It is tempting to wall yourself off when you are hurt. Many people are advocates of that “walling off” as well. People would assume that my life experience has taught me that I need to protect myself and be more careful when it comes to love. But it has not. It has taught me about my own fear.
Love never hurt or deceived anyone. Only fear can do that and for most of us, our love is cradled in so many layers of fear that we can no longer differentiate between our fear and our love. We say love is painful. We don’t understand that it is not the love that is painful. Love cannot be painful. It is fear that is painful. It is the prevention of love caused by fear that is painful. If you want to live a happy life, heal yourself and make self-loving, smart decisions in the future, you need not armor yourself against the world. You need not protect your love. Instead, you need to remove your armor and remove the layers of fear that by virtue of their constriction, are choking the freedom and life out of your love. Many of you will come to discover that you have never fully loved. How do I know this? Because many of you have never been completely fearless.
Speaking of love, I went to my company mailbox yesterday. My box was full of presents and letters sent by fans. I feel so weird calling people who follow my material fans. It feels more like they are members of my army of awakening or like they are extended family members scattered all over the world. Anyway, I spent half of an hour reading the letters and playing with the presents that came. I wish I had the time to write everyone who sends me things one by one. I can only hope that they (you) know that when I continue to create the things which I hope will add to the richness of their lives, gratitude for their support and love is contained within each creation. I love presents. Gifts is my love language. I live in a terrible country to have that love language. The influence of Christianity has made it so that gifts are seen as materialistic and therefore shameful. Not many people in America speak that love language, and many are even repulsed by it. In fact, I’ve never been in a relationship with a man who speaks my love language. Gifts are the visual symbol of love. They are reminders of the fact that people love you. I admittedly have a hard time believing and remembering that I am loved. So when I read through my binder that is full of the letters I have received, or look around the room and see all the little things people have sent me, I feel loved.
Last night was Halloween. I dressed my son up as a pumpkin and sent him out trick or treating with Mark (his dad), Blake (who you all know) and his best friend. It’s a hard not be so rigid that you give children the desire to rebel when you are committed to the way you want to raise them. I have trouble with this when it comes to my son’s diet. I’m a heath freak. Sugar is a neurotoxin. I have a difficult time watching people poison themselves with it. In America, every holiday is an excuse for the candy companies to make money. In fact, entire holiday traditions have been created specifically for the candy companies to make money. Halloween is one such holiday that in today's modern world is all about the candy. I have made a deal with my son that if he gathers all the candy he gets trick or treating and trades it in, he gets to go with me to the giant toy store in the city nearby and pick out anything in the entire store, no matter how small or how large. This is what we will be doing today. He was so excited about it this morning that he was jumping up and down. He even scrounged around in my drawers for whatever pants and shirts he could find to give me so I couldn’t tell him that I needed to get dressed.
When people give my son sugar before I can avoid it, I deliberately try not to make a big deal of it at all. I can’t prevent him from experiencing life. But I do know that children emulate. So we make a big deal out of dinner and never offer dessert as a reward for finishing dinner. I also know that that the foods we are exposed to as children; build the foundation for our palette. This is a byproduct of basic species survival. The body sets itself up to crave whatever food it has already been exposed to. It does this to ensure that you will be driven towards eating whatever food exists in the area. This means, feed your children junk food when they are young and they will crave junk food. Feed your children healthy food, and they will crave healthy food. This has proven to be true with my son. I made all of his baby food from scratch when he was young. He’s been eating mostly vegetables since he was old enough to eat and now, he prefers healthy foods. His 2 favorite things to eat are dried seaweed and roasted almonds.
I am so happy it is November. Soon the ski resorts will open and I can be back in the heaven of the snow covered mountains. Look… I’ve even taken to dressing like a skier again!
