexis. There is always so much simple common sense offered for us . I agree that without the wonderful presentations and workshops of Serge Benhayon my life would be very different.
Absolutely, when we choose to disconnect from ourselves we do not know what we are feeling, because as you say we are not there to feel what we are feeling, ‘I had very little awareness of the pain that I was in and the reason why I was unable to feel the pain that I was in, was because I had chosen to sever my connection to myself.’
When we feel a disconnect from ourselves, it turns to sadness and anger – so no wonder the hampster episode happened. When we want others to fix us or love us to fill the void, we are saying we are not up for taking responsibility for how we are living.
It is so true Alexis, that it is possible to gently uncover what self-judgement there may be and to bring in enormous amounts of understanding to that place. This is a great reminder for how much everyone deserves to be loved.
I think it is key what you share about bringing understanding, I know that I am my harshest critic and that I give myself a really hard time, most of the time and so this then is carried over to others. I can feel that I need to bring much more love and understanding to myself so that I can also bring this to others.
That our world is down to our relationship with ourselves is huge and fantastic – we have no control of another’s choices and are not victims when we are responsible for ourselves.
However, I know I have asked things of people and then played victim when I’ve not got what I wanted, not understanding where they were at they weren’t able to be loving or what I was asking for wasn’t actually loving either. All because I’ve not wanted to take on the responsibility of how I am with myself. But it’s as simple as me embracing being responsible and asking for support, if needed, from this awareness and commitment.
Looking back at our lives, it’s clear that the majority of us are involved in a continual push and pull tug of war. ‘Others should be a certain way’, ‘each situation needs to be like I want’ every day has it constraints otherwise our contentment is seriously disturbed. But as you show Alexis none of this is it. We are in Truth self-sufficient Love machines designed to bring deep care to everyone we meet. When we expect others to make us feel good, it’s not just the hamster but ourselves that we drown.
What a wonderful comment and so true we drown ourselves and everyone in hurt and expectations when asking others to do what only we can do for ourselves – be love. ‘Self sufficient love machines’ – awesome!
I love what you share here Joseph, and yes ‘We are in Truth self-sufficient Love machines designed to bring deep care to everyone we meet. ‘
Hahaha . . . “When I was about 20 years old I momentarily pushed my pet hamster under water in anger because it bit me. I had bought myself a hamster because my best friend had a couple and it seemed like a really cool thing to have. I remember feeling disappointed that I got absolutely nothing back from my hamster… it didn’t make me look cool and neither did it love me.” . . . I am still laughing at this priceless first paragraph as it says it all. Looking for love in a hampster is the same as looking for any kind of love outside of ourselves.
How powerfully profound and eye-opening is this statement of truth?
“What makes our disconnection from ourselves even more harmful is the fact that everything, as in every-thing that exists outside of us, is set in motion first by our relationship with ourselves.”
“It is because of this increased understanding that the judgement that I have towards myself has decreased: however the judgement that I still have towards others indicates that there is a lot more self-judgment yet to be uncovered.” This is very true of myself, however my sharpened judgement arrows feel mostly pointed and uncompromising towards myself first, then I use them on others, having left myself for dead. This is a debilitating cycle of self abuse that has only been gradually arrested for me, through the love and teachings of Serge Benhayon.
The more I look at my relationships the more I see the one with myself. When I get annoyed by what I see, it’s either because I am only looking on superficially or I am doing the same thing.
Kehinde I am only just coming to feel the extent of the sheer amount of judgement that I have administered in my life. In fact I know that I am not yet able to fully comprehend the true extent of the judgement that I have felt but know that it has been a constant force in my life. You are spot on when you say that there is a certain sneakiness to it and it is that sneakiness that has kept the full force and impact hidden from my view. I am however onto it and am committed to flushing it out of all of it’s hidey holes.
Judgement is sneaky and creeps in, if we’re not vigilant. it can enter as a fleeting thought, and when it does and we catch it, feel it for what it is and release it lovingly. To judge another is to focus on externals, not their essence, in the same way we judge ourselves. It does not heal, it harms.
Life can very often feel like a struggle and when it does it usually reflects our own inner struggle. Photographic of me in my late teens show a very disgruntled young woman. I remember feeling angry, not really knowing what was going on within and around me and never openly expressed, I carried these feelings internally for years. To be supported to connect to and express our feelings (all of them) is foundational to developing a relationship with ourselves. An understanding I gained late in life, but invaluable at any age.
It’s the so-called ‘norm’ to dedicate our teenage years to dating, to finding a relationship and someone to be with – often just to fit in and do what everyone else is doing. I know that’s how it was for me. I really was totally uninterested in relationships for ages and then suddenly wanted one to make me fit in and also have someone adore me. I expected my partner to do all the things I wasn’t willing to do for myself – to love and care for me in a way that I hadn’t done for myself. Relationships were loaded with expectations and need and so inevitably they didn’t work. It’s when we’re prepared to get honest and see what we’ve invested in, and why, and to look at our own stuff well before we place blame on another, that things start to shift and heal – opening up the space for true relationships built on quality, not need.
It is so simple and this exercise can be applied to any relationship, starting it today!
Thank you!
I remember as a young woman spending hours on the phone to my girlfriends moaning about other people or my current boyfriend and how they did me wrong and weren’t being supportive. I never once questioned how I was supporting myself, or if I was treating myself with the same respect and decency I was demanding from others. Taking a look at myself was not comfortable at first. It was so much easier to point my fingers outward, but after that first step, the journey has been life changing and very empowering.
Agreed Debra, many will relate to what you say. Life becomes simpler and lighter when we stop looking out at others to blame and take responsibility for ourselves. Honesty is uncomfortable at first, but the rewards are worth it and life long.
We have many ways to distract ourselves from that true connection we do know so well and say we are looking for all of our life. How hypocritical we are as to distract ourselves purposely from making this connection and at the end even dare to say we where not aware! Actually we have to become honest and admit that we have fought this awareness in many ways and that all the suffering we have encountered in life is from our own doing.
Deeply appreciating the deepening of relationships within my home and with people around reflecting back to me this relationship I have with myself.
As a species we must choose to reconnect… This is an inevitable process, and yet the delay at every turn is quite extraordinary, and extraordinarily revealing.
Well said Chris. What it reveals is our dogged determination to avoid the truth.
And also our dogged determination to keep returning to it.. no matter how many delays and avoidance strategies I can come up with, eventually I keep coming back to the knowing that nothing ‘out there’ is greater than what is inside me.
“I have come to feel that judgment comes from lack of understanding: once we understand why a person is behaving the way that they do, it becomes impossible to judge them.” If we judge others harshly – how are we in fact judging ourselves? Giving ourselves understanding allows us to bring that same understanding out into the world to others. Seeing others for who they truly are – not just their behaviours.
Judgment is an emotion that really only serves to reinforce the hurt and thoughts of someone that they are less than you and others – whereas understanding allows them to feel their potential and live it.
Well said Suse, when we judge another for either being more or less than us, it’s akin to pinning them down energetically and preventing them from moving, whereas understanding where they’re at gives them the freedom to move should they so choose.
Indeed Suse, judgment is like an imprisonment, a reduction in life while understanding brings us the freedom to expand and to become more of who we potentially are.
When we cast judgement it’s like casting a net over whoever we are judging, whilst at the same time casting a net over ourselves. In that moment we’re both trussed up.
From what you’ve shared Suse, it is clear that it is a great dis-service to hold another or self in judgement.
Monica I love what you have shared, especially how important it is not to judge ourselves. When we do go into judgement it creates a barrier between us and ourselves and therefore prevents us from being able to understand what is truly going on and therefore from also being able to evolve from whatever it is we are experiencing.
I love what you’ve explained about judgement Alexis – so true. I had never considered what gets in the way of me having a relationship with myself in such a real way. It’s opened up a way of being with myself that is open, transparent, honest and loving- everything I ever looked for in another to reflect back to me I can actually give myself and with no fear of that love being taken away suddenly and not within my control. Fancy having a relationship with myself that never has to have a limit?!
and if we are able to have a relationship with ourselves that has no limit, then we are also able to have relationships with others that have no limits.
‘every-thing that exists outside of us, is set in motion first by our relationship with ourselves.’ This is huge, it is colossal as you say. It’s not confined to relationships with others but to how the whole of life flows, how opportunities present themselves or how we choose not to see them or allow them. I’m just starting to observe how I am allowing wonderful things in my life because I am more accepting of myself and expressing this.
Rachel I have come to feel that each and every relationship is indeed blessed, even the ugly and difficult ones, as every relationship that we have in our lives is there by divine design.
Life is one big relationship. Everything is a relationship. We can choose to see if life is a blessing or a curse. Our choice indeed!
Ultimately life is God having a relationship with himself.
Is it possible that the way we treat ourselves is the direct result of being brought up to believe that we put everyone else first and us way down the list of who to care for? With this programming no wonder it is so hard for us to love ourselves or even care for ourselves. We have been led to believe that we don’t matter all that much and so begins the severing of the connection from ourselves, one that was so natural as a child. To return to this connection, in my experience, is followed by a return to the top of the ‘who to care for first’ list, where we naturally belong.
Ingrid whilst I agree that we can all be lead to believe many things, I also believe that we can’t be made to believe anything. I feel that were only too willing to jump from the ship of truth into the murky waters of illusion because it enables us to stay in the comfortable holding patterns that we have chosen, lifetime after lifetime. Responsibility really is the name of the game.
Great point that we set things up for ourselves.. it can be very easy to blame the world for all of the ills and expectations that are placed upon us, but we can’t avoid the fact that it’s always our choice to take on these expectations and align to them, or not. It takes strength and commitment to align to our own internal compass, and not the world’s, especially when we have old ingrained patterns of having done that for a long time, but there is so much inspiration around us to show that our patterns are not who we are, that we can choose differently, live more of who we truly are, at any time.
As with all relationships, they need nurturing, honouring, great communication and listening. From this they become enriched and then deepen and grow. To apply this to yourself, for yourself is a very beautiful thing! Every relationship, with another thereafter is truly blessed.
It’s a great to be reminded of this first thing in the morning – you can apply it to your day too and that how my whole day will turn out depends on this moment right now that I have with myself.
Judgement to others or to ourselves is lack of acceptance of what we don’t understand or don’t want to embrace in our lives, although this is an unavoidable part of us. This is a lost battle; only by surrendering ourselves to the reality of our nature, we are blessed by it and free of any judgement’s pressure.
We are either being fuelled by an energetic source that seeks to keep us in separation from the Divine or an energetic source that seeks to re-unite us with the Divine. When we’re being driven by the former then we will ‘protect ourself at all costs’ and defending ourselves in confrontation is a prime example of this. On the other hand when we are being fuelled by the latter, then we are much more likely to be receptive to the learning in any situation.
Very interesting how we lash out when we don’t get what we want. It just goes to highlight the selfish motivation rather than being open to what the universe is trying to show us…
Our relationship with ourselves is the start of all things! From there all other relationships can blossom and grow. Without out it we are foundation-less and have no real substance to bring to another.
and when we ‘don’t like to say no’ what is it that we are therefore saying ‘yes’ to?
There is always something to look at and address within ourselves when we don’t like the reflection in front of us. It may be as simple as not choosing the situation we find ourselves in and asking ‘What was going on within me that I didn’t like to say ‘No’.
I needed to read this again today.
When the reflection outside of us highlights to inner disharmony it’s easy to assume that we can’t change life because of factors outside of our control (other peoples reactions/responses) but I know this distracts me from the part I can change which is what is inside me.
Relationships with ourselves are forever evolving and one way to support this is to set standards that we don’t drop below of until emotions such as judgement, comparison or self doubt no longer come up and we can live more consistently the love that we are with ourselves and others around us.
The answer to all wars -“When we have each returned to our true relationship with ourselves, one that contains love and nothing else, then so too will our world be a reflection of that love”.
Brilliant blog Alexis. If all is a reflection what are we choosing to reflect?
It is our relationship with ourselves that does set everything else in motion and if we have in place a loving, appreciative and honouring relationship with ourselves then this is what will be there for us as we bring ourselves into the world and relationship with ours.
It’s so real and practical what you share Alexis, we can kid ourselves as much as we like but we can’t escape the truth that everything around us is a direct reflection of every thought and movement from with-in us. It’s an awesome moment when we understand, accepted and appreciated this as the truly golden opportunity to take responsibility for ourselves.
“When we choose to disconnect from ourselves we lose the ability to know how we are feeling because we are ‘not there’ to feel what we are feeling.” yes this is so true, when we do loose connection to ourselves we just open ourselves up totally to have other energies enter that are not us, but we think it usually is us, so we loose the ability to feel what is there to be felt.
I chose to disconnect from life at about 5 years of age when I noticed that the honesty I bought to all I met was not received by the masses. The openness and willingness to call a spade a spade at such a young age was met with much discontentment from the elders in my community. Many years later that little girl is living this same presence that is met with not as much resistance but an understanding now of how my relationship with myself is paramount to the foundation from which I can bring all that I am to another.
I never really liked maths at school but now see how the perfect equation for living life is from the connection we have with ourselves. It is from this equation of our bodies and our movements as one that we begin to unlock the true power of love, truth an feeling that circumnavigates up our lives and how we in turn interact and connect with it.
Caroline I have a similar marker for knowing when I am off and that is when I become irritated by another person shining their light, it’s a sure sign that I’ve switched mine off!
Judging others is a clear marker that I am not connected to myself in my livingness for when I am it is impossible to judge but have only love for myself and others.
Meg the fact is we are quite literally ‘out of this world’ but we have come to see ourselves as two dimensional beings that are born and then die and in seeing ourselves as a slither of our true selves we have reduced our entire outlook and experience of life into a mere fragment of what’s possible.
Life is maths I agree, seek to fill what you cannot or will not fill yourself and you will have less-than-loving relationships with everyone in your life. Approach these relationships full and complete and they will be out of this world amazing, because you are already out of this world amazing – it’s a simple 1 + 1 = 2.
All our relationships are doorways of opportunity, windows of reflection, and can always serve to accelerate our path of return back to who we truly are.
I played that game for a long time, the game of pretending I did not know so that I did not have to feel, and so I would numb myself through food and distance myself from people. But love waited patiently, and knew the time would come when I would be ready and willing to choose another way, another way to be in this world and I could feel safe just to be myself, to express the love that I am and was born. In deep gratitude to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine.
When we love ourselves in full, we cannot but see the love that is equally in all of us.
and conversely it’s a sad fact that when we can’t feel the love in ourselves then we can’t see it in anyone else.
We are the world around us.
It is true that if we want the world to change around us then we have to change us first, otherwise we just live from a place of feeling defeated by what we see and feel going on in the world.
‘What makes our disconnection from ourselves even more harmful is the fact that everything, as in every-thing that exists outside of us, is set in motion first by our relationship with ourselves.’ We do not want to see this because it puts responsibility for everything firmly at our feet – in our hands. The world is in a mess because we are in a mess and it is only when we begin to deeply care enough that we can start to turn this around and true care actually starts with ourselves.
“I have come to feel that judgment comes from lack of understanding.” So simple and yet at times we love nothing more than going into the drama of a situation and blaming another for our own choices. The beautiful thing is that we can re-imprint our old ways and begin anew simply by re-connecting to our bodies more consistently and watching how our awareness for ourselves and the world around us just begins to open up. Bringing it back to our bodies and what is really going on within can truly bridge the gap on judgement and open up greater depth in our connections everywhere.
Kelly I’m glad that you made the point that judgement creates a gap. In truth judgement creates a massive moat around us, one that is filled with piranhas!
So many gems of wisdom contained in this blog and a great support for anyone struggling in relationships, which I did for such a long time. I no longer struggle with relationships of all descriptions since I choose to be more loving and tender with myself. And from this space I could appreciate all that I bring and that my expression, my contribution counts in this world. There is no space to no longer make myself less.
How crazy is it Jacqueline that we do, indeed, make ourselves less. We work diligently to reduce our natural grandness into a dishevelled remnant of it’s former glory and this we then pass off as ourselves. There will be a time in our history when we look at what we are currently choosing for ourselves and shake our heads in utter disbelief because make no mistake we are all indeed choosing the lives that we are leading.
There is a deep deep sadness we all share – the deep sadness of choosing to disconnect from our being and be totally overwrought by the human condition. This sadness is covered up in many ways, anger and other emotions, food, drugs, alcohol, behaviours, activities – pretty much anything to distract us from the fact that we have lost that connection.
The trick therefore is to connect to the being within the human condition and to live that beingness in all that we do.
There is such a depth to what you share here Alexis and to the glorious statement – ‘Life is maths.’ And just like with maths at school, we make life unnecessarily complicated whereas the reality is, it is so so simple. How can we hope to find the amazing love outside of us when we harbour a barren land within us? It simply doesn’t add up, it just won’t happen. But if I open up to me, i melt into the essence of who I am and let that be seen by me and then by others, I will ever so naturally invite the same quality back to me – and this is exactly what happens. Our relationships change, our lives change amazingly so, when we make it first about tender relationships with ourselves, with our Soul, first. We are met in Life by the same quality.
“I have come to feel that judgment comes from lack of understanding” By not choosing to understand something but instead judge and blame distracts one from looking honestly and taking responsibility for one’s part in the situation. By doing so we make ourselves a victim while when we choose to understand and be truthful we empower ourselves and can then make different choices.
This is so supportive to read as I begin my day. I am feeling a little unsure of myself in the world and recognise I can support myself lovingly, not go into self sabotage because of this insecurity but look at what exactly is going on and reconnect with an inner knowing that comes through from connection. The willingness to feel all that is there and allow the vulnerability.
Thanks for shining a light on judgment and how it’s a lack of understanding for another ornate ourselves. When we bring understanding to ourselves and others it totally shifts things and we are able to observe what’s going on clearly, without judgement clouding our vision and our knowing.
Lack of understanding breeds reaction and judgment – it’s a big topic. When we choose to react and not understand we are missing out on a healing, of strengthening our ability to read life on an energetic level and why a person is choosing a behaviour. Understanding takes the ‘personal’ out of a situation and makes it about choices and energy instead, which confirms who we are in the process.
Deep down we always know what is needed.. and we always know the real issue is never with the other person but with us..and that actually there is no issue- just another layer to feel and discard.
“But because we have chosen to pretend that we don’t know how life works, then we all scrabble around making out that we really can’t understand why life is so hard” When we all come to this understanding the way our societies will operate will change dramatically, instead of what you say, scrabbling around about what to do with situations at hand and looking for solutions we will bring healing to every aspect of it and that simply just living from the inside out.
What a beautiful example Alexis of you taking responsibility for developing and expanding your relationship with yourself; and subsequently the impact that has on yourself, others and humanity. What you have expressed here is gorgeous and inspirational;
“When we have each returned to our true relationship with ourselves, one that contains love and nothing else, then so too will our world be a reflection of that love”.
This blog is brilliant for exploring the spell that we are all under until we choose not to be. You simply can’t see how you are behaving or why you are being that way, until you start to come out of it. There is a thick fog that surrounds us until we start to look even to the smallest degree to the way we are with ourselves. This inner awareness creates the first crack, after which so much more can be seen if you continue to be willing. The lie that we have all agreed to live maintains the fog, as we look around and see our false way being confirmed everywhere we look.
Indeed Fiona, it is the fog of the false way of being we raise from if we are able to see our own doing in it.
Thank you Alixis for a beautifully inspiring blog, one that I can relate to with these words “I had very little awareness of the pain that I was in and the reason why I was unable to feel the pain that I was in, was because I had chosen to sever my connection to myself.” At a very young age I too severed the connection to my self, choosing to not know how I felt. Now I too am returning to a true self loving relationship with myself, understanding myself much more by the reflection I receive in my relationship with others, now claiming me and the love I hold deep within.
Absolute Alexis, a sweet start of the blog inteoducing something very important.
Part of this is :
“When we have each returned to our true relationship with ourselves, one that contains love and nothing else, then so too will our world be a reflection of that love.”
It is that what we heal within that than comes out.
As a society, we can so easily hold the idea that if you are single or not with a partner out of choice you are lacking or lonely. So often the discussion is never about enjoying being with yourself and deepening your relationship that then provides another the opportunity to feel if they are open to the same quality. This blog is a lovely account of how we often override what is true self care of oneself, in order to share the same quality with another for the ideals and beliefs of being with someone or part of a peer/societal union.
How we disconnect from ourselves is so incredibly automatic these days, we do it so effortlessly that we are not even sure we’ve done it. It is only in having a relationship with our bodies that can assist us in knowing what this actually is and feels like. When we do disconnect when we don’t have a clue, we are into behaviours before we even can blink, but when we have markers in our body of what it means to be still, have harmony and a love for ourselves, when we make choices that aren’t loving, we can bring ourselves back much quicker.
In a world of anger, aggression, fake niceness and abuse, the only way forward is to build the inner connection and then with that love of self, be the point of change for the world.
‘…. others can only get as close to me as i get to myself.. ‘ I really get it. Though I have known and understood unless I love myself I cannot love another or feel love, this makes this tangible. Unless I step over to where I actually am I cannot know who I am, like being sat on the beach trying to imagine what it’s like in the water but not going in. And I can feel when I keep myself at arm’s length so I do know I have the choice to put down the protection of feeling what is there (it may not be anything like I’ve imagined) and surrender to being me.
In truth we are all already up close and very very personal with ourselves, we are all, in truth already in union with ourselves, it’s just that we choose to do things that sever our natural state of connection and then have to spend an inordinate amount of time getting back to the constant union that is our natural way of being.
This blog highlights how we can think everything is OK and muddle along, when actually there is much deep-seated unease that we are not truly dealing with.
‘if I want to change any-thing that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first.’ Having spent most of my life in an exhausting cycle of blame or judgement of others and myself, I, with the support of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine know this to be so true.
A true relationship is one that reflects evolution to another, this might not always be very pleasant to feel if we are choosing to avoid responsibility in our own lives, so it is easier to find fault in the other instead of appreciating their reflection.
In truth all relationships offer evolution to another because life is set up to help us evolve and so if someone is on our life then they are there by divine design.
‘…every-thing that exists outside of us, is set in motion first by our relationship with ourselves.’
This is indeed HUGE! After week of what I’ve found to be challenging interactions with others I can see pattern emerging and how I am with these interactions shows me where I am attracting certain types of interactions. If I hide behind everything is random then I’ll keep on having similar weeks until it’s so obvious I can no longer ignore what’s there to be learnt.
I also relate to hardening my body and disconnecting from the true feeling I was having and as part of this I would also hide under a huge umbrella of anger which I would never let out not even the smallest bit of anger so I bottled it up. Thanks to the presentation from Universal Medicine and as part of my healing by studying how our organs relate to emotions my anger has been healed so that my Livingness can begin the process of reconnection.
It’s only when you start to come back to yourself that you realise how far you have drifted, and that things that now seem obvious were not even a consideration, let alone the concept of bringing understanding to a situation. It just goes to show how disconnected to humanity and ourselves we can get, and then develop the attitude every man for himself.
When we have each returned to our true relationship with ourselves, one that contains love and nothing else, then so too will our world be a reflection of that love. This lived understanding is so true and confirms that energy is everything and is also the end result of the energy we choose to run us, so when love is the only thing we are choosing, everything is done in that love.
Relationships are just incredible. They are so precious and deserve our absolute commitment and awareness as they tell us so much about ourselves, and offer us the opportunities to deepen the love within us, that naturally emanate out to others.
Living in disconnection in order to avoid feeling pain is a very familiar state for myself and many people that I know. This seems to be the solution because this is what we see, we all grow up experiencing pain with adults around us who are dealing with their own painful experiences by living a disconnected way of life, and this applies to each and every generation. So no one is to blame because this is all we seemingly and on the surface know or have access to knowing. When Serge Benhayon presents on the painful experiences that we all have, he gives us an opportunity to see those experiences from our inner-hearts, where there is no pain, and thus to bring true and real understanding to the situation, which leaves us un-scarred and healed and more open to letting people and love in.
