"The goal is to cultivate in our hearts the concern a dedicated mother feels for her child, and then focus it on more and more people and living beings. This is a heartfelt, powerful love.

"Such feelings give us a true understanding of human rights that is not grounded just in legal terms, but rooted deeply in the heart."
~ The Dalai Lama

What a wonderful world we would have if we all cultivated in our hearts the love most of us feel for our children or others' children. But we also need to take this same love we have for our own or others' children and bring it to the child within us. My experience is that if we take that love and focus it more and more on others and not also on ourselves, then we become needy of others giving us what we are not giving to ourselves.

I love what The Dalai Lama says here, but too often religious and spiritual people forget that giving to others without filling ourselves with love first can create many problems. When we ignore our own feelings and needs and instead focus on giving to others, we may have a big empty hole inside that pulls on others for love. When this is the case, the people we are giving to often don't feel loved – they feel pulled on instead. So I would change the first sentence of the above quote to read:

"The goal is to cultivate in our hearts the concern a dedicated mother feels for her child, and then focus it more and more on the child within, and then focus it on more and more people and living beings. This is a heartfelt, powerful love."

 

"I Don't Know How"

Why is it that many people feel they know how to love an actual child, but they often ask me, "How do I love myself?"

The real issue is not so much 'how' but intent. Even if it is very important to you to be a loving parent to your child, you will probably not do a perfect job – whatever that is – but your intent to be loving will motivate you to continue to learn about being a loving parent. You will learn from your mistakes and you will likely not give up and give your child away for adoption. You might read about the 'how' and keep practicing so that you feel better and better about your parenting skills.

It's exactly the same for inner parenting. When we first start, we don't know what we are doing. But if we are to cultivate our heart and reach a place within where we can give our heartfelt, powerful love to others, we need to take that same depth of parental love - of which we are all capable - and bring it within.

There is truly nothing more fulfilling than offering others our heartfelt, powerful love. To have that quality of love, we need to open to learning about loving ourselves with our guidance, and learn to take loving action for ourselves. This is what CREATES the heartfelt powerful love that we can then offer to others.

 

When I feel like I don't have that love to give to others, it is always because I'm abandoning myself in some way.

For me, it's usually about having too many irons in the fire and not having enough down time. I don't turn to self-judgment or addictions, and I don't make others responsible for me, but I have SO much I want to do that I sometimes forget that I'm an introverted type who needs downtime and solitude. When I don't get this, then I feel depleted and I don't have enough love within to offer to others.

What is the issue for you? How do you abandon yourself that leads to not having enough love to share with others?

Join Dr. Margaret Paul for her 30-Day at-home Course: "Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships."

Image by S. Hermann & F. Richter from Pixabay