Absolutely LOVE this blog Alexis! Utter gold! I must be honest and say that on first reading of this I felt the truth of what you share too much to take in in full. It is a huge responsibility to fully own and live the truth of this blog in full. It essentially asks us to take responsibility for EVERYTHING.. and that means EVERY little ounce of discontentment, bitterness or emotion towards ourselves other than love in full. We cannot point the finger at anyone as we are fully and utterly responsibility for all we endure and live.
An absolute truth to choose in every moment “a relationship with ourselves that is nothing but love’. I can appreciate very much the understanding you share on reflection Alexis. The smallest things can be great indictors that there is a deeper claim of self love available, and rather than squirm from them and try and deflect them back – lovingly appreciate the reflection being offered.
Our life is a bit like looking into a giant size mirror, we get to see all of ourselves and what we hold within reflected back to us.
The moment my relationship with myself goes deeper, immediately I can see how all my relationships can deepen. The opportunities for love and understanding are endless.
“Every single thing that was in my relationship with myself was reflected back to me in my relationships with others. It was all there for me to see, if only I had chosen to see it. But I didn’t.” Sometimes the truth is so obvious but we choose not to see it.
We can fool ourselves that we have a great relationship with someone when we are making self abusive choices for ourselves, but the body never lies and eventually we will start to feel the impact of the imposter we are choosing to run with others, and our relationships will start to feel not quite as comfortable or good.
‘…every-thing that exists outside of us, is set in motion first by our relationship with ourselves.’ – this is so true – I cannot love anyone more than I can love myself. I can try to please and be nice and do things for others – but if I don’t have the quality with me first – I end up doing things for others to get the recognition from them which I think is love – but it is very far from it.
It is as if we sit with the book of life before our eyes, with it open to page where every thing you could ever know is written down. Yet we rage and cry and moan that we have no clue or even a single reason why things happen to us in our life. Yet if we just stopped and saw that everything is there before us to read, we could not help but understand ourselves and everybody. Thank you Alexis for helping me see its all a choice we make not to read.
‘…I continued to harden my body and bury my feelings in a myriad of different ways and eventually ended up so far from where I had begun that I forgot that I once had a starting point of Me.’ Ouch I felt this line Alexis! Living so much in protection, every moment is one of vigilance and nervous energy. Coming back to me has been and still is a process that is unfolding. There is some heavy armour to divest myself of!
I had some old friends round for lunch yesterday. In the past I would have felt pressured to make sure everyone was enjoying themselves and flitted around doing what I thought a good hostess should. Yesterday was completely different and it was lovely to simply let myself be and in that allow everyone else to be. So yes I can definitely see how my relationship with myself affects how I am with others.
It’s so funny how we can continue on and on thinking everything is fine yet in truth we are not evolving and not in true relationship with ourselves, sometimes a wake up call is needed for us to get back in touch with that true self.
BANG – YOU NAILED IT ALEXIS “I have come to feel that judgment comes from lack of understanding: once we understand why a person is behaving the way that they do, it becomes impossible to judge them.” So that’s the answer to why people can be hostile and racist isn’t it! And the explanation we all need to embrace. As soon as we have unloving thoughts about someone else means there is something in between you and the other that is not true, some gravel that needs to be looked at. Love the freshness of this blog Alexis, it feels like I can breathe a lot better now.
Responsibility can be related to as too much, but is that just another judgement?
Lately I am constantly being reflected what my own relationship with myself is through others, which is awesome because if I did not have this reflection, I would continue to not be myself in this on/off fashion with others and then there is no evolution for either of us. It seems choosing to be consistently in love with myself needs some attention, as old patterns of not being me with others seems to take over when I am not fully focused and in the moment with myself. Outside distractions have a way of taking me away and being seemingly more important at that time, so I have been noticing at those times, that how my body feels and I kind of hold my body stiff or rigid which is a telltale sign I’m on autopilot or in an old stuck way of being. This is a great stop moment for me, where I can choose to move differently and actually feel my own love is right there for my choosing.
“As far as my relationship with myself went I don’t think that I consciously knew such a thing existed and anyway, I thought that I was fine as I was.” I used to think my relationship with me was fine too, maybe a few little things needed tweaking here and there but mostly it was not me it was ‘other’ people, so I made it my mission to avoid anyone that might rock my boat and make me feel uncomfortable. in this I created a comfortable life but not a real life.
The greatest loving choice we can make is to stay with ourselves, through thick and thin. No matter what we are feeling choose to stay with ourselves while the feelings pass – and they will. If I try to block them then I trap them and they lurk until I choose to release them. If I don’t choose this I choose distraction – which is harming to not feel whatever, therefore a cycle of trickery is underway.
There is so much wisdom in what you share with us Alexis, thank you.
“Our relationship with ourselves is the start of all things” I couldn’t agree with you more. We always like to spend time on other people and developing relationships with them, a lot of the time to avoid going deeper in our relationships with ourselves. But it is a wonderful experience to really connect with oneself and feel that amazing quality of being with and having a relationship with us.
If I have any issue in any relationship I know I now need to look at me first, usually its because I have not been looking after myself and that I am tired or lacking in appreciation or it can be I have put too much expectation on myself and others, in all cases the relationship with me first is what I bring.
Establishing a loving relationship with oneself helps us clock when there is abuse and the more we do this the finer our perception so that something that might have felt quite okay before becomes definitely not okay and we learn to say No to even the subtlest form of abuse. In fact this ‘subtle’ abuse is often the worst because it is disguised and something we even thought was ‘good’ can be insidiously harmful.
Sandra I completely agree with what you have shared about certain things that are seen as good, actually being harmful. I used to pride myself in how ‘nice’ I was to people, believing myself to be a good person. It is only retrospectively that I came to feel that ‘nice’ and ‘nasty’ are both the same energy and although that might initially sound confusing, it’s simply that both ‘ nice’ and ‘nasty’ are ways of being that are fabricated and neither comes from who we actually are in truth.
How is it that we can be so unaware of the abuse in our lives that it becomes a norm? Is it because we get some perverse satisfaction from feeling a grainy sense of ourselves which gives us some form of identification? – for at least we have been singled out as a victim, or our claim to fame may be because we can dominate others and appear to be strong and in control. As you say Alexis, this can only happen if I choose to ‘sever my connection to myself’ for ‘we are ‘not there’ to feel what we are feeling.’ In our absence, we can take on an energy that is not us: ‘He’s not himself’, people say. Once we are with ourselves we more easily discern what energy is running us and we are not so likely to open our ‘front door’ to disharmony or abuse.
My answer to my own internal anguish was…. chocolate! I didn’t realise at the time that my anguish and internal turmoil was because I had disconnected so far from who I truly was and my relationship with myself was nilch. Thanks to Universal Medicine I am slowly coming back to myself and I agree entirely Alexis, it is our relationship with ourself and the quality we hold ourselves in, that reflects out to all our relationships, and having that knowing is one of the greatest gifts we can have because it stops us from blaming everyone else for our life and that our life is only our responsibility and not anyone else’s.
What is so beautifully highlighted for me in this blog is how so many of us are caught in looking for love from all our relationships and that it is never enough until we look within and live the love that we are.
On one level yes it is so simple and so obvious, and yet it is absolutely necessary for this truism to be written about again and again… It is essential for our relationships with ourselves to have a true foundation and then we can relate to the world.
I so agree that developing a loving relationship with ourselves is the only way we can formulate any sort of true relationship with others. I could really relate to what you said about never really having a sense of what it meant to have a relationship with yourself, until meeting Serge Benhayon and the work of the ageless wisdom. Anything other than that, for me was all spiritual new agey stuff that never really changed anything.
If this was our only learning ‘ our relationship with ourselves’ we would read life differently with everything being a reflection for us to ponder, rather than life being out there and happening to us, leaving us to feel at its mercy and powerless.
This is a great blog and I read it at a perfect time. A super intense period at work in which I can all too easily get overwhelmed and embroiled. So, so supportive to bring it all back to the simplicity and root of it all – me and my relationship with myself. Thank you for bringing these wise words to us.
To crave a deeper relationship with friends or family, then build that loving intimacy within – I love that advice Alexis and so easily accessible for us all to do. I think we all have a measure of what it feels like when we feel good about ourselves, how much easier it is then to be open to other people and share our life. I know for me that when i am on good form I love to share my feelings with others, yet when I am off key I find this much harder, so the responsibility lies in addressing what choices put me off key and build the consistency to be on it more of the time.
Alexis, you are so right, it all starts right here right now. I love this line: “If I want to be loved for who I naturally am, then it is my responsibility to love myself in full first.” So often we want the end result without taking responsibility for our part in things, and I would add, if I want to be loved for who I naturally am, then it is my responsibility to be who I truly am.
I was gonna comment on that exact same line! And love your addition Meg. This all makes it super simple…so simple that I can not hide from my responsibility – well I can try, but it doesn’t work and doesn’t get me anywhere! Off to have an evening hot bath and and early night!
I love your addition here Meg – it feels that we so often look for others to qualify who we are in their way of treating us before we choose to be this, when as you express it is, in truth, the reverse of this.
Alexis, what you are sharing is very profound and makes absolute sense, it has been my life experience, when I had little love for myself and was very judgemental and critical of myself I was this way with others too and felt that I did not have loving or close, true relationships with people, this has changed since I have been developing a loving, caring relationship with myself and this now shows in the much more loving my relationships are with others, I now truly love and appreciate them.
I love the basic maths – ‘if it’s on the outside then it’s on the inside.’ Such a simple equation but one I’ve tried to deny all my life in trying to ignore what’s on the inside and focusing on trying to control the outside. It doesn’t equate and I know this! what’s great is that I can have a relationship with myself that is of my choosing, no-one can meddle with that and if I think they are then I know I am using what’s happening on the outside as an excuse. how I treat myself is always my choice.
The more we are love within that love comes into our outer relationships. It’s exhausting trying to focus and control the outer relationships and so much simpler to focus on what we can change – our within relationship.
It is exhausting trying to control the outer relationships because it’s like we’re frantically trying to make people like us for example but we’re running around shouting insults and until we stop doing this we will continue running around exhausting ourselves not getting any connection with people. What we do have a choice about is how we are within ourselves and how we express.
The period in my life when I was desperate for people to like me, was when I had no self love whatsoever. Now that I am full of self love it’s alright if people like me or not.
There is a deep responsibility in developing a deepening a relationship with ourselves. Because we begin to see the impact that this has around us. We also see how we have been that is not true and this is not the easiest thing to see and I know for myself that this is where is have reacted and gone into “I don’t want to see, or feel this” and often gone and ate something. It is no wonder we go through life with our blinkers on as we don’t want to face all that we have been responsible for. This is where self care and self love come in for by deepening this we begin to see all that we are presented with as reflections and great opportunities to learn and grow.
I find what you have written here Alexis very powerful, insightful and wise, thank you;
“What makes our disconnection from ourselves even more harmful is the fact that everything, as in every-thing that exists outside of us, is set in motion first by our relationship with ourselves”.
A great re read Alexis. Your fearless look within and the truth you share of your journey is awesome. We all need to truly look deeper to see that “if I want to change anything that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself”
If we have a dysfunctional relationship with ourselves, then this will result in dysfunctional relationships with everything and everyone else. This is true, even though many would not like to admit it. We like to go around thinking that our relationships with others are honkey dory, but if we were more honest and looked at our own self relationship, we would have to agree, it could do with some self love focus, which consequently adds up to, a lack in our other relationships. We seem to be fine to just settle for getting on with others and stay in protection and not wanting to be the first to admit there is no real closeness or true intimacy with others.
Heavens that is a massive blog. There is no escaping the responsibility we have to address behaviours that are unloving and unkind after reading what you have written. I am sure I will come back to other parts of this blog but this next bit really made me stop and read it again. “When we choose to disconnect from ourselves we lose the ability to know how we are feeling because we are ‘not there’ to feel what we are feeling. If you’re not at home, then how can you possibly know who’s walking through the front door? Choosing to disconnect from who we are makes it very easy to abuse ourselves because we are literally oblivious to the abuse.”
I have never heard of someone looking cool because they had a hamster! This made me giggle. And this is very honest, I am sure many people feel like this .. As far as my relationship with myself went I don’t think that I consciously knew such a thing existed and anyway, I thought that I was fine as I was.’. I can definitely say that was the same for me, that I was fine and my ‘relationship’ with me was ‘fine’. This however could not have been further away from the truth and looking back I can see I actually had zero foundation with regards to the relationship with myself, hence a life I lived in complete disregard of myself. It was only until I met Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine that I started to truly understand what this meant, I tangibly knew what self-love and self-care were through both the presentations and reflections back to me of how they were living. In our life we cannot escape relationships and are in them all the time whether with family, friends, teachers, work colleagues, shop keepers the list goes on but the most important relationship of them all is the one we first have with ourselves.
What I have found over time is that when we point the finger at others and blame them for things not working in our lives, it distracts us from our one true aid i.e ourselves. Allowing ourselves to uncover our past choices and patterns and to see that everyone in our lives offers us a point of learning through reflection are a great way to return to our connection to who we are within . That is the greatest love of all.
If it wasn’t for Serge I would still be getting self care and self love mixed up with self-centredness and selfishness as this was what I was brought up to believe. Learning to love yourself blows this out of the water and is so important to healing ourselves so we are open to loving each other in a true way.
It is not worth disconnecting from ourselves and ceasing to express our truth for any reason whatsoever.
To do so, leaves a deep anguish, sorrow and prevents us from living in brotherhood with others – our natural impulse and true way.
The quality of our life, self love and presence is the key to a purposeful, dedicated, committed life. Thank you Alexis for this beautiful sharing.
So many gems here Alexis including ‘judgment comes from lack of understanding’ and for me it is helpful to recognise that it also applies to ourselves. I can feel how often I still judge myself and that this is rooted in my lack of connection with myself which fosters a lack of understanding of the actions that I am judging. Nurturing my connection with myself and appreciating my commitment to this is supporting me to let go of so many unhelpful judgements that have coloured my relationship with myself and others.
So supportive to re-read your blog this morning and I was particularly struck by the truth of this ‘No-thing more, no-thing less.’ In the past I have invested so much effort in my relationships with others and very little in my relationship with myself and reaped the consequences of ignoring what you have presented. It is only when I am willing to re-build my connection with myself and allow that to flow out into my relationships with others that I start to achieve more balance in life and a level of intimacy that I never dreamed was possible despite my many years of desperate searching.
Our relationship with ourselves is paramount to everything. Without that we have nothing real.
It’s interesting how angry we can get when we don’t take the time to love ourselves. Everything else stems from that, and the anger can literally leak into every other area of our lives. Not pleasant for ourselves or anyone else. Yes, our relationship with ourselves is the start of all things.
Absolutely – when we love and honour ourselves, this naturally flows far and wide and touches all others .
I love how you mention Alexis that it’s not even on our radar that we could get to know ourselves. This is so true. And yet as you clearly show this is the basis for everything that comes. If you have a dysfunctional relationship with a friend it can be difficult to admit, it seems easier to carry on than to address. So it’s no surprise that we tend to over-ride our issues with our own connection, until the day we start to see this is actually what we really need.
Hi Alexis – I loved your comment – ‘Others can only get as close to me as I get to myself’. I spent a lot of time hiding as I felt less than others but since attending Universal Medicine, claiming ourselves and building self love into our lives has been the most beautiful gift, now ‘Others’ can get closer to me because I allow them too.
‘Our relationship with ourselves is the start of all things’! This is something we should be taught when we are young and carefully nurtured along the way. Without this as our foundation we are lost, constantly looking outside of ourselves searching for others to continually confirm us in some way as the need sets in.
So true and it is never quite fulfilling, so the search and the need goes on, escalating bit by bit. Time for a new beginning and for each and every one of us to walk the talk by looking inside and showing children, by example, a more physically and energetically responsible way to be.
A beautiful sharing Alexis with so many powerful and wise lessons for us to ponder. This morning I was particularly drawn to these words;
“if I want to change any-thing that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first”, so true and a very timely reminder.
When we choose to disconnect from ourselves we lose the ability to know how we are feeling because we are ‘not there’ to feel what we are feeling. If you’re not at home, then how can you possibly know who’s walking through the front door? Choosing to disconnect from who we are makes it very easy to abuse ourselves because we are literally oblivious to the abuse. This is so true, as I know that when I have made an unloving choice, it’s always because I was not fully with myself at the time, and don’t have my own best interest at heart and so my choice reflects that.
‘…If we have a dysfunctional relationship with ourselves, then this will result in dysfunctional relationships with everything and everyone else.’ – this is a great sentence and makes me appreciate that everything is everything. A relationship starts with us and we can only provide as much support to others as we are willing to receive. It is a gift of equality to all and i observe it more and more in myself and others.
You have offered so much to consider here Alexis. It is so commonly experienced that we grow up not knowing or being aware of what a relationship with ourselves is, means or feels like. It’s crazy actually, considering that the quality of this relationship is the one that shapes the quality of our lives and the relationships we share with all others. I have come to learn over the years when we are not in a loving relationship with ourselves we are in fact allowing abuse to be the defining quality in which our lives are lived. This is to reflect who we are or represent the quality that we all deserve to live with, as we all are and deserve nothing less than love.
‘Life is Maths.’ A neat description which brings logic and science to explain the reflection of our inner world in our outer world. An equation in which quality of life is directly related to the level of self-responsibility we commit.
“I have come to feel that judgment comes from lack of understanding: once we understand why a person is behaving the way that they do, it becomes impossible to judge them” – love this insight and truth Alexis, it is what I’ve also come to realise over the years for myself too, and also feeling the freeing sense and spaciousness inside the body when the grip of judgment and also expectation are loosened. Understanding is the seed of our salvation and inclusiveness our back towards true brotherhood.
I love what you share about how often we think that other people are the cause of our anger. I could feel this huge illusion being lifted from my eyes when I realised that I was actually more annoyed with myself for not making more loving choices, standing up for truth or honouring how I feel. I was furious with myself a lot more than anyone else. And from my experience this is true of pretty much everyone I meet, we direct our issues and blame onto others and in so doing, do not heal what needs to be healed, ourselves first.
It is so true that how we feel about ourselves is reflected then in how we are with others and also in what then comes back to us in how others are with us. If we don’t value ourselves, others won’t value us, if we are harsh with ourselves we will experience the world as being harsh. If we are loving with ourselves we will also experience more love in our interactions.
It is never too late to connect to ourselves no matter what our age, stage of life or choices have been.
We are forever provided with the opportunity to say yes to who we are and to take the first step back towards ourselves.
This blog is a great confirmation of the choices that we can all make to build the quality relationship that we often seek from another that is missing it’s own quality within ourselves.
You reminded me of my relationship with the hamster I had, it rolled around that wheel every night while I slept, I set up obstacle courses, cleaned its cage, but me and it never connected. I wanted a cute fluffy creature to love, but it did not reciprocate. I recall, feeling dissatisfied and bit empty from not feeling connected. I have learnt only in recent years that relationships are all about how connected I feel with myself first, this is the only place it starts, whether hamster or human.
‘What makes our disconnection from ourselves even more harmful is the fact that everything, as in every-thing that exists outside of us, is set in motion first by our relationship with ourselves.’ So very true – a powerful observation Alexis.
My relationships start with me taking responsibility for all that I have chosen to do. Then, in being responsible, how could I blame another? But at times I still blame, but this is great for in clocking the reaction I am learning not to react.
A great starting point is choosing to have awareness for how we are living, choosing to feel what is actually going on for us and then developing that relationship further. Before I was introduced to Universal Medicine, I knew that I didn’t feel great sometimes, but I wasn’t sure why, the reasons I gave myself varied depending on who I was with. Yet, in truth, the answer was always the same, I was dis-connected from gorgeous me.
How we are with our selves is what we bring to and share with everyone else.
Today I spent some time getting my hair cut and coloured and had a facial at my local hair and beauty salon. When I left my hairdresser asked was I going anywhere special as I was feeling great and looking wonderful. I shared that I was hanging out with me and wanted to look good for the occasion!
The title says it all really.
It doesn’t make sense to live without even attempting to love ourselves. Without this we are completely reliant on others for love. This is totally unrealistic so we will always feel needy. Not an enjoyable way to live.
“When we choose to disconnect from ourselves we lose the ability to know how we are feeling because we are ‘not there’ to feel what we are feeling.” Sums up dementia perfectly – thank you Alexis.
‘Our relationships with others become the most incredible tools to see what needs addressing in the starting place of every-thing, and that is in our relationship with our self.’ Very true Alexis.
‘I have come to feel that judgment comes from lack of understanding…’ wow this is huge and very pertinent to me right now. Making space to bring understanding to my own feelings and sensitivity is something that I have only very recently begun to look at but reading this and on reflection of events today I can also feel just how judgemental I can be of myself too.
For so many, myself included, until the last few years the concept of a ‘relationship with myself’ was an alien one. However, since being introduced and developing a relationship with myself my life and my relationship with others continues deepening and expanding as everyday goes by. This is because I am no longer reliant on others to fulfil my needs but instead it is my responsibility and choices that determine how I am feeling. So empowering and joyful way to live.
“so in effect we are giving other people the energy to abuse us”, bingo Julie. Every-thing that we experience, we have generated in our relationship with ourselves first.
When we walk around in a ‘pissed off’ state we get more of the same without realising what we are doing to our own bodies by carrying all of the anger around and also that we are affecting others. The thing is we complain about others being hurtful towards us but this would not happen if we did not have that within us first – so in effect we are giving other people the energy to abuse us.
“Deep down every single one of us knows that it is our relationship with ourselves that sets every-thing else in motion, but the responsibility of that feels too big and so we pretend that we don’t know.” This is very honest and powerful and opens us up to so much more with an understanding and love that is so much held back in ourselves and how we live and would change everything from the inside out with true connection and love.
‘…as in every-thing that exists outside of us, is set in motion first by our relationship with ourselves’. This is a very powerful and exposing comment and one that many would choose not to hear or feel. We choose the life we live and your sharing of your experience throughout life and how you have changed that is proof that we are holding within, the key to a way of living that brings harmony, joy love and responsibility. There is so much joy for me as I feel the truth of what you have shared and the knowing that what is happening in our world is to be held in deep understanding and not judgement.
Incredible Alexis, very well said in many many ways. Nailing it to the bone and so simple. Just sharing your sentence again, its brilliant , says it all: “”Again basic maths – if it’s on the outside then it’s on the inside.””
We can continue walking our path by being in denial of that – or walk the truth of that and change our path.
“We can continue walking our path by being in denial of that – or walk the truth of that and change our path”, pure poetry Danna.
Recently I have been feeling a bit like the hamster you describe Alexis, in my case running round all of life, trying to ‘do it all’ yet feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. What I realise from reading your words is that I haven’t brought myself understanding, for how I feel, what I am experiencing and what I choose. And so from this point its very hard for me to bring this understanding to other people that I know. Then what they get is the cranky angry resentful response, that is not truly me. Thank you for this moment to pause and see the responsibility I have to show everyone, but especially myself, unconditional acceptance, understanding and Love.
Our relationship is clearly reflected back to us, and the best way to change what’s going on is to build a true relationship with ourselves, and the reflection will make an amazing difference to everyone around us.
“I was lost at sea with no idea where land was. What is fascinating now for me to feel is that although it was a very painful time of my life, I had very little awareness of the pain that I was in and the reason why I was unable to feel the pain that I was in, was because I had chosen to sever my connection to myself.”
The pain that we are unaware of at the time because of our disconnection to ourselves, comes up to heal once we reconnect but instead of looking at how we have lived and making that accountable, as human beings we are prone to blame the stop as the problem. Like “I stopped drinking for a week and felt worse than when I drank…” I have had many friends say that, or “ I tried to quit coffee, got the worst head ache, never doing that again”
The true pain is when you wake up and realise what you have to walk back through, we can run for a time but we cannot run forever.
‘if I want to change any-thing that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first.’ What a wonderful truth to keep returning to. It blows all blame away and restores responsibility within.
” If it’s on the outside then it’s on the insides. ” such an awareness is not common knowledge, I have watched people go into a rage when driving because they saw somebody doing something wrong, yes road rage. But when we spoke about it, there was no awareness that they were carrying around the rage in their body 24/7 and it only took a small thing to set it off, which is like living with a ticking time bomb. Time to look at the cause of the judgement and anger and diffuse the hurts caused by words that usually best describe the one whose body they are coming from.
‘When we choose to disconnect from ourselves we lose the ability to know how we are feeling because we are ‘not there’ to feel what we are feeling. If you’re not at home, then how can you possibly know who’s walking through the front door? ‘ This is so true Alexis. If we are ‘not home’, how can we truly feel and wisely respond to situations in our lives. Saying connected with our body gives us our only true gauge of what is going on around us.
I love what you share about judgement coming from a lack of understanding -there is such an opportunity for us to look at this in our own way of living, I know this is true for me and when I don’t react and judge, I am able to see things more clearly and from different perspectives and bring understanding to things.
“Our Relationship with Ourselves is the Start of all Things” this statement is so true how we are with ourselves is how we will see the world.
Understanding can make a huge difference to a situation and help to bring more openness and clarity in how we can move forward on something in a much more loving and true way.
I can put my hand up as having been a serial-judger for sometime. It always felt horrible in my body and against everything I am made of… Love. Ultimately, judging another just exposed where I was at with myself… disconnected from the Love that is constantly on offer in my body and with my Soul. So now, if something comes up like judgement or reaction I can use it as a marker to see what happen to ME and why I am OUT.
How light and loving we can be with ourselves is a direct reflection of what everyone else receives.
Our relationship with ourselves is definately the start of all things, as I notice if I get out of bed a certain way my whole day tends to reflect that.
This is a great question to keep returning to – what is the quality from which we set everything in motion? And if it is not from the quality of pure love that resides within us, what are we perpetuating in the world?
The signs that our relationship with ourself isn’t loving are often glaringly obvious and yet we can’t see them. I was so off the rails as a young woman with drinking alcohol, binge eating, bouts of depression and blaming everyone else for what happened in my life, but at the time couldn’t see it. But now I see that all I had to do was admit something wasn’t right rather than dig my heels in and keep doing what I was doing. Now because I do love myself so much more, if something isn’t right, I can see it and just say, ‘that needs to change’ without any blame on myself or beat up, it is just a loving honesty that is the beginning of the healing.
Understanding allows us to create space for another to evolve at their own pace, there is no judgement or imposition only the holding and opportunity for another to unfold.
Deep down we do all know that it is our relationship with ourselves that comes first. It is the responsibility that this brings that causes me to falter – I want to put the brakes on, step back into comfort and cruise for a while, yet all this does is cause delay.
I keep coming back to this blog as my relationship with myself has been less full and loving than it can be for a while … it’s like I have gone so far and then applied the brakes – this has resulted in pulling in old habits again. I’m having to very lovingly understand that a protection and dare I say it, a deliberate holding back is still in play. Blogs like this one inspire me to accept what is happening, appreciate what is already in place and keep building the love, care and rhythms of my daily life.
Accepting ourselves deeply and appreciating all that we are and bring allows not for seeds of judgement to foster.
This is so true Alexis – “What I have come to learn from my own experiences since attending the workshops of Universal Medicine is that if I want to change any-thing that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first.” I have come to learn that too, and I find it is so much easier to look at my own relationship with my self and address what needs addressing than trying to change another…
Could it be possible that every time we react to another or a situation we are then called to stop and reflect on the quality of our relationship? Yes we can all react but how quickly do we bounce back to our loving foundation choosing to sit in the hurt instead.
“I have come to feel that judgment comes from lack of understanding: once we understand why a person is behaving the way that they do, it becomes impossible to judge them.” This is very true Alexis, and what’s more, we only judge others because we judge ourselves first. If we were to accept and appreciate ourselves for simply being who we are, would there even be any need for judgement, but rather simply understanding?
A very powerful article Alexis!
“I have come to feel that judgment comes from lack of understanding: once we understand why a person is behaving the way that they do, it becomes impossible to judge them.” And, of course, this understanding comes from first developing a relationship with and learning to understand ourselves.
While I have made huge leaps and bounds into the relationship with myself there is always more. Addressing our relationship with ourselves, the judgements we may hold is forever deepening I am finding. And with the support of Universal Medicine I am understanding that the simple techniques shared are constantly able to keep up and support each deepening step. For so long I would feel a new depth asking to be addressed and assuming I needed another method of addressing it but that’s not the case. Listening to the body each step of the way is what supports us to deepen this relationship.
The only way we can truly know ourselves is to build a relationship of love and honesty with the daily choices that we make, and experimenting with what really supports us and what does not. In this way we get to feel what is true for us and what is not, and it becomes clear that there really is no such thing as right or wrong.
For years I lived in disconnection to my body. It was only when I started receiving support from the esoteric healing modalities that I realised this, and that it was a long-standing pattern from young so as to escape the uncomfortable feelings I would have about what was going around me. It was like i was living in a permanent panic, my breath always shallow, in anticipation of the next jolt and so I would jolt myself out of my body before anyone else would do it for me.
As I realised this momentum was there and as I steadily started to reconnect, I felt the solidness I was longing for, and the joy of truly returning home. ‘Out there’ in the clouds, we escape into an emptiness and we forever seek and lose ourselves more and more. When we rekindle the relationship with our own bodies and commit to deepening our connection, we are met with the warmth and grace we have yearned for all along, and we then realise that the safety we’ve always sought, the safety we were desperately running to and never able to find, is within us, always and that it can never be taken from us, because it is the very essence of who we are.
I love the analogy Alexis that if we’re not at home how can we possibly know who’s at the front door… brilliant. That’s exactly it – most of us live not at home, not in connection with our bodies and we have plenty a sayings in day to day language that shows we do in fact know this. ‘He’s gone’, ‘he’s not there’, ‘she’s away with the fairies’ etc etc. Change and freedom comes from the foundation with ourselves and this can only be truly built when we are at one with our bodies.
One of the biggest points of how well we do in life is how much we take care of ourselves. When we truly treat ourselves with love and respect we are then able to treat everybody else the same way, while taking care of others does not have quite that confidence when we are neglectful of ourselves.
The greatest love shown is by the way we are with ourselves, the way we life. From that our unity of love grows and so can be and will be expressed to others. As we are never truly separated if the one source we exist out (love) is who we all are. We can just choose to step away from it, yet we hold that love in our essence even if we have locked it up or have pushed it far away.. We are it. Thats why this relationship with love back again is so so important. It starts with you, yes you!
I recently realised how I can get so stuck in ‘rights and wrongs’. Either I am terrified of getting it wrong or I am blaming another for wrongdoing. Bringing understanding to a situation, I am learning, the justification or judgement disappears and that changes everything. And my body loves the space created in it by letting this go.
‘If you’re not at home, then how can you possibly know who’s walking through the front door?’ This is so true Alexis, it is as if we are choosing to live a short distance from our body, not actually in it, so how can we really truly be connected?
Like you I had no idea what “relationship with self” meant and don’t think I had even heard the term, yet today it is something that I know is the most important part of my life, it is the foundation to everything. With the appreciation of this today it does make be wonder how was it possible that such a key part of our life is not fostered from young and made a central focus of our entire humanity?
MA relationship with self is not a key part of our children’s upbringing purely because we have so few people who have relationships with themselves to be able to pass on this living knowledge.
“… if I want to change any-thing that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first… “These wise words are fit to be framed and hung on the wall for everyone to see, as a reminder that true global change comes from within every single human being…. Responsibility, self care and self love…. makes a world of difference
‘Our relationships with others become the most incredible tools to see what needs addressing in the starting place of every-thing, and that is in our relationship with our self’ – This brings so much understanding and love for others knowing that what they bring offers healing for ourselves. Having an honest relationship with ourselves changes not only our life but the lives of many around us.
I love your basic math on life, something, if learned in school, we all would benefit from.
“When we choose to disconnect from ourselves we lose the ability to know how we are feeling because we are ‘not there’ to feel what we are feeling.” so well said Alexis, could disconnecting from ourselves over and over again lead to the start of dementia?
Amazing blog Alexis, I could relate to so much of what you shared, the disconnection in relationship to self, shutting off to others and being in constant judgement of myself and others. But it was only through beginning to look at my relationship with myself that I was able to truly let go of judgements that I had with others and of course also myself.
“If I want to change any-thing that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first. Others can only get as close to me as I get to myself. If I want to be loved for who I naturally am, then it is my responsibility to love myself in full first.” This is so true for if we are not in truth with ourselves it is not possible to be in truth with others.
First thing I need to do is to be open in my heart and feel when and why I disconnected so that the lost feeling I had as a child can be nominated. Then I can backtrack and heal the issues that surrounded my emotions that caused my separation. Emotions played havoc with me and I would hide most of my anger and never show it because if I “pushed my pet hamster under water in anger” or any other violent act, I felt I would run totally off the rails and probable be able to kill another or possibly commit suicide. To understand this you would have to appreciate my size and strength, so I always kept my anger under-wraps or internalised it by biting my lip.
My understanding is that emotions are one of the most powerful addictions of all. Also when our emotions become who we are, we can become so lost and disconnected. Slowly I have worked on the issue around my anger and can now feel that my anger and a truck-load of other emotions are something, which are no longer any part of my life.
The hamster is a great example, as we approach Christmas its clear to see how much investment is held in the promise of shiny gifts, the promise of a present that is going to make it all alright – Like you Alexis, I am blessed to have met Serge Benhayon who has shown me that “our relationship with ourselves is the start of all things” – our greatest gift.
To have met Serge Benhayon is the greatest blessing I have ever had.
Alexis, your opening paragraph alone reveals so much with honesty about how many of us choose to perceive the world – it is like we feel something is owed to us, and that it should be delivered to us on a silver platter without us needing to do any work to get what we want. It shows us how isolated we in effect are, how we have isolated ourselves and barricaded out the rest of the world. We do this out of hurt, and out of protection. But when we do this we also stop ourselves from connecting to the deepest love that lies within. And this is what you have shared so beautifully in your blog, revealing that no matter how hard we try to get the love and recognition from the outside world, none of it can be embraced until we can first embrace the relationship we have with ourselves, and allow the love from within us to hold us first and foremost. Then from here we get to feel that in fact we do not need recognition, that we are fulfilled as we are and there is only more love to share all around. I can say that I am still in the process of learning this, so this has been a wonderful reminder for me to read this blog and to write this comment. Forever about deepening or learning, and hence deepening into the love that we come from.
‘Our Relationship with Ourselves is the Start of All Things’ – These powerful headlines says it all. How odd that this is not what most of us are taught at our homes and/or at school.
“Looking back, I recognise that I was in anguish. I had chosen to disconnect from myself to such an extent that I had literally broken adrift from any kind of footing that I had.” When we are able to see this it gives more understanding as to why we do things that sometimes don’t make sense, as we grapple with life to find what we know to be true. I know in my childhood I struggled to find who I was when in truth all I had to do was stay with me and not disconnect from my inner knowing.
This is so beautiful and true and brings a real feeling and understanding of warmth love and knowing “When we have each returned to our true relationship with ourselves, one that contains love and nothing else, then so too will our world be a reflection of that love.
I do love that the picture that accompanies this article is a flower, I feel that nature is constantly showing the way to live our lives with no push or drive, perfection, but with the ease and complete relationship with everything in harmony. When we have a relationship with ourselves we are back to the relationship with everything and then we can begin again to be at one with nature and divinity, instead of being a force against it.
This statement ‘judgment comes from lack of understanding’ rings true and is something which is lacking in our daily lives. Not only do we judge others severely but we cannot accept the actions of others, and as horrific as some of the actions are we will always struggle if we do not read the energy that started the conflict in the first place. Understanding can be brought to every situation.
Hello Alexis and how true is this, “As far as my relationship with myself went I don’t think that I consciously knew such a thing existed and anyway, I thought that I was fine as I was.” I remember thinking I am just me and I had no sense that I should have any deeper relationship then that. I just thought how I was was how things were, there was no awareness beyond that. Relationships were something you had with other things and people and there was no thought of anything else. I remember looking for the perfect relationship, after all the idea was to get married. You have some fun and date of few women and then you pick one after trying a few. How impersonal is this and it became an exercise rather than a living relationship, it’s like I was taught to settle for the best I could get. Since Universal Medicine I have realised and as you are saying Alexis that relationships start with me, it makes so so much more sense. How I take care of myself is then taken out to everyone else. The relationships around me can reflect how I am back to me but they are there for me to grow and expand but not for me to settle in. I was lost in the world outside not for one moment thinking that if I took care of myself, a deep care then this would support everything. Thanks to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine otherwise I would be still chasing love, like a hamster on a wheel.
I love this clarity of explanation …”When we choose to disconnect from ourselves we lose the ability to know how we are feeling because we are ‘not there’ to feel what we are feeling…”
Letting go of self-judgement has been difficult to say the least. I find that being loving to the best of my ability has started me on the path of consistency and away from any judgement.
Thank you Alex is for sharing such a deep and honest experience. Your journey is inspiring.
I had a meal with a dear friend the other night and she shared that she always felt that confidence came from how others perceived her. It is interesting to note how do we as a society sell confidence to the consumer? This blog is a powerful starting point to rediscover that all greatness comes from within.
Like you Alexis I had no awareness of the struggle and complication I was in in my life until I was no longer in it. I was miserable but pretending not to be, that all was AOK. There are times I still choose struggle and complication but with the awareness has come the means to notice sooner and ‘nip it in the bud’. Who knew back then that all it would take was stopping and reconnecting to and building a relationship with oneself first. What is so beautiful is seeing the proof of this in so many people I know who were in the same position as we were.
Knowing this does offer us the ability to understand others behaviours that may not be supportive or are closed off. I know I was unaware consciously of the impacts I used to have on others until I started to reconnect more with myself and gentleness.
“What makes our disconnection from ourselves even more harmful is the fact that everything, as in every-thing that exists outside of us, is set in motion first by our relationship with ourselves.” this is such a profound aspect of life and one that if embraced has the potential to change everything that we think life is about.
And one that is an open invitation for us to see exactly what our relationship is like through the absolute reflection of everything around us.
Johanna your words ‘absolute reflection of everything around us’ sum it up beautifully and what is reflected back to us, is as absolute as the sun bouncing off a mirror.
Wow this is a great blog, I loved reading it and feeling how much you have really understood what happened to you in your life. I particularly like this “Others can only get as close to me as I get to myself. If I want to be loved for who I naturally am, then it is my responsibility to love myself in full first. ” so so so true
Alexis I’ve always been one who would knowingly hurt myself to avoid being hurt by others, yet in that self sabotage of a relationship with myself I then bought that to every relationship I have had. What a great change to shift to a relationship where I live the love of god I know regardless of anything else. that to me is the start of a true relationship with myself. Thanks for sharing and allowing me to reflect on this.
’When we choose to disconnect from ourselves we lose the ability to know how we are feeling because we are ‘not there’ to feel what we are feeling’ – Very well said – how could we possibly feel what is going on, in and around ourselves, if we are not present in our own body? It is interesting how this important fact seems to be dismissed in our society, in fact, we seem to be working hard at adding more distractions than we already have.
Great point: “If you’re not at home, then how can you possibly know who’s walking through the front door?” In disconnection to ourselves we are but a plaything of anything and everything that comes our way and there is certainly no energetic discernment. In fact, we render ourselves powerless.
This is a brilliant saying and so truly revealing of how can we actually be aware of anything if we are not choosing to be in our own body in the first place. Being in our body is in fact such a simple thing – although what is difficult is stripping away the complexity and busyness that the world brings us up in.
Alexis, this is really interesting, ‘If I want to stop judging those around me then I must stop judging myself. Life is maths, nothing can exist outside of us that doesn’t already exist on the inside’, I love how you explain this so clearly, I have noticed that I am feeling connected with myself, feeling lovely and sweet then this is reflected in who I meet and how our interactions are.
A very timely read for me Alexis, how we are treated by others reflects how we treat ourselves.
Absolutely spot on Joe, it is only possible for another to abuse us, if we are already abusing ourselves and therefore if we are deeply honouring of ourselves then we shall be deeply honoured by others. Beautiful isn’t it.
I thought I was fine as I was too, until I started to clock my lack of self worth, being in constant nervous tension and not accepting frequent colds and being run down as the norm. I recognise these words in myself…”I had chosen to disconnect from myself to such an extent that I had literally broken adrift from any kind of footing that I had.” By re-establishing a relationship with myself all this has begun to change and my life is transforming.
We really are the key to how we and others will be within relationships. If we are coming from our own truth that we are absolutely divine through and through, love cannot help but be the end result. And even if the love is not accepted, the love is still holding everyone within it, as that’s what love does in its absolute simplicity and power.
So are you saying I can’t blame others, my family or ex-partners on the current development of my life?
Wow haven’t we got it it way off?
We are not brought up to put ourselves before others when it comes to taking care, and if we do choose to do this it is often deemed as selfish behaviour. So to have a relationship with oursleves is pretty much unheard of. It was certainly something that I was not familiar with before I met Serge Benhayon. But if we are not willing to at least start exploring this as a possibility, any other relationship that we have will not be based on truth, but merely an ideal or belief of what we think a relationship should be.
It is interesting and crazy how we as a society have labeled self care and putting ourself first as selfish. When we actually develop a level of self care, consideration, love etc with ourselves then that is the level of the quality we share with others. It is impossible to share less than we have truly developed within ourselves. So in-fact self care makes for truer relationships all round.
Very true – judgement arises out of a refusal to want to understand what is truly presented before us. Judgement arises because our perception of the world and ability to see things as they truly are is blinded by our wants and desires and for the world to reflect that which we think we need in order to feel complete.
‘if I want to change any-thing that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first.’ Ah Alexis, if I had only known this when I was young, I would have lived my life differently. Now that I do know it again, I sense that the seed of knowing was always there, but I had convinced myself that I couldn’t possibly be that wise and looked outside for guidance. A great way to avoid responsibility to be all that I am and thus fully contribute to the well being of humanity.
A powerful and great exposure of the quality of energy that judgement brings with it – whatever we don’t want to see about ourselves, is so much easier to project onto another, so as not to feel the pain of separation from our true self. What a beautiful healing Alexis, to have a deeper level of awareness of that that occur when being more aware of self-judgenment indicating that this is a key to that which we do not want to know hidden within us.
“It is because of this increased understanding that the judgement that I have towards myself has decreased: however the judgement that I still have towards others indicates that there is a lot more self-judgment yet to be uncovered”.
If we develop our relationship with ourselves then we have so much to offer the world from that . If we don’t, then you have to ask the question of what are we offering?
Great question Simon and I would venture to say that as we are in truth, love, then by connecting with ourselves first we get to offer love to another and therefore without connecting to ourselves first, it stands to reason to say that, whatever it is that we offer another, by default, is loveless. This is the stone cold truth.
I know my relationships with others are directly impacted by my relationship within myself. If I feel good and at ease on the inside i can take that everywhere I go to be with others from a space of not needing them to be certain way in order for me to feel good within myself.
It’s true – we can berate others for not loving us, demanding and expecting them to love us, family, friends, work colleagues, partners, acquaintances, even complete so called strangers – why do they not love me, why do they not do this, why don’t they show me that, when all along we are demanding, imposing and expecting them to love us when we are unwilling to deeply love ourselves.
In this there is no rom for love, for we are unable to see or choosing not to see, step back and understand what’s going on for them, maybe they are stressed out, not coping with work, maybe they are sad, have family stuff going on, maybe they are unwilling or don’t love themselves. If we did this then it would bring up the fact that the world is not about us, and make us realise how much we indulge in our stuff. We would feel the responsibility we have, in taking responsibility for deeply loving ourselves, not looking to others to love us, and so called give us what we are unwilling to give ourselves, no one can give us love, we are the only ones who can create a body of pure love for ourselves. It is this love that works miracles, at times without us needing to do anything, it offers those we meet and know the greatest amount of support, people are inspired to love and take more care of themselves.
Great sharing Alexis! I agree with your comment “Every single thing that was in my relationship with myself was reflected back to me in my relationship with others. It was all there for me to see, if only I had chosen”.
‘As far as my relationship with myself went I don’t think that I consciously knew such a thing existed and anyway, I thought that I was fine as I was.’ – I can totally relate to this, I had no idea that there was such a thing as relationship with myself and the enormous importance of it until I came across Serge Benhayons profound teachings.
‘Flirting and hooking guys in was a constant game and one I played even if I wasn’t particularly interested in the guy’… I gave myself a wry smile when I read this one Alexis, as I realised that I had done this myself. Looking back I can see how I was just looking for love, but of course, I realise now, I was looking in all the wrong places and imposing on men, wanting attention from them and when I didn’t get it I felt rejected and empty. It’s all a big game isn’t it, when the reality is we cannot expect another to love us, we can only truly love ourselves, then, when we do, all the searching on the outside of us ceases and the relationship with ourselves truly begins.
The relationship with ourselves is one of the most natural things in being a human being, we are born to having it, just like we do not question ourselves that we breathe. Any agenda invested onto re-developing a relationship with ourselves takes the naturalness out of the equation. As everything is everything, if the world today is deeply lacking the nurturing of what is self-relationship, it is exposing to us that as a whole, we wandered very far from what is simply natural—that we are love. And thus, to bring back what is true relationship into the world, there is no other way but to begin with self-love.
It says a lot when we go through life frustrated, angry, depressed etc. and can still say we are ok, and life is supposed to be this way, the horror that we see in our own lives and in the world is just the way it is, without wanting to find out why and even question, ‘like really?’. Or when we know but do not want to be the one speaking out about it. Not wanting to know, not choosing to be aware of and not expressing what is true is a combination that leads to the greatest tragedy for humanity.
Plain and simple … Basic maths, no drama or therapy needed just a dose of honesty in seeing what life is presenting back and you get a clear reading on what you are putting out. Change the relationship with yourself to one based on self love and self care and the world will align. Amazing but basic maths.
This is true – whilst we hold judgement towards ourselves our interactions with and perceptions of others will be coloured through this ill. All that we see in another is a great blessing, reflecting constantly our own choices and forever offering learning, healing and the call to bring our all.
Opening up to the possibility of self-responsibility is the greatest gift I can give to myself and others. How about making this your Christmas gift? The most satisfying and fulfilling gift ever.
This is so true-“if it’s on the outside then it’s on the inside.” We cannot therefore blame anyone for anything, all we have to do is be honest and deal with what is being presented for us to look at.
I really appreciate your honesty Alexis and the clarity in which you can now see the choices you made growing up. Shutting down seemed to me to be the only way to go even though I only know it to be true now as I look back on my life. As I slowly start to reclaim who I truly am, many hurts and fears are coming up to be released. Thank you Alexis for bringing your experiences into print and encouraging others to get more honest in uncovering their own.
As you say, how we are with others is a reflection of how we are with ourselves. How much learning and growth do we deny when we accuse or blame others for our reactions.
I love the simplicity of how our relationship with ourselves is how we are with others and how they are with us.
As i am developing true relationships wiht those in my life, it reflects back to me. i am developing a true relationship with me and the most beautiful thing about this, is that i am developing a relationship without conditions, it is simply loving.
It was not always like this.
All of us are hurt from one thing or another – the way people have been with us, the way we have treated ourselves, the fact that we just miss a deep connection with people. And if we can start to welcome a deeper quality of relationship with ourselves, we can start to address our personal hurts. Of course people can tell you they are not hurt but this is probably because they have found a way to cope and not feel – ie eating, watching TV, checking out – but if we are honest with ourselves, developing a true relationship is very supportive for our bodies and can have a huge impact on us and others.
I love the first paragraph of this blog Alexis and have been inspired by what you have written throughout. There can be so many parts to our relationship with self to develop and explore that it does not make sense that we should ever ‘need’ another relationship to give us something.
“Women spend lifetimes talking to one another trying to fathom out what deep down they already know. ” Yes I know this one very well. Women’s magazines are full of it mostly and most seemingly intimate conversations between women are also about this. It goes from trying to find a better boyfriend to better clothes etc but to go to the level of ‘it is our relationship with ourselves’ would to me always feel like ‘so boring’. Yet this is not true, building a relationship with yourself is beautiful, it is amazing and it truly enriched my life. None of the other things ever did that before.
I agree Lieke, it wasn’t until I dropped all the superficial ‘self improvement’ stuff on the outside and truly began to look at my relationship with me, did things begin to change. It’s a bit like jumping out of a plane without a parachute at first, but after a while an inner strength and knowing returns and I realise I have the power within me to change my life and blaming others becomes a thing of the past.
If we disconnect with ourselves then we cannot be aware of what we are feeling as you demonstrate in this example Alexis, ‘What is fascinating now for me to feel is that although it was a very painful time of my life, I had very little awareness of the pain that I was in and the reason why I was unable to feel the pain that I was in, was because I had chosen to sever my connection to myself. ‘Great sharing in this post thank you.
Alexis, this completely makes sense, ‘if I want to change any-thing that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first. Others can only get as close to me as I get to myself. If I want to be loved for who I naturally am, then it is my responsibility to love myself in full first’, I have found what you are sharing here to be very true, the more I love and appreciate myself the more I love and appreciate others and the more honest and open I am with myself the more honest and open I am with others, like you say Alexis, it is basic maths. Thanks for explaining it so simply.
One of my patterns is to pretend that I don’t know what life is truly all about, and in the pretending I could live in comfort an indulgence and be like everyone else. But my body decided I needed a wake-up call which it delivered and turned my life upside down, which was exactly what I needed. During this shake-up I decided to put me first instead of always putting others first. This changed everything, as now I love giving to myself and taking care of myself thus I do not look to others to fulfil my needs. And my relationship with myself is deepening and evolving.
“Deep down every single one of us knows that it is our relationship with ourselves that sets every-thing else in motion, but the responsibility of that feels too big and so we pretend that we don’t know.” Alexis, you have hit the nail on the head here. We use any number of excuses to not take responsibility for building a relationship with ourselves, and will do our utmost to avioid it. But if we do start with the simple things like taking more care of ourselves and the way we do things, it is amazing how before long we realise that we have developed this relationship more deeply and the impact this can have on our lives is enormous.
“Deep down every single one of us knows that it is our relationship with ourselves that sets every-thing else in motion”. I agree Alexis we do truly know this, it is therefore incumbent on us to take full responsibility to continue to expand and develop this relationship with self; certainly a work in progress.
When it is all said and done, responsibility for the body and being we express from must be honoured nurtured and evolved to be in it’s fullness. This can only develop once we make the connection that we hold all the necessary ingredients to do so. I love this line Alexis…’if I want to change any-thing that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first.’ And it is all available to us, this love that we are made of!
Deeply honest Monica, awesome to read. This is why self-love and developing a deeper relationship with ourselves is a continuous journey because there is no perfection, which means there is not end point to this journey.
Powerful blog Alexis, it highlights how much we are responsible for everything in life and what is around us. It dismantles the possibility of blame and inspires us to take responsibility for everything we have created and how we are living. Our relationship with people is certainly a reflection of our relationship with ourselves. Absolutely brilliant reminder, thank you!
This still plays out for so many women and girls today ‘In my late teens and early twenties I relied on boyfriends for my sense of identity. I made sure that I was never without a boyfriend or at least someone that I was chasing because I felt that without a boyfriend I would not have known who I was. Flirting and hooking guys in was a constant game and one I played even if I wasn’t particularly interested in the guy.’ Where the importance is put on the relationship we have or could have with another when in truth the importance is first the relationship we have with ourselves ???? This is so true ‘if I want to change any-thing that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first. Others can only get as close to me as I get to myself.’
The relationship we have with ourselves is not only a reflection of our health and how we are with others, it is also the base we come back to when feeling challenged. The ability to maintain our quality, consistency, tenderness, power and Love in all situations depends on this connection.
Developing understanding sure has been a game changer for me in accepting others and letting go of judgements. That understanding must first of all start with myself because if I don’t take the space to get to know me – warts and all, I can not possibly know another. The more I get to know myself, then I begin to realise that the habits that we have that take us away from our essence, really are very similar. The human spirit has many tricks up its sleeve to keep us in our individuality, but really these tricks all come from the same hat so getting to know these tricks within myself I can then see this in others and bring a deeper level of understanding.
What you present here Alexis is Huge! Bigger than big. Ginormous. If what you share is true, which it absolutely is, then we cannot be at war with another without fighting such a war with ourselves. Many may find this difficult to digest, but the levels of anxiety, tension, illness, disease, self doubt, emotional behaviour and more prove that such a war is forever being fought with so many because natural harmony within ourselves would never produce such conditions to the extent they exist.
It’s so true, I have found that so many of my relationships with people which were troubled on the outside are now so much more content and joyous since I began to do the work on the inside of me, and stopped feeling powerless or needing to go into control to stop others affecting me. I am far less resistant to life and the world now. It is the way it is and more often than not, I need it to be any particular way, less and less.
It is true what you say Alexis, the disconnection is to such an extent that we do not even consider how we live as being abusive, never mind the abuse we accept from others.
Yes, Monica, there are more subtle levels of lovelessness in our behaviour that hurt the body, so I too feel inspired by the invitation to go deeper with myself, with even greater awareness of how I move and respond in life.
This is a great formula for living life, Alexis – “if it’s on the outside then it’s on the inside”, as it reminds us that there are no co-incidences only reflections of the choices we make from our hurts or from our love.
‘I relied on boyfriends for my sense of identity’It’s not just about owning the right things or wearing the right clothes, it is also about having the right boyfriend – and friends of course – whether it is to please others ideals and beliefs or our own. What is this really saying about us as a humanity? How we have caged ourselves in to an imprisonment and fool ourselves into thinking it’s all right. Liberation can only come when we wake up and start asking ourselves questions and are willing to look a bit deeper as to what is running us and make changes.
I have always been one of those people who likes to give to others but what quality have I been doing the ‘giving’ in if 1st I have not been fully loving and appreciating and effectively giving to myself? If I say I love another then surely I can only love them to the same depth and quality that I love myself and live with? That makes sense to me – yet so often we are fooled into thinking we can use words. I know for me I can say I love you and not really mean it and equally hear it from others but it can come with caution, hesitation or conditions. Love has none of these and simply is.
Understanding is definitely the key to giving no power to the word judgement. Understanding allows us to drop in to equalness with another where there is just appreciation that we are deepening our relationships.
There are so many gems of wisdom in your article Alexis, so I thought I would quote this one for starters… ‘Life is maths, nothing can exist outside of us that doesn’t already exist on the inside: we can’t conjure something up out of nothing, it’s just not possible.’ This is pure gold because it means that we have to take responsibility for what is going on for us on the inside, and stop blaming what is going on outside of us. A tough pill to swallow, but until we do so we will continue to blame ‘out there’ for our inner state of being and miss the reflection that life gives us, and instead if we choose to take heed, great healing can take place, and boy oh boy does the world, and everyone in it need healing right now.
A beautiful blog thank you Alexis. What you have expressed here is so true;
“If we have a dysfunctional relationship with ourselves, then this will result in dysfunctional relationships with everything and everyone else.”
It is indeed then our responsibility to have a loving truthful relationship with ourselves which will flow on to loving truthful relationships with others. What a joy!
I love this Gill – “As our understanding grows, our five senses work in unison and build our sixth sense, constantly improving our clarity for our own development and building our responsibility.” How awesome is this knowing, and what potential lies within this, within us to truly live this in everyday moments.
Just re-reading your blog again I really loved your concluding sentence- “When we have each returned to our true relationship with ourselves, one that contains love and nothing else, then so too will our world be a reflection of that love.” Let this be sooner rather than later …
It just makes so much sense to me now, that my relationship with myself is the most important one if I am to relate and interact with others from a place of love and truth. Not so some 8 years or so ago, before I was introduced to Serge Benhayon and his presentations and workshops, then I had no idea I needed to have a relationship with myself first and was supposedly happy focusing on it being about other people sorting out their stuff so that I could feel okay.
“As far as my relationship with myself went I don’t think that I consciously knew such a thing existed and anyway, I thought that I was fine as I was”
I was the same as this once upon a time, the stubbornness was riff and all the signs that my body was giving me were dismissed, I was unable or unwilling to see that things were not working. This blog is a great testament to how we can approach things in a new light and what amazing changes can be born from this.
Alexis you highlight a very clear and distinct choice that we make throughout our lives over and over again – to choose to avoid and ignore our inner voice and the depth of feeling we can connect with that brings us to truth, or to choose that connection and the harmony and unity it offers. You clearly show how divergent those two roads are.
Realising that there is such a thing as relating to ourselves then allows us to choose our relationship. We can then, over time, choose a loving, caring relationship which is a lot more fun.
If we love ourselves it is easy to see the beauty in others and to love them deeply and understand where they are at.
‘I have come to feel that judgment comes from lack of understanding: once we understand why a person is behaving the way that they do, it becomes impossible to judge them.’ This is my experience too Alexis. And recently I realised that though I was open to understanding others, I have not afforded myself true understanding at times. By doing so, I have so much more love of myself now, and therefore more love of others.
The more gentle and loving I am with myself the more I am with others, it is simple but powerful energetic formula.
So true, I find that also when I am truly gentle with myself my whole interaction, my voice and everything becomes much more loving – felt by myself, by others – and yes a winning formula for self love and opening this love to others too.
‘I have come to feel that judgment comes from lack of understanding: once we understand why a person is behaving the way that they do, it becomes impossible to judge them’. Powerful to have this stated again Alexis and so simply.
So as we are inside ourselves, so we will be the outer world. The world we live in is created by all people living in it. That said, the world will only change if we all change individually by returning back to who we truly are and to build that intimate relationship with ourselves first. Only from there we will be impulsed to live in another way, a way of living that is in respect of and in harmony with anybody and everything on this earth and even beyond and will eventually restore brotherhood among men and bring heaven down to earth.
Judgement against ourselves for past choices is a very toxic energy that plays havoc within and remains with us in our outward expression and interaction with others. It is wise to let ourselves be, to accept our choices and to love ourselves to the bone and it is the lived Love and acceptance that we bring to another.
If we love ourselves than we have trillions more love for others!
You have expressed the essence well Harrison: when we love ourselves, it infuses everything we do and is felt by those around us.
Very well said and clearly explained Alexis, that our relationship with self sets the foundation for everything that happens to us. It is always my responsibility when ever I feel not myself and not others or a situation to blame. Sometimes this truth may be challenging to feel especially when I have chosen to disconnect from myself but the more I live in connection to myself the easier it is to call out those moments when I feel in separation.
Another golden statement amongst so many truths in your blog Alexis…’If I want to be loved for who I naturally am, then it is my responsibility to love myself in full first…”
Yep fully agree – a truly golden gem indeed and one to be aware of every moment in our lives…
When we return to the relationship with ourselves we can begin to rebuild our lives, our relationships with others and onward it expands. The power of change that is possible on a grand scale, when we start with us is our true way forward.
Steve, not only is ‘The world we live in affected by our choices’ but the world we live in is actually the product of all of our collective choices.
And this takes collective responsibility to a whole new level.
Hear hear – truth spoken.
The decision to disconnect from ourselves and everything that we are is the most important one. From that point on, we go adrift in life. Yet, we do not register it. As a result, we do not know that there is something to return to.
Judgment colours our world! As you have said, Alexis, ‘judgement comes from a lack of understanding’. The world we live in is affected by our choices.
This sharing …”disconnect from myself to such an extent that I had literally broken adrift from any kind of footing that I had…” brings the image of being lost out at sea when we have disconnected from ourselves, yet, once we stop, and reconnect with our body and feel the presence and exquisiteness of our soul, its like we have stepped foot on dry land… and come home.
So beautifully true Alexis the changes we seek from the world are the direct signpost to the choices are soul is offering us to make for ourselves. There is no judgment or blame in the soul – but perhaps just a moment of humbleness to feel while our spirit lets go and we allow our own soul connection.
Very well said, there is no such thing as only the outside, as what is lived is actually reflected to us in every way, all we can do is to not see it… Thank you Alexis for showing honesty and realise your story and how you can change your every day life – by choice. Beautiful.
Judgement can be the slightest, minuscule thread of non-acceptance of choices, how we perceive the past, the present, the future and is not always the overt, blatant cursing of ourselves or others. Judgement can be the finest sandpaper or the coarsest with the same abrasive effect, distancing ourselves from others in our disconnection from our true breath and holding ourselves prisoner to an expectation, image or ideal that we will never measure up to.
How important it is to free ourselves from such prison of our making and accept ourselves in full, our past choices and each and every other human being who equally makes theirs.
Reading this so highlights the absolute importance of building a relationship with ourselves and living and deepening with this continuosly. It is beautiful and very honest and provides a great reflection for us all. “Every single thing that was in my relationship with myself was reflected back to me in my relationships with others. It was all there for me to see, if only I had chosen to see it.” A new marker and foundation of loving ourselves so much needed in the world today.
There is so much diversity in our world, it is key to understand another and their life first, if we all brought far more understanding to our lives then judgement would vastly reduce, which brings it back to acceptance and appreciation.
As uncomfortable or challenging as it may seem to admit that all our woes came down to our relationship with ourself I find it is beautiful and freeing to come back to such a simplicity because in this I then know everything I am reflected is an invitation to keep developing the one thing that can support me – my relationship with myself 🙂
Isn’t it so apparent that we are not prepared for life in terms of our own relationship with self through our current way of being brought up by our parents and schooling. It’s amazing that there are so many people who will be offering children a true understanding of who they are and how to be with themselves which other children can then feel and observe.
In society we learn if we want to change something we have to go out there and get it done, yet I have found this approach always felt quite unnatural and with a push to me. In the end it is always the coming closer to myself and being more loving, understanding and caring that changes how I feel within myself and thus the world – this is when I naturally feel like making adjustments in my life without that push.
That feeling of being ” lost at sea with no idea where land was,” is something I can very much relate to. Attending Universal Medicine workshops definitely guided me back to the coast and onto dry land again, allowing a true sense of myself to unfold and a reclaiming of knowing who I am. This is a priceless gift and one I packaged for myself with support from The Way of The Livingness.
The relationship we have with ourselves has a lot to do with the lens we look out with on the world and the things that go on. Whether we react or observe, that always is a choice that we take, and something that we can also learn and discover more about ourselves. You are quite correct… “Our Relationship with Ourselves is the start of All Things..”!
“If we have a dysfunctional relationship with ourselves, then this will result in dysfunctional relationships with everything and everyone else” – yes, and the problem i faced to begin with, and sadly similar to many others too, is that i didn’t or had a hard time in admitting the dysfunction …. because there wasn’t anything ‘wrong’ with me externally , mentally or physically. Dysfunction is not just about the act itself and that being at odds to make it a dysfunction e.g. working long extended hours to exhaust/or a ‘workaholic’, but more about the quality of that act, be that working, exercising, eating, sleeping, dating, doing leisure activities etc. I lived life and ‘did well’, though all without paying attention to the quality i did them in, and crucially its impact on my body – which today, has been what’s founded the quality of the relationship I have with myself, and all others too. Self-relationship and its quality comes from the body, and our [respectful] connection towards it.
What’s interesting Zofia is that my extremely dysfunctional lifestyle was heralded by those around me as enviable. My obsessive exercising, mis-matched eating and hard partying were all seen as desirable by others, as well as by me. It took me a while to see the truth of how I was living but with the support of Universal Medicine I was able to see that nearly everything I did was an attempt to avoid feeling the gross feelings of discomfort that sat in my body. Now that I have dealt with those feelings my desire to leave my body has gone and there is actually no better place I’d rather be than with myself.
‘other people’ that made me angry’ – I love how we are taught that it is people and things that make us angry, but the reality is, this is the secondary justification for our anger. underneath it all is usually sadness and that sadness is usually about how disconnected we have become from ourselves and others.
‘If we have a dysfunctional relationship with ourselves, then this will result in dysfunctional relationships with everything and everyone else. It’s basic maths, there can be no more or no less.’ I like the simplicity of how you explain this Alexis. The reference to anything to do with maths and/or science is right up my street and so always makes me smile.
“I was lost at sea with no idea where land was. What is fascinating now for me to feel is that although it was a very painful time of my life, I had very little awareness of the pain that I was in and the reason why I was unable to feel the pain that I was in, was because I had chosen to sever my connection to myself.”. In retrospect this is so familiar, I just assumed everything was normal and was totally unconscious of the effect I was having on people in my teens and twenties, and not until I met Universal Medicine in my sixties was the whole impact of how I had lived my life revealed to me. Nine years later I am still unearthing the pain of having separated from myself in the way you describe Alexis, but the glorious thing is I am also feeling the joy of finding myself at long last. This is the journey of the return to ourselves, our original source, where we find we are love after all.
“This happened a lot and yet still I had no conscious awareness that I wasn’t ok.”
So key what you are sharing here Alexis – the measure of wellbeing that we hold as our normal can be astonishingly askew when we reflect from the settlement of greater connection within ourselves.
If only we brought such understanding to aggressive or violent behaviours across the board Alexis. That in order to behave so, there has been a fundamental disconnection from the self.
And then, why have we been so disconnected? From your candid words here, I can’t but sense a girl and woman who acutely felt the rampant disconnection all around her, and had simply lost herself in wanting others to fill a void – when truly, she always knew her own ‘void’, i.e. the anguish of being so acutely sensitive and the deep frustration of wanting the world to be another way, that being a way based upon love.
How truly powerful then, to reconnect to one’s relationship with self and the love within – with the knowing that it is this that can truly shift the greater balance…
I wasn’t particularly livid but I felt I had a red hot flame inside that just felt completely wrong and I kept trying to find relief from it.
I’ve noticed that things work out differently for me on days when I love and feel good about myself to the days when I feel down on myself.
So many expectations we place on love and what it should look like – to the point where when true love comes along we no longer recognise the quality of its presence.
I observe that my hurts are feeding the judgement about others. To look at my hurts and see them as a source to evolve is supporting me to observe my reactions and to feel that in the first place I have left myself and the quality of movement.
What I find fascinating about your comment Samantha is that you say “I went so hard in my body, as a child, due to ‘thinking’ I was hurt”, most of us would swear blind that our hurts are real but could it be possible that the whole notion of hurts is fabricated to stall us even longer from re-connecting back to the truth of who we are?
This is so true that disconnection leaves us wide open for abuse from ourselves and others and we accept this as being normal. Being able to break this cycle and keep coming back to ourselves can be tricky at times because we don’t want to feel what we have allowed to be our normal and the amount of hurt that this brings us. We have to be super loving and tender with ourselves and allowing the understanding to support us to heal what we have created.
Bryony you are so right when you say ‘if we beat ourselves up for our choices and what we have allowed or created, we just add more of the same”, basically any one thing is either love or it’s not and so ‘beating ourselves up’ is not love and therefore borne of exactly the same energy as whatever it is that we are beating ourselves up for.
“…however the judgement that I still have towards others indicates that there is a lot more self-judgment yet to be uncovered” — ahh Alexis, the moisture and salve of understanding, and so the lipstick applied must then be the acceptance and letting go… and in it, the glory of its celebration : )
I went so hard in my body, as a child, due to thinking I was hurt, I went into protection. I can feel I did this because I continued this behaviour into adult life. I know I was hard because it is leaving and I no longer hold myself in the protection I once did. It is never to late to make new choices. My body is healing.
It is fascinating when we observe how we are with others is a reflection of how we are with ourselves. Also I absolutely agree Alexis, ‘Our Relationship with Ourselves is the Start of All Things’ it is amazing to realise this and I find this hugely empowering. I was so used to looking for answers outside, from other people which left me feeling exhausted and constantly doubting who I am. Learning to develop a loving relationship with myself is a starting point to building a loving relationship with others and this supports me to trust what I know and feel.
Like many I spent most of my life looking for love only to find that it is and always was inside me. You explain this process most eloquently Alexis
We are all human, and every one of us is different but, we all came into this life with the same clean slate. The world and at some point we chose to step away from our-self. No matter how far we travel away from us there is a road back. God has only love within and only sees it in others. We have left the reservation many times and can sometimes trip into old patterns of what is not love but can feel the change and come back to ourselves. We can all be the apples that don’t fall from the tree being the sons and daughters of God.
Steve I feel that if we came into each life with a clean slate then we would be even more irresponsible than we are. It makes sense that we actually bring all of our dirty laundry, as well as our clean and ironed smalls with us from one lifetime to the next.
I was recently talking to someone about how they wanted to accept life and the way situations and people are more, and thinking of this blog, I shared with them the fact it might be possible they need to learn how to accept themselves more, and from here it will naturally cause greater acceptance of life.
Ah Rebecca that’s music to my ears!
Hello Alexis and even the title of this blog has enough in it for us all, “Our Relationship with Ourselves is the Start of All Things”. You could walk away with that alone and ponder on many things in your life. There are many things that set us up in life but without the continued awareness around ‘our’ relationship then you are at the mercy of whatever is in front of you. Having a solid home base, a sense of how you feel just with yourself then when you approach or are approached by anything you have a gauge to see where it comes from and what your next step will be. Don’t or refuse to build a relationship with yourself and we are always guessing and from experience it’s not a great way to live.
When I was reading this I was just struck once again about how the universe has this perfect design, so that any given situation gives the precise message or lesson to each and every one of us… even if its a different lesson for each person involved in the same circumstance. Its unimaginable how it does that, but absolutely true in every sense.
Simon I am very occasionally able to glimpse a slither of the divine design that is behind all things and when I do it is so gigantically, unfathomably, flashingly, incomprehensible that my head feels like it momentarily spirals off my neck before quickly setting itself securely back in place.
It is so often the way, that we expect some form of love, attention from our pets and loved ones and are so disappointed and blaming when it does not appear. It makes me reflect how often I have let myself down not supporting and loving myself and yet I expect others to be there for me. The more I cultivate the intimacy and love within, the more it is reflected back to me from others without any expectation.
This is such an insightful blog, and there is much to re-visit. I have been recently uncovering a lot of the anger that I have operated with for a good portion of my life. But what has been most revealing to me is how much of that anger has its roots in self judgment. With judging myself comes a hardness which means that I cannot feel me or other people, and thus blame is able to come in without feeling just how hurtful it is. It all comes back to appreciating myself and letting go of the picture of perfection that I have held of what I think I’m supposed to be.
Naren the crazy thing about the pictures that we all have about who we and others are meant to be, is that they are based on pictures, that have been based on pictures, which have been based on pictures, they are total fabrications of our imaginations.
“….there is a lot more self-judgment yet to be uncovered.” How true this is for all of us Alexis (well, almost all). It is at the core of holding an identity separate to each other, without which our physical existence would crumble and this scares us so much in our attachment to it.
Deborah, what you have shared is huge ‘Loving ourselves as a whole, without judgement, images and expectations to live up to is certainly key to understanding others and accepting and allowing each of us to be where we are at in any moment’, I have spent an exorbitant amount of my life wishing and wanting others to behave differently. This want has resulted in an unimaginable amount of tension in both myself and others and in truth I am not free of it yet, however I can now taste the freedom that comes from being free of the stranglehold of wanting myself and others to be anywhere other than where they are. Surrendering to ‘what is’ is such a soothing balm.
“Again basic maths – if it’s on the outside then it’s on the inside.” I feel you have brought into the open what we inherently all know, and thanks to this beautiful blog, what we can no longer avoid! Awesome.
This is absolute gold when it comes to relationship advice. If we have issues with others and with life it is always on the inside first.
agreed Joshua and how many thousands of lifetimes have we collectively wasted talking about the downfall of others!
In life we have been hoodwinked to think its about having a relationship with everything besides ourselves…. How uncommon is it to be asked…What is the relationship like with yourself?… As this relationship really is the common denominator of everything we do and interact in life with.
“Deep down every single one of us knows that it is our relationship with ourselves that sets every-thing else in motion, but the responsibility of that feels too big and so we pretend that we don’t know.” boy oh boy do I know this one, I would have to say its one of the things I fight the most, deepening my relationship with myself, yet I equally know its the most important thing in the world and where everything starts.
I have spent most of my life dancing on the edge of a razor, and this was my relationship with myself. Going through life making and taking calculated risks to the detriment of myself and body was my way of life. My only thoughts of why I had not expired the vessel I was inhabiting was either dumb luck, or there was something I needed to do that just was not the right time yet. I am now a bit long in the tooth but is never too late to find one’s self and our real purpose for being here and it starts with the relationship we have with our self and the reflection and ripples it creates on the pond we live in.
Loving ourselves as a whole, without judgement, images and expectations to live up to is certainly key to understanding others and accepting and allowing each of us to be where we are at in any moment.
Understanding the other in full means there is no judgment, just an awareness of their choices, hence, in order to be able to react, we choose not to have the understanding. That is very common.
Christoph I agree but would go further. I would say that choosing to have no understanding is actually the fabric of our society.
This is beautiful Alexis and very profound allowing the natural joy we have within us to be seen and nurtured for what is by our very own connection to this by building ourselves through our learning and relationships with others and the love and expansion within this process of evolution.
I chose to disconnect from a very young age as well, I had one look at my mother and could see how shut down she was and decided that I was not going to cope, so shut down and became loud and boisterous, which is the opposite to my delicate and quiet nature.
Recently I invited a group of women to reflect on their relationship with themselves and they looked stunned! It is mostly a foreign concept There is much work to be done to support us all to connect with the amazingness we are!
This offers a whole new perspective on anger and frustration and where it stems from. Is is possible that we all know what we are missing – a connection with ourselves. I know that as I build this more and more, I am more at ease with myself and others – I don’t hide away from life but rather face it, knowing my relationship with myself needs to be a stable and supportive foundation.
‘But because we have chosen to pretend that we don’t know how life works…’. oh yes I know this one well and has recently come up for me to clear. I have pretended for such a long time that I could not feel or read people and situations, and I asked myself; what was my relief from choosing this? The answer was, I could then ‘fit in’ with everyone around me, and maybe something a little deeper is that, people including family did not deserve my love, so I held it back and hurt myself and all others in the process – a big ouch!
This self-judgement is huge and has weighed me down for a long, long time…… which meant of course that I judged others harshly too. However, through the simple tools of consistent self-care and self-nurturing over several years now, I am able to be much more tender and gentle with myself. And I have observed the shift in me in that I am able to bring more understanding to others as the old habit of judging drops away.
“Every single thing that was in my relationship with myself was reflected back to me in my relationships with others.” I am beginning to see and really appreciate what is on offer to us through our reflections of all relationships in our lives. It offers a greater understanding of our own inner workings and potential for us to ask ourselves questions on what may be triggering our hurts or issues and allowing us the space to move through old patterns and beliefs. Our relationship with ourselves is a grand relationship to appreciate for life and one that is forever developing and expanding as we move through and evolve along the way . Thank you Alexis.
“Every single thing that was in my relationship with myself was reflected back to me in my relationships with others”
If we aproach relationships with this knowing and awareness, we can firstly learn a lot about ourselves and secondly never point a finger to our next one as he / she is only reflecting to us what either we like or dislike.
‘I begin to feel like me, then I know that the choices I am making are true, and it is the only way to live.’ – Isn´t it amazing how simple it is? Making choices that confirm who you are and you feel like being you – a simple formula for life.
As long as we don´t even have a sense of our true self due to the layers of identification we have taken on and that makes up our socialized identity, personality and psyche we cannot even have a relationship with our SELF. Knowing SELF for sure is the beginning and the key for everything thereafter as already written on the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.
Although I am much less judgemental on myself these days I noticed recently how it had crept in during an incident with my daughter. I ended up feeling quite hard on myself. To have the understanding that I am not perfect, I am a student of myself and of life and to accept where I am at has been super supportive to me and my wellbeing. I realise that when ever I indulge in any emotion such as being judgemental I am avoiding the grandness of who I am.
I know plenty of us here have been saying this, but i’ll say it again, your line Alexis is just brilliant: “If you’re not at home, then how can you possibly know who’s walking through the front door?” Being with yourself and ‘at home’ metaphorically speaking in this case….is the hearth of any home’s place; that home and that hearth is ourselves, and where our presence warms up a home of the bricks and mortar kind too : )
I am struck with how simple my relationship with my self can be! I don’t have to purchase anything, go anywhere, prepare anything or go out of my way; I just need to connect and be present with myself and this relationship is available 24/7. I know it’s quality, I am in charge of it all and have a choice about whether to pursue my relationship with myself, or not. What a precious opportunity, not to be missed!
For many years I lived in an ’empty house’, thinking I was protecting myself, but in truth having no idea how to have a relationship with myself. I believed putting myself first was selfish – how wrong I was. If we don’t love ourselves first, how can we truly love another?
Beautiful article and a great reminder that life is reflecting our energetic state of being. Thank you.
This is really important I feel, understanding ourselves and others, ‘ that judgment comes from lack of understanding: once we understand why a person is behaving the way that they do, it becomes impossible to judge them.’ Absolutely, bring in more understanding.
Great and powerful testimony Alexis – and there is a great science here as well that everything that exists outside of ourselves in our lives is a reflection of what is going on inside of us. It gives us a hint that the answers to our woes are closer than we might think.
A statement worthy of framing… “if I want to change any-thing that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first…”
Great blog Alexis if we understood how harming judgment is to ourselves and others we would definitely work on becoming nonjudgmental. I have found too that it is our connection within ourselves that starts to dissolve the feeling of judgment we feel both outwardly and inwardly, and by appreciating that I too have judged others, it is easier when you feel another’s judgment directed at you.
Yes I agree Sally, it’s impossible to feel any judgement towards another for being judgemental when we realise that we too have judged others. I am also noticing that I cannot be judgemental with another when I too used to do and behave in the same way. Having this awareness is helping me to stay with myself and not react.
“What makes our disconnection from ourselves even more harmful is the fact that everything, as in every-thing that exists outside of us, is set in motion first by our relationship with ourselves”.
Powerful words indeed Alexis, with a ‘colossal’ harmful impact on ourselves and others when we choose to disconnect.
On the other hand colossal healing for all when we choose to connect.
‘If you’re not at home, then how can you possibly know who’s walking through the front door?’ When we live our lives checked out we leave ourselves open for any energies to enter and from there our thoughts are not our own. Once we align to an energy, that energy governs our every thought, even making us think we are connected. Being connected is a feeling not a thought, and it is only a few gentle breaths away.
I kept getting an image of one giant size mirror…. everything in life is reflecting back to us, and we get to choose whether we react to what is in front of us, or respond and bring a deeper understanding and acceptance of ourselves and therefore others.
I can absolutely relate to this Victoria. Everything is then one huge opportunity to bring out the best in us.
I love the honesty with which you write Alexis
Thanks Sara, I love the feeling of freedom that being honest brings, the few times that I’m still tempted to not be honest now feel so suffocating that I can’t help but fess up! And I know that we all have the same two energies running through us, which means that although others may not have identical thoughts and feelings to me, we all basically have variations on the same themes.
I love how our understanding of, and our relationship with ourselves can be deepened through the reflection of others. It is phenomenally fascinating to observe how the shifts we make in ourselves can change the quality of what we attract in our lives and relationships in a way that ‘no-thing’ else can.
I’m learning that having a connection and relationship with myself is the most important thing I can develop as then all other areas of my life start to develop too which then affects how I live as well as everybody else’s that I interact and relate to.
I get this, thank you, Alexis. The quality of my relationship with me is the foundation for everything that happens in my life – this is a piece of golden wisdom that inspires responsibility in me.
Before we really know what we are feeling, ie. understand in full we need to know how it feels to be oneself or how a certain quality feels consistently. It needs an absolute marker from where we can relate towards everything else we feel otherwise we are left with an inaccurate sense by comparing randomly different things and measuring them against each other without grasping their nature as such.
Being numb or insensitive to pain is sometimes interpreted as having a high pain tolerance and seen as natural for some people. What you share Alexis is that it is actually a chosen desensitised state, where more tolerance of physical pain may have occurred because of seeking to harden and avoid underlying emotional pain. Having people express like you have is an enormous service for people to begin to understand that what they experience on the surface is actually only the tip of the iceberg.
I knew something was wrong with my relationship with myself but I had no idea what to do about it – even after more than 25 years of trying.
I searched for connection and confirmation outside of my self for most of my life until I realized, with the support of Universal Medicine, that all I needed to do was re-connect with myself and every thing I was looking for was all with in…. what a revelation.
“I have come to feel that judgment comes from lack of understanding: once we understand why a person is behaving the way that they do, it becomes impossible to judge them.” I have found the same Alexis, and agree, when the understanding is there the judgement simply does not exist. Equally, as I let go of judging others, I feel less judged myself because I judge myself less.
Recently I have felt that the depth of relationship I have with myself has changed and that the opportunity to explore this with more clarity has increased. Interesting that I have not chosen to be in this relationship all of the time previously or presently and yet I am never away from myself.
This calling out of anything that feels abusive or not loving but holding another in the understanding without judgement is a huge thing to develop and one I know I am still working on. The more I commit to this way of expressing, the more my relationships have improved though so I know it has got to be the way forwards.
Binge eating is something I have done all my life and occasionally still do – usually when I am trying to avoid feeling what I really know I cannot avoid, but I eat and eat until I am comfortably numb. Unfortunately it does not work for long – I am learning that certain foods affect my mood and I can feel far worse afterwards, once the numbness has worn off. In the old days I would feel bad after a night of drinking alcohol, but now I can get an equivalent hangover from food. I could feel how the alcohol changed my mood, and I am learning now that foods containing sugar can do the same – and the sugar is addictive so once I start it’s hard to stop. Eating like this is not self loving, but neither is judging myself for eating this way, I need to understand what is at the root of it.
Alexis, this feels so true, I have noticed recently that people seem to be behaving in a very friendly, open, loving way with me, I said to a friend that people in my local town seem to be very friendly, she commented that its a reflection of what I am giving out/ how I am being and I realized that I used to think people were unfriendly and mean and this was what was going on with me, Ii had no true self relationship whereas now I do and I care for and love myself and so this is what is being reflected back to me – beautiful!
True – deserting ourselves and our true home in connection to ourselves and all others, not only leaves the door open for any manner of visitors and unwanted energies, but the windows as well for unloving thoughts, others ideals and beliefs and before long it becomes difficult to discern what is ours and what is not.
When we live according to the outside world and what it asks or demands we become, this outer world essentially we squash within our home rather than remaining in our own spaciousness and observing life from a solid foundation of knowing who we are.
You write “Flirting and hooking guys in was a constant game and one I played even if I wasn’t particularly interested in the guy”. How revealing is that? And furthermore, would it be correct to call that abuse of another, of men in this particular case? And have we not all done it, needing a person outside of us and demand they give us what we are not willing to give ourselves?
We all remember when feelings were very strong, but we are never taught how to handle them, only to manage or carry on in some way.
Yes exactly Harry…and today in schools they call this resilience.
It’s fascinating how ‘resilience’ is actually seen as something beneficial.I even saw an advertisement for a meditation technique that says that it provides ‘resilience’. Resilience is a form of hardness, which as a species is something that we already have way too much of. We don’t need resilience we need to be able to yield and then surrender.
The moment we choose to disconnect from all that we can feel, is the moment we start to put our every effort into building a life on the lie that we ‘do not know’. Every step of that way our bodies take each blow.
This is such a simple yet profound insight that it all starts with ourselves and how deeply we choose to connect to what is innate and true.
One thing that has helped me in the past to develop deeper my relationship with myself was to sometimes pretend that I had myself as a child/friend with me all of the time – this might sound a bit crazy but, bear with me on this one…
By pretending that I was with myself as a little girl, I found it sometimes easier to ask myself if I was warm enough, if I was thirsty, how I felt, if I was nervous or anxious or sad etc. Over time this then transitioned to checking in on me regularly and how I was and how I was feeling. The beginnings of self care, you could say. But from here as a foundation, the trust was built so that I can now be more in tune with how I am feeling overall and this is acting as a stepping stone to go deeper with myself and access areas I did not realise I held within myself. And hence as I learn to love myself more, so too do I learn to do the same with those around me. A win-win situation!
” Judgment comes from a lack of understanding”. Some times we choose to not understand someone because we get hooked into individual or group judgment and we make a choice to stay there. I wonder if a lack of understanding occurs because we are not holding ourselves and hence another in love.
Anne, I think you’re spot on because when we hold ourselves or another in absolute love, then there is no room for anything else.
Roll on the day when this is the first thing we learn in school, before we are even taught how to read or write. The first lesson of the day is how are we feeling today, how does our body feel, are we connected to our innately warm essence?
Yes, Rowena. How delicious would that be, and you could well imagine the kids skipping into school rather than dragging their feet!
Indeed Rowena and what will be even better will be when we don’t even have to wait for school to learn about connection, because it will be such an intrinsic part of our lives that it is something that is part of every interaction, including those with our parents from as young as we can remember.
“I had very little awareness of the pain that I was in”. Looking back at my life I find it quite astonishing how successfully I managed to numb myself from feeling how I was truly feeling. I was living in such illusion as to what was actually occuring that it is no wonder life did not turn out as I was wanting or expecting. Although painful to come to this realistion it is, however, the greatest blessing in my life to return to Truth and it is an ever-deepening awareness.
Building a relationship with ourselves first is the key to all relationships, but to do this we have to look at areas of our life that we are less than honest about. This is the charade and the game we play, as you say Alexis who’s going to be the first to put their hand up and say the truth, for if we do it exposes our game and that we do know much more than we are willing to reveal about ourselves. As long as we do this, judgement can still come in, either on ourselves or about someone else, either way, judgement deflects us from looking at our own stuff and what is really going on.
Returning to the love and the relationship with ourselves can be a long journey depending on how far we have allowed ourselves to drift away, But, drifting away and not knowing we are lost takes a little longer. By returning to ourselves, we can be reflections for those lost at sea.
This was a very intense reading for me Alexis, because it was as you would have written about me, my experiences of life and about the choices I made…and I did come to the same results as you did: it is all abut my relationships. And all my relationships are based on my relationship with myself and with my own evolution. As we are the sons of God and belonging to the Universe (our particles connected) we are – as the Universe is – called to expand all of the time. The moment i am disconnecting to me, I disconnect to this pull. That I am disconnecting does not mean I am not longer connected but that I chose to not live any longer the purpose and the responsibility my belonging does contain. But the pull is still there. So to not live it I have to go against this pull and this means to call in energy that is not the truth. This causes all our troubles and hurts, what holds us busy while becoming more and more numb and unaware what is really going on and unaware about what we choose. And so, as you so excellently discovered Alexis, we gave away our understanding of the world and us and instead judge. What keeps us away from ourselves and others. What keeps us in the fallen state of separation. And so we suffer. What a mess we are in! Done by our own choices. And here we are. That’s the point. To claim back my responsibility is claiming back my power and brings me back on the path of truth. To connect again to me is connecting back to the Universe I belong to, connecting back to the purpose we all belong to. And so is connecting me with God and you all again.
I cannot love another more than I love myself, nor can I judge another less than I judge myself – and so, it is worth taking the time to work on loving ourselves to enable us to increase our love of others.
When we stop being ourselves, we are not in our fullness anymore, we contract. That allows things from the outside to enter and some of them are very nasty indeed.
‘I had no conscious awareness that I wasn’t ok.’ We travel through life glossing over so many signs that everything is not ok, and hide from any conscious awareness that will take us to that deeper level because we don’t want to look at what we have so blatantly ignored.
I love maths, and what it proves to us in the fact that we first have to change something inside when we would like to have it differently on the outside. It is o so simple, but it asks us to take the responsibility for all, which we don’t always like to admit.
‘Deep down every single one of us knows that it is our relationship with ourselves that sets every-thing else in motion, but the responsibility of that feels too big and so we pretend that we don’t know.’ – Indeed Alexis – and because this is the norm in society, we get reflected back that it is ok to live completely disconnected to ourselves. The world would be a different place if we all were encouraged and supported from a young age to take full responsibility for our own choices and taught to understand the consequenses if we don’t.
Eva, on reading your comment the word ‘consequences’ stood out for me. it made me ponder on how often the consequences that we consider before we do something are often along the lines of whether or not we can get away with something or as children, if we stop to consider consequences at all, then they tend to be the consequences that we think we may meet that will be dished out by an adult or someone in authority. I get the feeling that we tend to put the slant on negative consequences but the truth is there are consequences to everything and how extraordinary would it be if we grew up, having discussions around natural cause and effect of life.
How we look out and see the world and other people is such a powerful reflection of how we are first looking at ourselves.
‘It’s basic maths, there can be no more or no less. But because we have chosen to pretend that we don’t know how life works, then we all scrabble around making out that we really can’t understand why life is so hard.’ This is pretty funny when you think about it, well at least it would be if it wasn’t the reason for so much pain and suffering. How much simpler life would be if we all just listened to the voice inside from deep within our body – the one that just knows.
Lucy I ignored that voice deep within me for such a long time. Looking back I now know that the two main reasons why I chose to turn a ‘deaf ear’ to that voice were because, one, what the voice was saying did not fit into the beliefs that I held onto so vehemently and two, I just didn’t want to hear them because what they were saying involved radical honesty, which would have resulted in radical change.
We are the creators of our suffering, the creators of all abuse, creators of the unknowingness (as we exactly know what we know and how to avoid knowing what we know), etc etc That is the point, we are the creators of everything that we are not and suffer from but we like our creation anyway. To expose the whole charade would put an end to being a creator and ask us to come back to our original purpose and responsibility – to co-reate what we already are by universal design.
Work on the relationship we have ourselves and this can not but transpire into every other relationship. Our responsibility is to deeply love ourselves so we can then in turn truly love others. This way we unite in brotherhood through love.
Understanding is something we can never get enough of. Understanding is what dissolves our judgements and hurts.
As the Universe is continually expanding then we will never ever get to understand everything.
If we are judging our self then we are judging others. To stop judging others we need to develop loads of self- love so there is no room for self judgement, this then supports us to do the same with another.
If you left an appliance unplugged in the middle of the room, it’s going to be hard for it to properly function. Is it any surprise that we break down too when we are not connected? For a while I have thought about this in terms of having enough energy to ‘get through’ the day but reading your words Alexis I can see that true understanding is also only possible through connection this way. Understanding is naturally designed to flow through our body, so no wonder we get angry and confused and very much in our head when we live life in parts.
What a real and revealing blog calling out the importance of our own relationship with ourselves something we are not taught except to disconnect from to get by and be good please and toughen up to cope . The truth about our reflections around us from our relationships reflecting our own to work on is amazing as it allows us the freedom to evolve , expand and be all we are with true love and responsibility .
Exactly Tricia, hence reflecting in the way you have described brings a richness to life that no money can buy.
I have been feeling this more deeply “Our relationships with others become the most incredible tools to see what needs addressing in the starting place of every-thing, and that is in our relationship with our self.” Rather than going into a reaction because I can feel something that does not feel great / or feels amazing, I have been wondering what is being reflected to learn, life looks and feels different from this angle.
I agree Samantha, the angle feels much wider than the old knee jerk acute angle that most of us operate from.
As you have pointed out Alexis, when we accept and feel, that another’s actions are not true, there is not a judgment because we know it is just the energy they have allowed in.
As have we all Steve. Energy either is or it isn’t true, there are no gradients, it’s only the human mind, that, through judgement grades human behaviour.
It’s a combination of transparency and fragility. Being prepared to be seen by yourself and the other in absolute fullness.
‘ If I want to stop judging those around me then I must stop judging myself.’ The only way I can stop judging myself is to appreciate myself, fully, in every possible way. Then I can fully appreciate everyone else too.
This is so true, Alexis – “once we understand why a person is behaving the way that they do, it becomes impossible to judge them”. Even the actions of the most hardened criminals are from a hurt that they are not willing to feel. This does not excuse the behaviour, but gives us an opportunity to see all human beings as equals with the right to be honoured and loved the same.
Janet I wonder what would happen to the rate of crime if we loved and honoured criminals, rather than judged them.
“Our relationships with others become the most incredible tools to see what needs addressing in the starting place of every-thing, and that is in our relationship with our self…” Rather than blame and take things personally, this is a great place to start working on oneself.
There are many gems in this blog for me and I suspect for many to ponder deeply on which begins with being honest with ourselves. “Deep down every single one of us knows that it is our relationship with ourselves that sets every-thing else in motion”. and “If I want to change anything that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first”. And in this way we can begin establishing true, honest and caring relationships with each other – being in true brotherhood.
I am currently playing with bringing everything back to my relationship with me – when something happens, someone says something, I feel hurt or frustrated, I judge another in some way, or compare to them – all these things can happen seemingly outside of me, but they are an opportunity to reflect back on me – why was that situation hurtful or frustrating? What did it trigger within me, what do I need to look at and address with my relationship with myself so that I no longer react in that way.
Rebecca I feel that what you have shared is the key to unlocking the merry-go-round that we call ‘life’.
I can very much relate to relying on boyfriends for a sense of my identity. I’d do my best to present as the perfect partner – at the beginning until my resentment towards myself grew to bitterness and blame- yikes! Or I could deny my honesty no longer and the horrible game of hiding from being me grew too painful.
The game meant I could hide from being responsible, being me. It seemed easier to have my boyfriend’s friends than my own- hiding from the fear and responsibility of sustaining relationships of my own making. It seemed easier to live where he lived and so on. Now I can see how I wasn’t following what was true and would bring true love to myself and those around me. There is gold to be felt as I develop my relationship with me. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to keep up the farce of hiding from myself in my own body!! And it feels as empty as two people together in the same house but with separate lives.
‘As far as my relationship with myself went I don’t think that I consciously knew such a thing existed and anyway, I thought that I was fine as I was.’ – This is so true, how many of us are aware that we can actually have a relationship with ourselves? In fact, wouldn’t a lot of people see that as a waste of time or even selfish? By missing out or dismissing the relationship with ourselves, we miss out on true Gold.
I continue to shock myself at the quality of relationship I have with myself, I so often allow a thought in of self doubt or I am not good enough to come in which is such a game I play to hold me back from bringing the real me out into the world. Catching those thoughts in the first instance and being honest with myself has made such a difference to starting building a different kind of relationship with myself.
‘Judgment comes from understanding.’ I have observed that I often go into judgment when uncomfortable feelings arise, so when I stop and surrender, and allow myself to understand what’s going on, the situation changes, and I can appreciate what others are doing or saying because it has provided me with a clear reflection of what I can now choose to work on.
What we put out to the world, we get back in return too. Hence if we invest in our relationship with ourselves and bring a loving and caring way of living with ourselves and hence to those around us, this too will come back to us – but it comes back to us first and foremost as warmth and a knowing from within ourselves that we are true and precious, and secondly it comes confirmed by those around us that are there to celebrate it with us. Hence it flows full circle, but only if we have begun and completed the circle within ourselves first.
“if I want to change any-thing that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first.” This is a great example of being responsible, this definition I would never have understood had it not been for the teachings that Universal Medicine presents. It always comes back down to us and the choices we make.
“As far as my relationship with myself went I don’t think that I consciously knew such a thing existed and anyway, I thought that I was fine as I was.” I imagine this is true for most of us Alexis, it certainly was for me until a few years ago. And to be honest, when I first heard about it, it felt a bit strange. But as I came to understand what it really meant, I was able to appreciate the significance of building such a relationship and the possibilities of what I could change about my life as a result. And this has certainly been the case as I learn to accept and love myself for who I am regardless of what others may feel or think about me. As I learn to feel from my body what is true for me and what is not, I grow in the confidence of knowing that for me, this cannot be disputed.
What I have felt very acutely very recently is how you can’t alter the depth of relationships with different people. What I mean is that any protection you might hold in one relationship will be carried across all. One might think this untrue. One might think that one is being less protected in one relationship than with another. But I now know that isn’t how it works. Recently I dropped a big chunk of protection in my relationship with my mother and was amazed to feel the ripple effect it has had on all my other relationships. Still lots to be revealed, but it is an absolute fact that; one affects the all.
Otto you are spot on. If our wall of protection is 9 bricks tall with our Dad then it’s 9 bricks tall with everyone, we don’t build and dismantle our wall of protection with each person we meet. The reason why our walls feel like different heights with different people is because with some people we’re prepared to put in a bit more effort and peer over the wall whilst making sure that we stay safely behind it.
If I am connected to myself I need nothing from the outside so never hold anyone or anything to ransom – for that is where the judgement comes from – when a need is not met, there is a gap/tension that then induces the judgement. An absolute connection with oneself enables absolute observation.
Alexis I love what you have shared in your honest blog. “. . . once we understand why a person is behaving the way that they do, it becomes impossible to judge them.” That is so true and if I allow myself to have this understanding for myself it is impossible to judge myself as well. For me understanding is the best medicine ever as it helped me until today to built a deeper loving relationship with me.
More golden statements stand out each time i read your blog… “…if I want to change any-thing that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first…” This puts the spanner in the wheel of blame for sure!
“Our Relationship with Ourselves is the Start of All Things” – what a super title this is Alexis, it is both the start and continual completion of all things too; for it never ends, only deepens…
a relationship with ourselves – the foundation upon which we live our lives and yet the one relationship we often dismiss
‘Every single thing that was in my relationship with myself was reflected back to me in my relationships with others.’ It is amazing that we are shown so much and yet for so many years we remain oblivious.
The greatest gift we can give to children is the permission for them to stay connected to their essence so they don’t leave it and if they do, the simple tools to reconnect.
I couldn’t agree more…. When we choose to disconnect from who we are we cannot help but have a dysfunctional relationship with ourselves, and in the oblivion of what we are choosing, it is easy to abuse ourselves and others and as a result end up in dysfunctional relationships with everyone and everything else around us. Living wisdom to make you wake up to what you choose. Love it.
This comment really says it all – “Deep down every single one of us knows that it is our relationship with ourselves that sets every-thing else in motion, but the responsibility of that feels too big and so we pretend that we don’t know.” ‘Pretending’ that we don’t know is the optimum word and is the biggest ill as in TRUTH we DO KNOW we just choose not to see it as we don’t want the RESPONSIBILITY of living as WHO WE TRULY ARE.
I have been attending Universal Medicine courses for 10 years and it was a couple of weeks ago for the first time I saw and really felt what is written here “… Every single thing that was in my relationship with myself was reflected back to me in my relationships with others. It was all there for me to see, if only I had chosen to see it. But I didn’t. ” This moment felt very freeing and I now see how there can never ever be any blame. Thank you Alexis, awesome article.
Your headline spells it out Alexis – it is indeed the relationship with ourselves that determines the relationship with anyone and anything else. The moment I switch off from myself, everything else goes ‘off’ too – it stops the natural flow.
I don’t think I ever even thought about the concept of having a relationship with myself till coming across the work of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine. Even the thought of self care was foreign to me. All my life the reflection from society was to always be there for others and that it was selfish to care for yourself or to have any kind of relationship with yourself that was nurturing or loving. It was all about diminishing yourself and making others more important. It was such a strong conditioning that I found it hard in the beginning to learn to actually take some time to be gentle and caring with myself, and even today at times, I can find that I am still so hard on myself in so many ways. But, today for me, it makes so much sense to develop and keep deepening this relationship that I have with myself, to keep exploring facets of myself that I have not really allowed myself to feel in so much depth previously. And of course the greatest accelerator of our relationship with our selves is to live in a world full of other people who are there constantly offering us opportunities for growth, more understanding, respect, and evolution. Thank you Alex for reminding me of this, and allowing me once again to look at my relationship with myself and keep working on this each and every day.
This is so true. When we disconnect from ourselves we can not discern abuse, nor connect to the will to even want to stop it.
So true Alexis ‘ Others can only get as close to me as I get to myself’ The relationship that we have with our selves is the foundation that we build our relationship with others from.
“if I want to change any-thing that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first” This is so powerful and sometimes I fight it tooth and nail but the real shifts in my life when I work consistently and diligently with this understanding.
I love the way you convey this energetic truth Alexis “…the fact that everything, as in every-thing that exists outside of us, is set in motion first by our relationship with ourselves.” We are therefore the creators of everything that we experience.
So much has shifted for me since I started appreciating all that I am, instead of judging and criticising myself for all that I’m not. I’m still a work in progress, but at least I’m working in a loving direction now.
‘Women spend lifetimes talking to one another trying to fathom out what deep down they already know’. … Indeed, and in a lot of those conversations we are looking to blame someone else, rather than being honest and taking responsibility for our selves.
Gorgeous Alexis. Thank you. Judgement is something I am unpacking at the moment. It feels like it is crippling many of our relationships and it is so insidious we don’t realise we are doing it as we hide behind politeness and niceness and pictures of how we all should be. As you so rightly say, it comes back to our relationship with ourselves – expose the judgement for ourselves and the judgement for others dissipates. Increase the genuine love and adoration for ourselves and this is what is reflected in our relationships with others. So simple, as you have expressed.
Gina I agree that being judgemental ‘is so insidious we don’t realise we are doing it’. I know that I have spent most of my life, automatically sweeping my environment with my judgemental eye. Simply walking down the street brings up judgement for me about so many things, a person’s health, their parenting, the fact that they smoke, the way that they talk, the way that they look, the way that they walk, it’s actually never ending and the tragic thing is, as soon as I judge, I not only condemn another but I separate them from me instantly.
‘Choosing to disconnect from who we are makes it very easy to abuse ourselves because we are literally oblivious to the abuse.’ I feel this is the reason why we are seeing so much abuse in our world, and in our everyday life. We have become so used to abuse we tend to classify abuse and recognise it in the most extreme forms. If we continue to live disconnected to ourselves this numbness to abuse will continue but thanks to people like you Alexis and many other amazing people I know who are showing us how easy it is to re-connect to who we are. It is only a choice away, it is up to us to call a stop to self-abuse and abuse to others.
“I have come to feel that judgment comes from lack of understanding” so true Alexis, when we judge , we do so because we don’t apply [or want to apply] understanding, like, ‘i’m right, you’re wrong’. I’d say that understanding has been the one golden attribute that’s been pivotal in developing to deepen the relationship i have with myself, and in this equally with others too… understanding that nobody’s actually ‘wrong’ or ‘done me wrong’… i used to get caught up in things/what people said or how they behaved, though when i apply understanding, or someone else helps me towards it, i can let it go, and accept. Acceptance is a lifeline, it is the fluidity needed for true movement in life.
What is even this thing, a relationship with ourselves? I certainly recall the time when I would ask the same question and was certain that the world is how it is and there is nothing that can be changed, everything that I did not like was someone’s fault. I had all those thoughts, but what brought me home was none of those thoughts aligned to what my body was feeling, even though I blamed the world I did not feel better actually I felt even more tension and so that clearly was not a wise choice. So eventually I realized a relationship with myself cannot be something to “think” about, it is a feeling within my body, a feeling of trust and love that nothing can ever refute.
Alexis you share such a beautiful understanding of how life plays out and we can choose to discover and learn what and why this is, or we can take our marbles and go home and play by our selves. The world has so much of the second reaction and literally crying out for someone to take the lead for the first option. Starting with ourselves we can be willing to look at our own part when something does turn out so great.
The relationship with ourselves make so much sense, because it feels solid and empowering, everything that I do not like in the world, I have a part and responsibility in it that I can look at. There is no need to impose change in the world or on anyone for that matter, I only have to ask myself if I am being myself or not, and the answer will be reflected back in how the world is.
‘Our relationships with others become the most incredible tools to see what needs addressing in the starting place of every-thing, and that is in our relationship with our self.’ Once we accept the reality of this then we have to accept that everyone comes into our lives for a reason and if we are willing to see what they are reflecting for us we do not need to take their behaviour personally but instead ask ourselves how we have ended up in this situation.
Our relationship with ourselves can include becoming more deeply aware of the subtle movements of muscles in our bodies that take place as we breathe. There is so much we take for granted, but becoming aware of the delicate balance of the endocrine system, of how our body knows how to breathe, and the many other autonomic functions, helps us to develop a tender appreciation for everything we are.
I can very much relate to the experience shared in this blog. When I look back at my past it now looks like a mess, but if you are ticking the right boxes with partners, career etc you have blinkers on to see that it really isn’t that all that rosy. I also found that this was because I had no connection or relationship with myself from my body and so was unaware of the devastation I actually felt keeping myself away from who I really am.
Reading your simple math’s equation of what exists on the outside must exist on the inside and thinking about the chaos and mess the world is in, leads me to conclude there must be a lot of the same within most people in the world. By the same token, the magnificence and loveliness I can feel on the inside when I am deeply connected and surrendered within myself, means that this also is there in spades on the outside. It is all there in one big melting pot and it is for us to choose which we want within us and to be in the world around us.
Calling out the responsibility we each have for creating our own lives is huge. What I have noticed however, is there does come a point for every single person on earth, and it will be a different point for each one of us, when things get so bad that we call out for help to be responsible, so that our outer worlds can at least begin to reflect back the love we feel and crave. And it is this call that brings the most loving support.
‘Every single thing that was in my relationship with myself was reflected back to me in my relationships with others’ – Life is our teacher and if we are willing to observe deeply all that is happening in our lives, we will observe what is unfolding within. It all comes back to each choice we make. Humanity is in a mess and if each of us were willing to claim this truth much would change. Thanks Alexis.
As it is outside, it is within. This is an awesome reflection for us all. Bringing understanding into all that I feel and do in my relationship with myself then extends out to everyone else. I can sometimes feel that old way of self improvement, starting to beat myself up about something to change it, yet this is not the way. Bringing understanding and deep love to myself means that everyone I know gets this too. When I live less than I know myself to be, I connect again and bring myself back to me. The more gentle and loving my approach to me is, the more everyone around me gets this understanding too.
These are such wise words Alexis. It sounds so simple. It is the basis of all relationships. Spelt out in black and white.
It is an ever deepening journey within us. Worth every step, as each step blesses ourselves and everyone else.
Alexis, what you have highlighted here is that from a very young age we start to look for those things outside of ourselves that will make us feel more, those things (such as the hamster!) that will love us back, yet we are constantly disappointed when they don’t. If only rather than getting the hamster, or the dog, cat, best friend, boyfriend – we turned our outward projection of love (which isn’t in truth love) towards ourselves, and adored and cherished ourselves, then from a young age, we would develop a foundation of love that is true and from which all of our relationships could then stem. Developing a true relationship with ourselves is key to a rock solid relationship with others.
When we are kids all too often what we are feeling is too much and the world is too painful. It’s no wonder we find a way to shut off what we are feeling.
I love the analogy that you have used Alexis about when we are not home we don’t know what is entering through the front door. There is much to be said about being present and aware to feel and understand the energies that are attempting to get in any window, door or crack possible. When we are home we can observe from every angle and not allow anything that is less than love to enter our house.
When I sit and feel how sophisticated the self abuse I have had for myself is I feel absolutely mortified that not only have I not seen this but in truth I am continuing this pattern and allow it on a daily basis. Not to discount the fact that i have made many changes such as I no longer smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol or coffee, rarely eat sugar etc., and so on yet there is so much more there on deeper levels that we can change beyond this that this feels like just the tip of the iceberg, the starting point to uncover so much more. I’m deeply inspired by this blog and others around me who have caught self judgement and started to say no to the critique. For a long time I felt that the self bashing was something that was hard to catch until I accepted that I was choosing this level of abuse because this is what I believed I was worth.
“Deep down every single one of us knows that it is our relationship with ourselves that sets every-thing else in motion, but the responsibility of that feels too big and so we pretend that we don’t know.” – imagine if psychology had its foundations in this statement…what a game changer it would be.
I love how you have described here, Alexis, the arrogance common to most of us of living in ignorance or denial of our own state of being and blaming the world and everyone else for our woes. It is staggering how irresponsible we can be towards one another, when deep down we all know that love does not blame.
Maths indeed Alexis – thank you for this deeply honest and powerful sharing. This sentence alone offers an opportunity to deeper reflection – ‘If you’re not at home, then how can you possibly know who’s walking through the front door?’ – We don’t know.
There is much I can learn from reading this blog as I can relate to so much everything that you have described, except getting bitten by a hamster although we did have a cat that would bite and scratch me.
Fantasizing is another form of abuse. I can be located anywhere and still fantasize about the same thing. It usually is the same fantasy too. It feels great to earmark this right now and know it does not truly support me or another. I was made aware recently how harmful it was to live this way disconnecting from my body and not appreciating my love for me and knowing I am enough. The fantasy actually becomes an illusion you end up chasing taking you away from your feelings …
‘Our relationship with ourselves IS the start of all things…’ Wouldn’t it be amazing to learn right from the get go when we are really small the truth of this; life would unfold very differently.
The human body is essentially a vessel. Refuse to fill that vessel up with your own precious divinity and you will seek all manner of things to fill it up for you. For the one thing we cannot stand, even more than the discomfort of anxiety, or even the evil that surrounds us, is to feel the emptiness of our own disconnection from our true divine origins.
I love the honesty in this blog. I can feel how I start allowing to consider why I’ve disconnected from myself. That I will never find it in the judgement or in changing the world, or in changing others. This morning I realised, that means felt, that my life is about me. That I’m not to listen first to other, but to myself. Freeing to realise and I’m also aware that there are multiple times that I haven’t expressed which must have hurt me. This is something that I don’t feel yet consciously, but can it be different. How different is it that my purpose in life isn’t supporting others to come back to their Souls, without the connection to my own Soul first. This is changing the whole ‘game’ – if we could see it like that. Wow! Thank you for sharing your path of understanding yourself and others. Far more real than the numbness that I’ve chosen for a long time.
‘Likewise, if there is something going on outside of us, we can’t throw our hands up in the air and say “Ain’t nothing to do with me.” This has been a massive lesson for me, things don’t just randomly happen around us – we create them, we’re part of them, bringing everything back to self-reflection is a great way to live, you are always responsible for your part in something and you can never blame another person.
““Because I was unable to feel what I was doing to myself, then I was also unable to feel what I was doing to others”- this is such a realisation isn’t it, and yet it makes total sense. How can we possibly feel anything about another if we don’t feel ourselves first.
Great point Alexis “Our relationships with others become the most incredible tools to see what needs addressing in the starting place of every-thing, and that is in our relationship with our self.” By observing these relationships truthfully we are given clues and markers all the time to check in with ourselves first and ascertain what is truly going on. And like you said, the more we connect and love within, the more that will be reflected on the outside too.
Stephanie your perception that things were coming ‘at you from the outside’ is such a common mis-perception and your reaction to withdraw, again is so common in us all but when you consider that life works more like a boomerang, in that what comes back to us, we have caste out, it shows us that when we withdraw or react in any way, we are simply adding more distortion to the illusion that we are choosing to create.
The brilliance of looking at it as all just math, is that it totally undermines all the emotions and complications and baggage that we might bring to any situation. Keeps the landscape very clear allowing us a much better chance of seeing the truth.
Perfect for me to read this blog today, I could have wrote many parts of it. And I do love the clarity, the understanding and love you write with Nikki – thank you for sharing.
If we deeply accept the truth of this blog then everything becomes a reflection and then it is purely a question of whether we are prepared to see that and take responsibility for making whatever changes are being asked of us.
Simply adore the math of all of this.
‘ It is because of this increased understanding that the judgement that I have towards myself has decreased: however the judgement that I still have towards others indicates that there is a lot more self-judgment yet to be uncovered’ This very much resonates with me today and I have become very aware of just how hard I can be on myself if I believe I did something wrong which feels really harming to my body now. I can feel how much I am lacking in playfulness in these moments and that we are never asked to be perfect.
Ah Jacqueline that word ‘wrong’ has a lot to answer for. What one person deems as being ‘wrong’ is likely to differ hugely from person to person and yet our individual feelings are based on where we pitch the pointer of ‘wrong’. I vote we scrap the word entirely and simply look at everything as supporting us to evolve.’
It is from our inner blueprint that we figure out all of life around us – and if this inner blueprint contains judgement, lack of self-worth, sadness or anger, it will appear in the blueprint of our lives – it is the ultimate reflection, not that we are those things, but that we still choose to have those things as a part of us – that in actual fact we are far greater than the anger or jealousy that we may feel and even identify as being us.
“if I want to change any-thing that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first.” Can we have this line front page on every newspaper everyday until we get it!
I love what you have shared here, especially ‘I have come to feel that judgment comes from lack of understanding: once we understand why a person is behaving the way that they do, it becomes impossible to judge them. That’s not to say that we can’t be horrified at the appalling things that happen in the world, of course we can and indeed we are, but understanding takes any judgment away.’ If we judge another we cannot understand or see clearly and often the judgement is there because we don’t want to deal or feel first something that is going on for us.
‘…the judgement that I still have towards others indicates that there is a lot more self-judgment yet to be uncovered.’ I have felt and come to know this too and have felt the close relationship this has with my expectations of others and of myself.
I as most others when we chose to look back at when we disconnected from ourselves can trace back and plot the course we have drifted our lives on that took us further away from our true self till we had forgotten where we came from to start with. Our foundation is always just a choice away. It may not only be a light at the end of the tunnel to start with, but it is a path back to our light.
Alexis, thank you so much for your open and clear sharing. I find so much in what you’ve expressed. Amongst other things, I love that energy is constant, and that our relationship with it is the key. I love that the constant reflection our world gives to us is testimony that we are one – that there is actually no separation, nor gap, and that my inner state directly affects the outer; and, that we do judge what our 5 senses present to us – a grand illusion that constantly “reassures” there is really something outside of us. Whether we receive joyful or disharmonious reflections – all comes back to our relationship with the ever amazing energy that we are. And this reflection is a gift – that allows us to check in at any time to know clearly how harmonious we are with ourselves; love holds us all in harmony, and we receive an appropriate reminder when our self relationship is askew. A theme I have been feeling lately is that – I am the day; the maker, – one way or another, and that if asked how my day was the only honest reply is – ‘exactly as I made it.’ Yes, what are our reflections in the world, and are we choosing to evolve with joyful responsibility?
“I was lost at sea with no idea where land was” – Alexis love this symbology, it paints such a picture of utter desolation and i think probably all of us have had that sense or feeling at some stage in our lives; i know i have…It was only when i came across the Ageless Wisdom as taught by Universal Medicine that i caught sight of land again and paddled swiftly towards it with the greatest and deepest joy in my heart since everything before [symbolically] had been a delusion or mirage that when i got to it, vanished into thin air to leave deflation and isolation. But this land is rock solid and not going anywhere, thank God!
“When we choose to disconnect from ourselves we lose the ability to know how we are feeling because we are ‘not there’ to feel what we are feeling. If you’re not at home, then how can you possibly know who’s walking through the front door?” The way you say this cracks me up – it is so funny and yet so true.
A brilliant blog Alexis, such a wealth of sharing and with each read more is discovered … A bedrock of truth here…”if I want to change any-thing that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first….”
Life becomes a simple equation that leads us back to One, the truest math. I love how simple truth is, and with the awareness and understanding you share here Alexis, it is very possible to live it.
“I have come to feel that judgment comes from lack of understanding:” Yes me too Alexis. As I have come to a deeper understanding and acceptance in myself I have a greater understanding of others, why we may choose to react as we do, and also to life generally.
Just beautiful Alexis “Deep down every single one of us knows that it is our relationship with ourselves that sets every-thing else in motion.” Yes the foundation of which lies our own connection to self is the basis for all other relationships that we encounter in our lives. If we have a shaky foundation then all of our relationships will be reflected from this quality, showing our responsibility is the key to a strong loving connections.
‘If I want to be loved for who I naturally am, then it is my responsibility to love myself in full first.’ Bingo! Simple and profound because this statement is the key to our ills and relationship problems! It is that simple Alexis Stewart. Practicing it in each moment is about my commitment to life.
“When we have each returned to our true relationship with ourselves, one that contains love and nothing else, then so too will our world be a reflection of that love.” And what a gorgeous world it will be indeed Alexis. Thank-you for your divine sharing.
“When we have each returned to our true relationship with ourselves, one that contains love and nothing else, then so too will our world be a reflection of that love.” We all have a repsonsibility to live this way as it will beneift all of humanity, not just us as individauls. And what a wonderful world that will be to live in.
Understanding that judgement of another is judgment of ourselves first is such a powerful tool in unlocking self criticism.
Our relationship with oneself is the most important and foundational relationship we have and is the key to living life rather than life living one – for if “I want to change any-thing that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first.”
If we ‘leave the front door open’ or even the window we are inviting any manner of draft, debris or energy to enter.
If we are not discerning the energy that is running us or seeking to arrest and heal this, we will easily say yes to what is not loving, nor supportive and not true.
Returning to examine ourselves, our pains and reactions is a great start and taking responsibility for our past choices and present state of being and beginning to Love ourselves is key to accepting ourselves, our life and all others.
“once we understand why a person is behaving the way that they do, it becomes impossible to judge them.” This just as easily applies to ourselves, I find that the more I understand my self, in terms of behaviour but also at a deeper place within I can drop the judgement, frustration and the self abuse that would otherwise have the environment to manifest. Understanding is a great healer.
It all comes down to the relationship with ourselves and this is developing a loving relationship with my body as all is felt in the body. What this means I am learning everyday a bit more, it is simple but sometimes difficult to stay with but not listening to my critical voice is a very important part in surrendering to the love I am.
I can so relate to all you share here Alexis… judgments on myself before attending Universal Medicine were vicious and yet I had no idea how I was abusing myself – I thought I was fine and life was ok! “Choosing to disconnect from who we are makes it very easy to abuse ourselves because we are literally oblivious to the abuse.” I didnt see that as abuse – trying to be perfect was ‘normal’ – no-one, including myself, ever said there is no perfection in this world, stop trying to attain the unattainable – until Serge Benhayon said it. The relief in my body when I heard this was enormous – no more striving for the impossible, no more exhaustion and no more abuse!
What a powerful blog, Alexis. Until I came to The Way of The Livingness I never considered that I was responsible for the way my life was turning out. It was all happening to me from the outside world, and I was a victim of luck, be it of the good or the bad variety. It was not until I actually began to change my relationship with myself and saw how the world around me changed that I truly understood that inseparable link between my love for myself and the love that I experienced outside of me.
“Every single thing that was in my relationship with myself was reflected back to me in my relationships with others.” This basic tool is so revealing and so empowering, and is a game-changer if we choose to truly see what is going on around us. Everything in front of us is a reflection of our relationship with ourselves in that moment and offers us an opportunity to reflect on where we are at within ourselves at that time. Life around us is a reflection of our inner world always.
This is a most important message. We need to truly look at ourselves even when nothing obvious has gone wrong. There is a vast amount to discover.
This is an awesome analogy Alexis… “If you’re not at home, then how can you possibly know who’s walking through the front door?” That is our lives to a tee when we live disconnected from the heart of the home – any energy can walk through the door without even knocking! If we are home and connected to our inner heart then there is no room in the home for any other energy to even consider knocking at the door because its emanating outside of the home too, and only love will want to come in.
It has taken years to understand that withdrawing from that which was perceived as coming at me from the outside and felt hurtful was basically just me hurting myself by withdrawing from commitment to life. Exposing and discarding old momentums is rather like discovering you are wearing several pairs of spectacles at once and choosing to start removing them one pair at a time, which each pair being clearer than the set of glasses before.
” If I want to stop judging those around me then I must stop judging myself. Life is maths, nothing can exist outside of us that doesn’t already exist on the inside: we can’t conjure something up out of nothing, it’s just not possible. Likewise, if there is something going on outside of us, we can’t throw our hands up in the air and say “Ain’t nothing to do with me.” Again basic maths – if it’s on the outside then it’s on the inside”.
I so agree that “life is math” – I often observe and say to myself in day to day revelations “it is all mathematics”!
Part of the constant angst we carry when in reaction of judging or blaming others, is the pretending that we don’t know what is at play. We do know, as you so clearly show in your blog Alexis, and once we admit and live that there is no wondering why or room for judgement. It’s beautiful to feel in my own body and equally as beautiful to witness in others, when the hard exterior or front melts away with a good dose of understanding.
I know what struck me when I got my first job in the customer service industry was how often the staff would blow up out the back, ranting about a customer and I got to see just how much frustration and anger we can hold towards people. Then I looked at where it was happening to me – these moments or days where I would get so worked up about other people when in reality it was all the anger and frustration within me simply transferring onto another person. It is so true when you say that everything originates within us first.
It is often talked about as being normal that we have a character and that this is just the way we are. Like being an angry person or a shy person. It has been a great revelation to me that when I connected to myself with the support of Universal Medicine and started to build a relationship with myself, that the person I thought I was was not me at all and this is the trick. As long as we think it is who we are we are powerless and can’t change it but when we feel who we truly are and how beautiful we are it is easy to say no to these ingrained behaviours and reactions to life and hurts.
Very honest blog – refreshingly supportive to read and truly understand why there was abuse in your life. I have abused others too and reached a knowing that this abuse was actually towards me. I am not the abusive kind and I was not aware of how thick it was in my life. I am not sure what hurts more seeing and feeling how much I have abused others or being aware of the abuse towards myself, and so “if I want to change any-thing that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first.” This is true. “if it’s on the outside then it’s on the inside.”
I find what you share very powerful Alexis and when deeply considered if not deeply pondered on, you are in truth highlighting the fact that NOTHING outside of us is ever the cause of our issues. We have first created them by the relationship we have with ourselves and the choices that we have made in every moment as a result.
Hello Alexis, loved all of it, written with conviction and wisdom
This is a very powerful piece of writing – feeling ‘out’ today it is a fantastic reminder to reconnect to myself. I love what you say about judgement, too. I’ve always said ‘that’s just where they’re at’ but I don’t think I ever looked at it as an understanding. Simple but really helpful. Thank you for inspiring me today.
PS. No hamsters were hurt in the writing of this comment ????
‘I have come to feel that judgment comes from lack of understanding: once we understand why a person is behaving the way that they do, it becomes impossible to judge them.’ I have experienced this too and it is such a powerful way of resolving situations which occur in relationships. If we look to allow another person to be as they are, without our expectations placed on them, we can understand why they are like that and appreciate them for being exactly as they are at that point.
There are so many gems in your blog Alexis. This one resonated with me this morning – ‘Others can only get as close to me as I get to myself. If I want to be loved for who I naturally am, then it is my responsibility to love myself in full first.’ Absolutely.
Yes Debra, I really felt this expression too and when I feel a bit off, this is something I will get back to, to remind myself to connect and get close to me again first.
It is simple math, so why do we invest so much time and energy into proving 2+2 =5?
Alexis, this is great to read, ‘I have come to feel that judgment comes from lack of understanding:’ I can feel how absolutley true this is, since reading your blog previously I have been experimenting with bringing in more understanding with people for where they are at and their choices, including my own and have noticed how great it feels to not go into judgment, this feels so much less righteous and instead feels light and allows me to stay connected with myself and others.
Thank you, Alexis. It makes such a difference when we bring understanding to our own behaviour and that of others, as we no longer react and judge, but see life as a constant opportunity for learning and a deepening of our awareness. When we accept things and aren’t invested in an outcome or picture, our bodies can stay harmonious and open.
When we develop and deepen our relationship with ourselves we then begin to see that we can no longer blame anyone else for anything in life. We start to see that we are responsible for all of the choices we make.
“As far as my relationship with myself went I don’t think that I consciously knew such a thing existed and anyway…” Until I attended a Universal Medicine workshop I had no idea that such a thing existed either. To consider building a relationship with myself was a turn around…I had no idea what that looked like or felt like. But by beginning to take care of what I was eating, when I would put myself to bed, how I moved during the day, how I would generally be with myself in terms of self-apprecition this has begun to change.
The title of this article on its own is a huge teaching. I am simply going to claim this as my #quoteoftheday ‘Our relationship with ourselves is the start of all things’. Thank you, Alexis.
‘When we have each returned to our true relationship with ourselves, one that contains love and nothing else, then so too will our world be a reflection of that love’ – Simply said and true, thank you Alexis.
Very honest post Alexis, love how this develops from the pet hamster into self-relationship and its quality setting everything else… there’s much to comment on. Your words:
“Because I was unable to feel what I was doing to myself, then I was also unable to feel what I was doing to others” –
when i read this it took me to the workplace reflecting on office politics, gossip, back chat .. workplaces that germinate and fester so much abuse and dynamics that make going to work the joylessness it so often is. Yet this all goes on because we’re unable/choosing not to feel what we feel within ourselves to close down sensitivity that brings the awareness. And we end up not feeling what we feel about others too [and their hurts, disharmony] and react because it’s just too much…so to enjoin the current dross makes it easier to disguise, to not feel the hurt. What a cycle we go to work in.
‘I had very little awareness of the pain that I was in…’ This is how it was for me too, and I suspect for most of us… until we wake up from our self-imposed slumber. The lack of awareness and the disconnection we have chosen keeps us dulled and in the dark and you have described how this is beautifully Alexis. I would add that it is a willful disconnection we choose, as on some level, deep down, there is always a niggling feeling that how we’re living isn’t true.
‘Once we understand why a person is behaving the way that they do, it becomes impossible to judge them.’ Having had my own struggles with judging others I have had to learn that the only way is to observe, understand and hold so that each unfolds in their own time and space. Which feels a heck of a lot more beautiful than going into the condemnation.
Powerfully shared Alexis – thank you for bringing the truth of how our relationship with the world is a direct reflection of the relationship with ourselves. It is so crazy that we search everywhere, in relationships with everybody and everything else to find the Love we seek. Everywhere but the relationship with ourselves, where there is an endless world of Love to be embraced, surrendered to and lived. We consider the chase we embark on as ‘normal’, as living in separation to Love is what we are surrounded by. As is the living with the restlessness that constantly stirs underneath the surface from our choice to separate from and resist our Love, and chase the falsities of happiness through seeking comfort and numbing our bodies so that we cannot feel the degree of lovelessness we are existing in. Through developing a loving relationship with ourselves first, we discover that within each and every one of us the wisdom of Love awaits our surrender, to a world that holds an inexhaustible volume of wonder and awe. It is this world lived that reflects the truth of who we are to the world outside of us.
“Deep down every single one of us knows that it is our relationship with ourselves that sets every-thing else in motion, but the responsibility of that feels too big and so we pretend that we don’t know.” this line speaks volumes to me today.
Only we choose to check in with ourselves, can we really understand what is going on. But as you say Alexis, we often feel it is too much responsibility to do this and whilst on one hand it is a big responsibility, the rewards are gi-normous and it is well-worth the ‘effort’. You no longer live in the dark.
‘Choosing to disconnect from who we are makes it very easy to abuse ourselves because we are literally oblivious to the abuse.’ This is true, and most definitely my experience. For years I claimed I was easy going, not easily bothered by seemingly ‘petty’ things, all the while people annoyed me no end. They’d drive me mental, but I had no understanding or awareness of why.
The more I build on my connection with myself, the more understanding I have for others by default and it reminds me it isn’t 2 separate things. When you can truly love yourself, then it’s impossible not to love others…because love is love and everything comes from that.
‘If you’re not at home, then how can you possibly know who’s walking through the front door?’. I love this quote, because it highlights just how much we pretend we are ok. But here lies the truth…if we are not at home with our bodies, how on earth can we be aware of harm we are allowing in.
The more understanding and acceptance I bring to myself, without having images or pictures in my head of how things “should” be, the less I judge myself and therefore others. With this, there is no room for frustration or getting angry and it changes everything.
Hello Alexis and I have never loved ‘basic maths’ so much. Thank you for your hard hitting truthful blog. It’s not hard hitting in the way we may assume but hard hitting in the points you make very clearly. Everything that goes on outside of us is as a result of what goes on inside us and visa versa. I love this point in particular and it’s not that you alone have made it. This teaching has been around for ages and in fact dates well well back in the human race. Anyone study physics? Or even if you only have a basic knowledge of physics then this is simply that and we say it many ways,” what goes up must come down”, “you are what you eat”, “you create your own destiny”, “every force has an equal and opposite force”, “you get out what you put in” and the list goes on. It’s very much time I think that we all started to return, return to being in relationship with ourselves, knowing that how we are in that relationship is automatically every relationship. If you want to see change then make the change but you will need to commit truly to it. Thank you Alexis.
I love your maths, Alexis. As within, so without. I appreciated your honesty, too as I don’t feel enough people really are aware of the amount of anger and judgement we can walk around in when we’ve chosen to disconnect from what we inherently know. Self-rage is huge and is the inner reflection of our choice to separate in the first place when we’ve felt the amount of lovelessness in the world around us. At some point we take responsibility and choose to love again.
We definitely are our own role models and how we are with ourselves gets reflected for us through others which we don’t always want to see or accept. Having an understanding around why we do what we do, really does help in understanding others as your been there done that knowing, holds others in a space that allows them to just be them also.
I totally agree Alexis, a relationship with ourselves built on love is paramount to developing relationship with others that is based on true love. We can not ever leave ourselves out of the equation.
What struck me before reading the blog Alexis was the picture of you, a delicateness, tenderness and sweetness that was a huge contrast to what you were describing of your past. This is a great testament to what it means to be a student of Universal Medicine and the savvy and self reflective qualities such study encourages as well as the enormous changes that can come about.
“I was lost at sea with no idea where land was. What is fascinating now for me to feel is that although it was a very painful time of my life, I had very little awareness of the pain that I was in and the reason why I was unable to feel the pain that I was in, was because I had chosen to sever my connection to myself.”Such a great point Alexis, I too rolled with this disconnection and observe similar behaviours in those around me – I became a master at overriding and justifying and in time it became an unquestionable normal.
Absolutely truth Alexis and I love how the maths simply prove the truth of it all: the quality of our inner relationship equals the quality of our outer relationships. I too never realised just how off track I was until studying with Universal Medicine and what a revelation that has been and continues to be. Building an honest, loving and intimate relationship with self should be a core subject in our education system rather than a chance encounter in our adult years if we’re lucky. And we do all know it, deep down there is no way to wriggle out of it, try as we might; how we treat our selves on the inside equals how we treat the world and how the world treats us back.
‘Life is maths, nothing can exist outside of us that doesn’t already exist on the inside: we can’t conjure something up out of nothing, it’s just not possible. ‘ This is a brilliant fact. True mathematics relates to all life and is very practical – it is sad that we don’t learn this at school.
“I have come to feel that judgment comes from lack of understanding: once we understand why a person is behaving the way that they do, it becomes impossible to judge them.” We can be so quick to judge others without really feeling what is behind their actions. I know when I stop and observe, I can quite often see there is a picture or an expectation that I have that someone should be a certain way. In this stop I can see that how they are behaving can be a reflection of how I used to behave or still do to a lesser degree, so it can be either a great marker or confirmation that it is something I have moved on from.
Some time back, a very wise woman gave me some advise that I now carry with me everywhere, every day. Back then I was lamenting a separation, longing for me and my ex-partner to come together again. The advice was simply that the most important relationship, the first relationship is the one with me. So utterly simple and yet it took some time to heed these words and to nurture this foremost important relationship.
When this relationship with ourselves is nurtured, we are nurturing our entire world. Everything changes when we love ourselves first.
I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to cut anyone up with a chain saw, but throughout my life I have made some very cutting remarks. In my self-hatred, rather than feel the devastation in my body, I have turned the full force of it on others with blame, criticism and judgment. Looking back I can see how my doing that has been devastating for them and worse for me, because it has built up such a hard way of being in my body. Now I’m working on appreciating myself more and finding that very hard to do, but noticing the tension in my body and gradually letting that go muscle by muscle is making a difference, especially my jaw, which tenses up at the smallest bit of anxiety. So every day is about developing a deeper awareness and being more self-loving, as well as recognising and appreciating others. When we appreciate we cannot judge.
Carmel it’s so true that when we appreciate, we don’t judge but we all seem to have such trouble in appreciating one another, even those that say they don’t, seem to struggle in appreciating absolutely everybody in their lives and so this in itself must take us back to how we feel about ourselves. Any pocket that is ‘not love’ in any of my relationships, correlates directly to pockets within me that are not love.
I love what you’ve shared Alexis. If I had to summarise it, I would say that you’ve shared about what being responsible is – yes the R word. By taking responsibility for our own feelings, needs, etc then we don’t place expectations on others to give these to us (isn’t that how most relationships work?).
What an amazing piece of writing Alexis. When we look around at our environment we see random acts of vandalism as isolated and unique. Yet what you show is that we are all perpetually vandalising all around us without this connection to self. Like a remote controlled robot gone haywire we charge from one thing to the next, smashing into passers-by. Eventually, we all must see there is a different current a different fuel a different way for us to move and yes this only ever flows from connection to us.
What a brilliant blog Alexis Stewart! You have ‘cut to the chase’, no ‘beating around the bush’ and ‘said it how it is’! What I am left with the simplicity, the bare bones of the truth that invites me to deepen my relationship with myself to the point that the beholding love for myself obliterates judgement of any kind and embraces understanding. I am reminded that love is an observation, which when deeply connected to myself is all that is needed. I want to know exactly who ‘walks through my front door’, by the way!
Brilliant blog, and a great question : ‘If you’re not at home, then how can you possibly know who’s walking through the front door? This is true. A great reminder to wake up to this fact for we are the keepers of our own front doors.
‘If I want to stop judging those around me then I must stop judging myself’ – Very true Alexis, everything we practice and live in relationship to ourselves founds how we are in relationship to other people, so to be self critical or judge our own choices/selves then guarantees a lack of understanding with others and in the world.
Thank you for sharing your journey, Alexis, from feeling completely adrift and lost to re-discovering the ‘starting point of Me’. I can really relate to this, and thank heaven every day for the teachings of Serge Benhayon, for guiding me back to the truth that resides in my body.
“When we choose to disconnect from ourselves we lose the ability to know how we are feeling because we are ‘not there’ to feel what we are feeling.” This is so key. We choose to disconnect because the we don’t want to feel the bad feelings, but in this we also are unable to feel the good feelings, and we lose our inner radar of what is actually going on. When we disconnect we disempower ourselves because we simply can’t feel the truth.
I used to find it easier to blame others for my anger and upsets. It was a way to avoid at all costs looking at myself and my part in the situations I created, but I’ve discovered that is where true freedom lies. It’s about taking responsibility and knowing you always have choices.
The gift that we give to each other daily is the reflection that we offer. Without others we would never truly come to know ourselves, as it is another that holds a mirror up for us to deeply look into if we so choose. If we react to someone, then they offer a mirror for us to look at our reactions. On the other end of the spectrum, we feel deep love towards another, they too are reflecting all the love that we are.
‘If we have a dysfunctional relationship with ourselves, then this will result in dysfunctional relationships with everything and everyone else.’ This is so true, but like you I didn’t even realise that I had a dysfunctional relationship with myself, let alone what a relationship with myself really meant. I never really questioned how I treated myself or observed how I thought about myself. I simply accepted things as they were, whilst feeling that something was definitely missing. Imagine how different life would be if we were taught about the importance of our relationship with ourselves and it was even part of the school curriculum?
I love your sharing Alexis of the basic maths in our lives and it is understanding this that makes so much difference and this allows us to make more loving choices for ourselves. Your honest sharing is very relatable to makes sense and shows what is possible for “When we have each returned to our true relationship with ourselves, one that contains love and nothing else, then so too will our world be a reflection of that love.”
What a beautiful blog, so raw and real. I so can relate to the part about thinking you are well when you are not. This is why we need others to reflect to us what true wellness is otherwise we are all living as if having angst, being stressed, being frustrated is normal when it is not.
Alexis, this is wonderful to read, ‘Others can only get as close to me as I get to myself. If I want to be loved for who I naturally am, then it is my responsibility to love myself in full first’, this really makes sense, I have noticed this with my son because he loves and cherishes himself he loves and cherishes others. I used to be very self critical and judgmental of myself and this played out in my relationships with people, now that I am much more loving and understanding with myself I am this way with others too – very interesting.
“We are all involved in a cover-up of such gargantuan proportions that we have made a silent pact to not break the silence…”. This is for women and men. I’m recently starting to feel how choosing competition over understanding, equalness and love is a choice we as men make to be ‘busy’ with outher life in order to be able to bury what we feel from the inside. This feels age-old and I can feel quite some sympathy in me towards other men. As if I don’t want to break the package that we agreed on together. There’s even proudness in it. I’ve tried to find me, walking around me, caring deeply for myself, but this actually kept me in motion. In the illusion. I’m in fact the opposite of the choice to disconnect from myself years ago (I don’t know at what age yet). Even though I can feel the 2 different people, one – the real me and the other one a character that in truth isn’t me, I’m still learning to accept that I am a feeling person – all of te time. Building a relationship with ourselves is a beautiful process actually, allthough at times quite exposing and confronting to feel the choices that we’ve made, away from ourselves.
I attended a open women’s discussion on breast cancer awareness organised by Foundational Breast Care. One woman shared how though making life style changes were important part of her recovery from cancer diagnosis, what contributed more to her healing and sense of well-being was deepening her relationship with herself. It was a powerful statement and revealed the extent to which we under-estimate this fundamental part of healing. We often speak about self care without fully understanding what it means. Lack of self care is a breeding ground for disease to enter our bodies. True self care is founded on developing a loving, appreciative self honouring relationship with ourselves.
“I have come to feel that judgment comes from lack of understanding: once we understand why a person is behaving the way that they do, it becomes impossible to judge them.” Developing understanding seems key in all relationships, but foremost with ourselves first. By holding ourselves with that awareness we can hold others by the same quality.
‘if I want to change any-thing that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first’ – its such a simple approach, it makes such total sense to me now, yet I have spent 40 years avoiding that responsibility and blaming everything else!
Reading your gorgeous sharing, Alexa, brings up the question what would have happened,if I would not have closed down and held back as a child, if I would have confronted my parents with the light, openess and delicateness within me in full. Yes they would have reacted, they would have felt their hurts but they would have had a chance to heal them. I have the same choice now, to stay in protection or to let go to the best of my abilities and let out the joy and lightness within me.
It’s such a shame we all generally disconnect from ourselves at a certain age as though we have almost been programmed to do it, and in a way I suppose we have as we have not been shown or taught (until now) how to deal with the outside pressures of life without hardening ourselves up.
“When we have each returned to our true relationship with ourselves, one that contains love and nothing else, then so too will our world be a reflection of that love.” This may be a long way of yet but it is blogs like this one that start the much needed conversation.
What a fantastic read Alexis …Chainsaws! … Hamsters! … and so many golden truths you share so openly … “If I want to be loved for who I naturally am, then it is my responsibility to love myself in full first…. If I want to stop judging those around me then I must stop judging myself. … Life is maths, nothing can exist outside of us that doesn’t already exist on the inside…” Brilliant sharing Alexis, thank you!
If we are to truly defeat judging others, we must first come to an understanding of why they are choosing to behave in a particular way and then use this understanding to accept that things, people and certain situations do not always perform accordingly to the set image we may have in our minds as to what a it/they should look like. Furthermore, if we are truly able to accept ourselves then we are truly able to accept that we are not in control of, nor responsible for the actions of another but that our responsibility is to live the love that we are to the best of our ability so that we leave no door open for judgement, comparison or jealousy to enter. Judging others is only possible if we are not valuing ourselves. Thus, appreciation of ourselves and of each other is the way out of this quagmire of comparison we as a society have become so bogged down with.
Loved reading this blog Alexis…
I especially liked this line…
‘Choosing to disconnect from who we are makes it very easy to abuse ourselves because we are literally oblivious to the abuse.’
No-one walks around saying they are going to abuse themselves today…but as you say from a place of disconnection this is what so easily plays out. So the answer is and has always been about connection. Amen!
‘if I want to change any-thing that is outside of me, then I must change it in my relationship with myself first’, sounds so simple, which it is, if we’re truly committed to making the change. Surrendering to the wisdom of our body, allowing the honesty to expose what’s getting in the way and the love to support ourselves, and appreciate all that we already are, along the way.
Thank you, dear Alexis, for all that you have shared. There is a rawness to your honesty which left me feeling unsettled. Re-visiting your article this morning, I was struck, again, by this comment, ‘When we choose to disconnect from ourselves we lose the ability to know how we are feeling because we are ‘not there’ to feel what we are feeling’.
This truth is exposing, for me, how my spirit still plays it’s games, hence the squirming. There are so many, ‘little’ things that I think I’m getting away with, however, I’m either connected or I’m not, I’m feeling love or I’m not, it’s pretty binary. Thank you.
“What makes our disconnection from ourselves even more harmful is the fact that everything, as in every-thing that exists outside of us, is set in motion first by our relationship with ourselves”. This understanding itself can provide a great deal of empowerment to people, inspiring far more personal responsibility and far less giving our power away to things that in truth are never more powerful than we are.
‘Others can only get as close to me as I get to myself.’ So many irrefutable equations here. So many reflections I can relate to and am discovering. If no-one is at home then it is no wonder that abuse is allowed in when the door is held wide open. I cannot turn around and say how could this happen when I choose to leave the building. Coming back and staying present, to feel the energies I’ve let in and let them go is how I reclaim who I am and stay in relationship with myself.
Thank you for your honesty Alexis – especially on the graphic thoughts when anger and rage were in the hot seat. I’m certain that most of us have had these thoughts, and perhaps only some question them as not being a normal thing to think, and others may think that is who they are, an angry person who doesn’t like people. Talking about it feels really neutralising and brings further understanding to why these thoughts may be allowed to enter. Like you said, if there is no one home, who knows what’s coming through the front door?!
Hamsters… well they are a bit useless… Alexis I just love your blogs, they’re so relatable and oh so spot-on! I remember kicking the family dog as a teen because I was angry about a certain situation related to the dog – but, rather than seeing and dealing with the true cause of the problem (the people making decisions about the dog) and expressing what I felt was an injustice, I took my frustrations out on the dog. Yes, that connection I could have had and nurtured within myself was nowhere in sight. As a result I was mute, and angry.
Thank you Alexis, great blog. This is a maths lesson that if taught at school could blow ‘blame’ out of the equation.
Life is such a battle when we live with levels of barely suppressed anger – been there, done that and got the dysfunctional relationships to show for it! Thank you for your honesty Alexis and the glorious insights you reveal which demonstrate so clearly that it is only when we become willing to work on our relationship with ourselves that our lives start to unfold in beautiful ways and the more we love ourselves the more this is reflected back to us.
It makes total sense Alexis, if we looked at and took care of our relationship with ourselves first then the ripple effect would be seen in our homes, schools, workplaces etc. It’s amazing how judgement slips away when we bring understanding to people and situations. I have seen schoolchildren completely change their feelings towards someone once they understand if someone is outwardly being a bully then they are inwardly bullying themselves.
Thank you Alexis for your simplification of a great wisdom, and that is our relationship to self. For without knowing and loving ourselves how can we have a truthful relationship with anyone else.
Everything is on the inside first before it is on the outside, is a great support and truth when trying to figure out why things are the way they are. Fixing things outside of us and without regard for our responsibility in all of this, leads to solutions but doesn’t provide the needed answers .
” If you’re not at home, then how can you possibly know who’s walking through the front door? ” Alexis that really gave me a laugh and I so related to the concept of no one at home. Without understanding of how it all really works we are just reacting and making it up as we go. When we live Love, connecting to our Soul we have made our inner heart our home and life becomes so clear and purposeful.
A few months ago I got to feel really clearly and painfully the amount of judgement I was directing at myself and therefore at everyone else too. It floored me for a few days – devastating to feel – but since then I have been choosing understanding over judgement and it has been nothing short of miraculous. I no longer give myself an exceptionally hard time – always striving to be good enough but never feeling it. Instead I now don’t expect perfection, I am loving and understanding of myself and in this I have grown and expanded so much, freed from the shackles of my own judgement and criticism.
Alexis, this is a very honest and open blog and powerful in its delivery of the message that our relationship with ourselves is in essence a priority because from here stems the quality of relationships with all others. Thank you for this timely reminder – I am currently having something reflected to me that I know is a reminder for myself of what I need to address in my own life, and though this is not pleasant to see and feel and accept, the beauty of the situation still remains, which is the beauty of being offered an opportunity to grow and change, and once more deepen my relationship with myself.
It is interesting what you have shared here Henrietta Chang. Often when we are given an opportunity to learn from another through their writings it brings up so much about what aspects of our life has the potential to change. Yes it may feel that it is unpleasant yet it is the squirming inside that is forever showing us the true potential we can live.
Awesome blog, Alexis.
Everything being reflected back to us is an opportunity to expose, feel and heal.
What a great analogy, Alexis, of the empty house with no-one at home. How can we make sense of life if we are not there to truly experience it in our bodies, to be able to learn, feel and have greater understanding of ourselves and then others?
Awesome Alexis, nurture all that is within for it reflects all that lives on the outer.
“I have come to feel that judgment comes from lack of understanding: once we understand why a person is behaving the way that they do, it becomes impossible to judge them” and as you say Alexis, this starts with ourselves first. The more we are able to understand ourselves, the less we judge ourselves.
The fact is we have created an environment in which it is OK to walk around as not who we truly are – and therefore why should we personally question our behaviour if it is accepted. One of the most loving things I’ve ever heard anyone say to me is telling me when I have not been myself – it gives me a reality check and a marker to say ‘you’re right, I am not me and this is why’ – without this guidance we could go our whole lives not wanting to feel what’s really going on. Universal Medicine has been able to allow us to ask ourselves these question and then decide if we want to address it or not.
Isn’t this the truth!
“When we have each returned to our true relationship with ourselves, one that contains love and nothing else, then so too will our world be a reflection of that love.”
So insightful and real Alexis. What a great way to take the lid off the silent pact we have created for ourselves and each other. For me it has been because I didn’t want to feel the responsibility. But at some point the awareness dawns that the avoidance doesn’t work either, and there is always one common denominator (maths), and that is me. What ever is going on and being reflected back, I’m the one that is the constant year after year. The scenarios, scenery, people have all changed but not the experiences or emotions. That is until I started to take responsibility for me and appreciating who I am and caring tenderly and discovering true love for myself has been an amazing, wonderful and life supporting choice. Responsibility is the new black – essential to include with everything.
A wise point to arrive at – and such a beautiful foundation for a connected life.
What a beautiful blog Alexis thank you.. It makes absolutely sense. There is no way out of that one.. What you share here with us is gold : “Our relationships with others become the most incredible tools to see what needs addressing in the starting place of every-thing, and that is in our relationship with our self.”
This explains us that we can go nowhere without a relationship with ourselves and that we will feel and are reflected this all of the time in any relationship. Now to foster that without judgement of what might rise up for us to see, but embrace all that comes our way and change it for the better of us All.
I.ove the way you write Alexis, it is direct and to the point and you end up feeling a bit of a nini for not actually getting it in the first place. There are so many bits I could quote but this one stood out “When we choose to disconnect from ourselves we lose the ability to know how we are feeling because we are ‘not there’ to feel what we are feeling.” and to go on you talk about therefore not being able to feel the abuse that can be part of our daily lives and considered ‘normal’. Very true and one to work on moment by moment. Always come back to question the normal.
What you have shared Alexis reinforces the importance of understanding, not judging and truly meeting others in love which as you say starts with ourselves – someone has to start it and for many of us Serge Benhayon was the one. If you had been truly met for who you are as a child you may not have needed to disconnect to such an extent and lose yourself. This applies to all of us and as you have described often even more to those who think it is not them and everyone else!
Love the basic maths scenario, it is very simple and yet we tend to complicate the whole thing to keep the ‘show’ going.
Yeah so true – ‘the show must go on’ … so much more freeing when we step out of the ‘theater’ and truly connect with ourselves and others.
This is an amazing blog, all starts from the relationship with our self, when we don’t choose to work on this we are left to all our protection, harm and abuse. In the end it is all a conscious choice we are not easily willing to accept, but it is the trick to see what we are doing. And then take the responsibility to live from our true selves.
Life is constantly reflecting back to us at all time. Sometimes it can be amazing and sometimes not so great. Still finding it difficult personally to look inside when I don’t like the reflection which is presented to me.
How simple would the would be if we chose to be aware of the fact that ALL our issues and that means EVERY SINGLE ONE, comes first from our relationship with ourselves and ultimately with evolving more of who we are out into the world. There will always be challenges presented by life, but the true way to deal with them is to have a solid foundation of knowing who we are within first. How huge this is! And how crucial this is for us all to know.
I choose a different way of dealing with the love that I was not getting. I convinced myself I did not need love and buried my feelings of hurt. This pattern continued until I was 50 and then I was so full of all the feelings I choose not to feel, that my body said no more (complete exhaustion).
With support from Simple-Living Global and Universal Medicine I started to understand what was going on and with simple tools that I learned I began to surrender to my body and feel all the hurts I was holding on to.
So simple a concept but so foreign to me as a child because I had no role model to show me how.
Now my job is to be that role model for others.
So much wisdom in this blog, thank you for your honest sharing Alexis.
“Deep down every single one of us knows that it is our relationship with ourselves that sets every-thing else in motion, but the responsibility of that feels too big and so we pretend that we don’t know.“
Our relationship with ourselves is a big subject, bringing responsibility back to to this point can at times be challenging but always worth while if you are humble enough to do so.
‘once we understand why a person is behaving the way that they do, it becomes impossible to judge them’ this is so true and our judgment of others is nothing compared to our self judgment, so perhaps seeing ourselves with greater understanding is the place to start.
I like this blog and your comment, Carmel. Taking the time to truly understand ourselves and why we have made the choices we’ve made, with no judgement, is a really good place to start! Then we can start to truly understand others without judgement too. What a wonderful, healing world we would be living in then!
Yes Alexis, we create the life we live – there was a time I would have denied this but as you have shared the relationship or connection we have with ourselves is reflected back to us in our life. The moment I accepted this as true, the most amazing and loving things opened up for me because I chose to open up to the amazing and gorgeous being I am.
Brilliant Alexis – it is as simple as that. Our relationship with ourselves is the only thing we can change, and I found like you that, even when I think it won’t ever make a difference, it always does change the outer when I make my relationship with myself more loving.
Yes, Lieke, staying consistently connected to ourselves makes all the difference in life, and determines how much of ourselves we are able to bring out and share with the world every day.
What an awesome blog Alexis, and about the greatest lesson we will ever learn, that is that all relationships first begin with our own relationships with ourselves.
Alexis,
This is an amazing article, the openness with which you share that judgement of others and self is all coming from our own choice to not connect and love ourselves unreservedly is such a gift to all of us. You are not alone in having this reality, as it is rife in our society today, and no amount of telling oneself will halt the destructiveness of self judgement (judgement of all) only connection and a dedication to choosing to live from our true essence within will truly stop this deeply harming force.
Our ultimate form of responsibility is to know that what is presented in front of us is a direct reflection what is going on inside. When I feel judgement arise of another, I know that I am not clear of that feeling within myself therefore calling me to look within and heal the hurt that is there.
Spot on Donna, any form of judgment of another can act like a cue and a clue for us to seek that which we judge about ourselves and hence learn to bring more understanding to us and the other. This can of course be a process, as Alexis has described, and it can be painful to realise the level of disconnection we can be in to allow such judgement. Feeling the disconnection is one pain and then there is the pain of realising that we chose the disconnection to begin with, which is a pain that is more of a feeling of having been ‘fooled’ (which we have been), and so this takes much humbleness to own up to and accept and then re-connect and then move on again.
That’s great Donna, makes it very clear and precise how we can get on top of these little ‘judgment monsters’ that may creep in now and then 🙂
These are such wise words Alexis. It sounds so simple. lt is the basis of all relationships.Spelt out in black and white. lt is an ever deepening journey within us. Worth every step. As each step blesses ourselves and everyone else.
Beautifully and clearly expressed Irena.
It is so easy to hold others responsible for how we feel and not own up to the fact that our first relationship is with ourselves and that is then reflected in every other relationship we have.
Hear hear – that’s exactly how it is.
What a great blog, Alexis. My relationships with others are a reflection of my relationship with myself. This is ultra self responsibility. I got a bit annoyed with some drivers yesterday and i can feel how that is actually reflecting my frustration with myself. A great learning for me.
How wonderful it is that you have realised that you feel that you disconnected from yourself at the age of eight. I have no idea though I can remember still feeling great discomfort in my own skin when I would have been around 13-14.
I love your truthfulness with yourself Alexis in that you can now look back at your life and bring your own understanding and acceptance to your forays which opens up your awareness of how life has been your constant loving companion by reflecting back to you your own needs, mis-judgements and general dis-regard for your self and others.
I am only now awakening to my own life’s reflections; and this does take a great deal of courage as we have to dis-assemble the life we think we have and start feeling into who we truly are: feeling all our hurts and taking responsibility for all the harm that we have done to ourselves and others; and most importantly, understanding why.
I love and appreciate all that Serge Benhayon presents to us: our truths with no judgement; just love: equally to absolutely everyone. He loves humanity and feels our pain, angers, frustrations, fears and hurts; and like the truest nurturer that he is he offers us all the tools that we need, knowing that these wounds of ours are indeed intimately personal to ourselves and that only we can bring awareness, understanding and responsibility to them so that in our own time we can heal our past hurts and free ourselves to live our lives in the love and glory that we have always had the freedom to choose. He cannot do this for us as we must learn to awaken our dulled senses and reveal to ourselves our lies and general disregard of ourselves.
And it is this progressive process of revealing all these hidden facets one by one that opens up our true selves in all our delicacy, vulnerability and fragility.
Like the beautiful, delicate and fragile butterfly who can fly through hurricanes: so are we!
Thank you Alexis.
When we look at human behaviour from this angle it is so much easier to not take things personal. If someone speaks harshly to me and I choose to understand that that harshness is being directed at themselves first, it doesn’t make sense to retaliate and react because that person is already hurt.
My anger towards myself used to be off the charts similar to what you’ve shared Alexis and while it is nothing as it was I still choose to judge myself and others. But choosing to be curious and ask for understanding is definitely the way to go in healing such criticisms because in that I get to learn that the only reason I choose this is because I have/had chosen to not be me, a work in progress as judgement is very familiar but one, if the body is given a say, that proves to lead to only failure and more hurt.
Absolutely Beautiful blog, I feel I learned so much!. Its become so clear that what indeed is on the inside is reflected on the outside, its so easy to look ‘out there’ and think something is wrong without first seeing what our relationship with ourselves is, which is where we can address reactions and judgements – ultimately understanding is how things truly heal.
An amazing blog Alexis – the anger you describe, the raging against the world and everything in it is something I know I have felt – life’s difficult or tough because of other people and yet two people can experience the same day, the same people and feel totally different about it because of the way they related to what went on in their day.
Great blog Alexis. “If we have a dysfunctional relationship with ourselves, then this will result in dysfunctional relationships with everything and everyone else.” So true – yet we blame everyone and everything outside of us. Is this because we don’t want to take responsibility for how we are with ourselves? Since attending Universal Medicine presentations I have been learning to treat myself with love and respect, also acceptance and appreciation for who and where I am in my life. This has had a huge knock-on effect, not only for myself of course, but on everyone I meet during my day.
“Deep down every single one of us knows that it is our relationship with ourselves that sets every-thing else in motion, but the responsibility of that feels too big and so we pretend that we don’t know. “Wow this is big and a real revelation for us all to take on board. The only option we really have in life is to make loving changes and to feel everything and build a loving relationships with ourselves first and this will change everything. A beautiful sharing bringing such love and understanding thank you Alexis.
That’s really beautiful Alexis – what you have spoken about makes so much sense and for me is a stop moment to take another look at my relationship with myself. I could feel myself open up as I read your words and the common sense of what you said – and that if we are not truth-full with ourselves how can we possibly know what truth is?
Thank you for sharing. Something I have learnt is that unless we are continually deepening our relationship with ourselves we cannot deepen it with others. If we put our relationship with others above ourselves it will never work. After all what quality do we bring to another if we do not have and live with and cherish the relationship we have with ourselves.
I love this Alexis. Basic maths! So well put.
I love the examples you are giving about how you felt and had this underlying anger and were blaming all this on everybody else, as this is such a common pattern in this world and I can definitely relate to it. It is so very freeing to understand that we all have to do with what comes towards us and that we can thus make the changes we want for ourselves. It simply and always starts with ourself first, the relationship with ourselves thus, is a very important one, and one to reply care for and nurture.
And equally that to defuse this boiling anger and rage, we have to get out of ourselves, and learn to see things from different view points – to create an understanding of the world and then we get an ah-ha. No longer does it have the fuel of criticism and judgement and the anger loses its fuel…. we are able to see the situation with more clarity, more presence.
I love this line….”If you’re not at home, then how can you possibly know who’s walking through the front door?” Remaining connected to us and what this means and feels like is not something I was ever taught except when I came to Universal Medicine presentations. This is something that should be on the school curriculum for every child, so that as we grow every adult has a solid relationship with himself or herself before needing another to fix them.
Yes it is quite a scary thing too isn’t it – not knowing who is coming through the door – that we have opened of course by vacating first… To stay connected no matter what feels so important and that goes for all areas in life.
This article makes so much sense, especially the part about having judgements of others and still having judgements on ourselves, and how understanding goes a long way to helping us to not react to situations and people. Our inner conflicts and how we treat ourselves are only shown back to us, how awesome is that.
You bring a clearer understanding of the effects of blame, judgment and irresponsibility with this powerful and honest writing Alexis. It is a very big ouch and wake up call when we realise that how we see others in the world is basically a projection from how we see and treat ourselves and don’t want to feel the pain of this.
“Every single thing that was in my relationship with myself was reflected back to me in my relationships with others”.
Thank you Alexis – What a great analogy this is to expose being totally separated from ourselves.
Every front door I touch will forever bring a reminder that there is always a possibility to deepen true connection with myself and thus others.
“If you’re not at home, then how can you possibly know who’s walking through the front door?”
Thank you Alexis, I can relate to much of what is shared especially around not recognising how far away I was from myself and any quality relationship with it. Having been attending Universal Medicine workshops for the last 10 years, it was a couple of weeks ago I realised and felt in my body how every issue, every moment, every choice comes back to my relationship with myself. This is what I am constantly being shown to pay attention to. It makes everything so much more simple – maybe challenging too as there can be no blame just self responsibility.
‘If you’re not at home, then how can you possibly know who’s walking through the front door?’ This is a great analogy and I can feel just how much I have chosen to disconnect in how I do things during the day in order not to feel all that I naturally can. This does not stop what is there to feel entering as is said here and so we have no way of effectively dealing with this.
When the relationship with ourselves is non-existent, we continually search outside of ourselves hoping to find the answers, when in fact this search keeps us trapped going round and round in circles. For myself I needed a huge wake-up call to break free from this trap in the form of illness, this gave me the much needed space to examine and revaluate my life and all I had been choosing: the disconnection and the irresponsibility. When I got this honest, so much support opened up for me and so many more choices became available.
‘I had chosen to disconnect from myself to such an extent that I had literally broken adrift from any kind of footing that I had’. I could have written these words, several years ago I was completely lost and had no tools to hand to find myself back….. and then I found the Ageless Wisdom presented by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine which supported me greatly to open my eyes and take responsibility for my life and slowly through self-care and self-nurture I began to reconnect with my body and develop a relationship with myself.
I love your raw honesty Alexis exposing your thoughts when you disconnected to yourself It is so true that how we are with people is reflected back to us yet we are so lost that we don’t want to or can’t connect the dots. All through my life I used to question the type of friends that I had, and why they were my friends, but at the time I wasn’t willing to look deeper into my questioning. I am able to see now that they were all variations of what I reflected of myself out to the world. Holding back, hard, using money to protect me from the world and control what happens in my life. I did know somewhere deep down that this was being reflected back to me, but I didn’t like it so ignored it and numbed myself to it. “Our relationships with others become the most incredible tools to see what needs addressing in the starting place of every-thing, and that is in our relationship with our self.” So very true Alexis.
Wow Alexis, I love this article, this is very profound and yet makes complete sense and is in fact very simple, ‘our relationships with others become the most incredible tools to see what needs addressing in the starting place of every-thing, and that is in our relationship with our self.’
Thank you for re-iterating that again Rebecca – it’s an awesome expression and one to take into our daily lives for the purpose of reflection and adjustment where necessary.
I can relate here Alexis to that decision made sometime in my childhood to harden and go into protection mode, basically so that others would never know that they had hurt me. The trouble with this is as you say that when we think we are protecting ourselves from things outside including hurts, we are also cutting ourselves off from ourselves and from feeling love inside us and around us. No wonder then that this way of living ends up in misery and emptiness!
When we leave ourselves, we have all heard the term ‘lights are on but no one is at home’ is closer to the truth than we would like to believe. What happens to a house with the lights on and nobody is home, anyone or thing can move in sit on our couch and make themselves at home! We are what is inside of us and it is a choice to be ourselves, or something we let in that is not us.
“Because I was unable to feel what I was doing to myself, then I was also unable to feel what I was doing to others” This is a beautiful realisation Alexis. Growing up I always felt disappointed that I was not loved romantically by others and now I know it was because I did not have any true love for myself and was holding myself and everyone else at arm’s length.
Alexis before coming to Universal Medicine I had no idea what having a relationship with myself meant or had even considered it possible, so today having this as the foundation of my life I can’t quite understand how I lived before. That is until I let myself see how much I was coping and struggling in life, the thing that I felt was missing was me and I was always there just needed to connect to me instead of making life about other people first.
I can so relate to this too MA – looking back now it is a wonder how I handled my life at all. Nowadays, even in the face of adversary, just by having a good foundation in my relationship with me, I can stay so much more connected with myself, looking after myself in a loving and nourishing way, whereas before I’d be in such disregard to all that I really needed to give myself to be truly loving and nurturing myself in all situations.
My life before Universal Medicine was like a ball in a Pachinko machine. My past my life was determined by chance and gravity and then repeated continuously. Now there is purpose and self in my life that just flows.
Wow Alexis! What an amazing and exposing blog and the whole thing is we can’t hide from ourselves forever so we might as well get on with it. This really hits home the importance of self-love and that nothing that happens to us ever, is not a direct result of our relationship with ourselves and the choices we make.
The hiding is the delay when deep down inside we know this. So why not just get on with it!
Yes and once this is understood and truly felt, the way to self love and care becomes so much clearer, and when we step on this path it feels truly gorgeous the more we connect to that inner essence.
Love your honesty of the strong feelings of anger Alexis, it is so much easier to let go of things when we apply such honesty and it always offers others the permission to go there and do the same. In regard to the teaching of Universal Medicine, some may argue that what is presented with issues such as self love is not new, it is found in many philosophies, and yet I find it is embodied by the teacher and in the teachings so fully and thus much more powerful and truthful, that to me is a fundamental difference in how much of what I hear I then embody too.
“When we choose to disconnect from ourselves we lose the ability to know how we are feeling because we are ‘not there’ to feel what we are feeling.” If someone had said this to me some years back I would have laughed and asked how could I possibly be disconnected from me as I definitely feel what’s going on for me. Then 11 years ago at my first workshop with Serge Benhayon a light was turned on, and as I turned this light inward, for the first time in my life I could feel how disconnected I actually was, from me, from others and from life, and the only way to heal this was to honestly explore the quality of my relationship with me; so I did.
Awesome Ingrid, often it truly takes another to show us how to turn that light to ourselves within and bring to light what we didn’t see or chose to not see or be aware of. And how liberating is it when we do and can start to see and heal all that is in the way of us truly connecting with ourselves in love and true caring.
Ingrid, the exact same with me. I thought I was connected to me, like you said how could I not be, I am with me the whole time! Alas this is true though and I would say for most if not all of us within the world and it wasn’t until I met Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine and was introduced to the Gentle Breath Meditation and also with what Serge presents that I could tangibly feel I was indeed not connected to me and the essence within, in fact everything I had lived had pretty much been avoiding feeling this not embracing and allowing it. This is still very much an unfolding path and there is never a point you get to where ‘that is it’ but it is a gift allowing myself to just be more and more and getting to feel the true qualities of who I am and what I bring.
‘I thought that it was ‘other people’ that made me angry,’ This made me smile, a reminder of a time when I felt the same, completely unaware I carried anger in my own body.
Yes me too Kehinde and Alexis, and how freeing and liberating it was to eventually recognise this and deal with it within…
Alexis, an incredible transformation. It is as you share when we deeply connect with ourselves we begin to understand the reason why we behave the way we do and in constant reaction to the world around us. Without understanding this level of awareness eludes us.. I can relate to much of what you share, in particular wanting to develop relationships with others (and failing) when I didn’t have one with myself. Your poor hamster! And yet that’s how it is: we pour blame on others without ever looking at ourselves and what we’re creating in our lives. What you say is true: ‘Our Relationship with ourselves is the Start of all Things. it must be joyous for your body to have you home again.
Thank you Alexis for clarifying in this blog what is meant by ‘relationship with self’. It is something I too have struggled with -with the consequences for my other relationships that you have described. When I re-connect to my essence it is the most glorious feeling and one that I remember well. I can feel the natural joy bubbling up inside me. Conversely, when i am disconnected from myself -my essence – I can overeat, over-exercise, get bored, get overwhelmed, frustrated…the list could go on and on. It really IS that simple isn’t it -to connect to self or not connect to self?
These are simple maths indeed Alexis, and the question arises within me why do we not learn this when we are young? Being aware of these basic maths give us completely back the responsibility of how we are living our lives to ourselves. We are not ruled by anything from the outside, it is from us internally that creates the outer circumstances and situations we are faced with, and if we are connected in love we know what we will meet in the outer world.
That is why this feels like coming home – it is the natural way we were as young children. We are indeed returning to that natural way.
Coming home to divinity – just here on earth for now.
” … if we are connected in love we know what we will meet in the outer world.” – Powerful expression Nico and right on the spot. With that in mind we can really assess where we are at and make the appropriate changes if necessary. The blame game stops.
I love your blog Alexis, so honest, exposing and real. I laughed at parts of it because I was able to relate to what you’ve shared and understand how crazy some of our thoughts can be when we are disconnected from ourselves and therefore others. To appreciate what others reflect to us, be willing to see that these reflections are always there for us to learn. But when we choose to blame instead of choosing to learn, then we can easily get stuck in a cycle of abuse. To choose to deepen our relationship with ourselves will support us to connect with others more lovingly, be more understanding and honest.
So very healing this is, as I can recognise so much of what you have shared here and I had my own chainsaw that was constantly on stand-by, humming away. “Every-thing that exists outside of us, is set in motion first by our relationship with ourselves” – this is Gold. Responsibility is so simple – turn it around, it is the power we have walked away from.
I love what you have presented Alexis, about life being maths as this is so true. We cannot expect to be loved in a way that we do not allow love in or out for ourselves, there is a rhythm and a flow to a loving life that knows what true love is and the beholding energy of God by which it lives. To know and live by this science is to let go of all neediness and abuse and just accept that the love we are, is simply that, all that we are.
I believe you have just discussed cause and effect Alexis.
How judgment exists if an image to how something should be is already held as a belief?
The greatest remedy to judgment is to cast all beliefs and ideals aside (although seeming impossible at first) there is nothing more liberating to read life for exactly what it is without relying on any picture.
A great way to describe it Luke, the law of cause and effect, but also the law that nothing can be created or destroyed – judgement for another cannot be created from nothing, first there has to be judgement for ourselves.
Wow, awesome Rebecca. The answers to life really do live within. Reminds me of the biblical verse ‘the kingdom of heaven is within you’.
Well said Nick – the inner kingdom and sanctuary that creates the architectural blue print for all our life.
I love it – we have everything within us already and can choose if we so wish to deviate and delay these plans coming to the fore but delay is all it is as the plans are already in place.
We carry our own key to all we ever dream in our hearts and no one can deliver this to us – just reflect and inspire us to reignite what we already hold.
I love your expression here Luke, so apt and absolutely true. How can we possibly judge something when we do no longer hold a belief how things ought to be? Very liberating indeed.
Thank you Alexia Stewart for sharing what I too have experienced from what has been presented by Universal Medicine. The details in which we can go to in order to deeply care for ourselves is noticed by others and often a reminder to us all our true potential.