What is self-love? What does it mean, and how important is it that we do it? Just as Chakra taught me, over 30 years ago, the truth about Love and the power and necessity of loving the self, he both poses and answers these questions, in great detail, in the third part of this lecture series. Thus, on this path of personal and racial discovery, our journey with Chakra continues as we begin to closely examine our relationship with the spiritual aspect of our being. It is incredible how exceedingly clear it becomes that, to heal anything about ourselves or our cultures, the medicine we need is Love. Love heals our relationship with spirit, ourselves, our cultures, each other, our planet, and with God. Earlier this week, I had this flash of insight, excitement, and urgency about the actual reality of Love. It made itself known to me in the following phrase: ‘Love. You, Just Gotta, Do It!’ This life-altering, dynamic, and radiant energy is God’s most precious gift to humankind. It’s logical and magical, mysterious and forthcoming, and the most fantastic opportunity we have been blessed with to experience and understand the truth about who we are, how we came to be, and the purpose of our walking a human life. I know I sound like a zealot; I probably am one. All I can say for sure is that Love has a powerful hold on my heart.
Chakra
Love is the gift of Spirit. Love is your ally. Love is what creates wholeness within a being. If a being has squelched or not acknowledged that aspect of themselves, they are not walking in wholeness. One way to get it that this is so is to ask human beings what they know about loving themselves. That would be the first thing Spirit would bring to light. First things first: how do you love yourself?
If Spirit were guiding from the very inception of a being's walk on the planet, the first act would be loving yourself. Love would be the first thing you are taught to understand and embrace since Love is what the whole planet is about. And, loving yourself would be the first thing on the agenda so that you would understand how to love everyone and everything else. That was the original plan.
But human beings decided to do it differently and pick Love up somewhere down the road. You decided to allow groups and organizations to control your spiritual aspect, giving them the responsibility of honoring Spirit for you––to a certain degree. You realized that you didn't know how you got here. But didn't think you got here all by yourselves. But none of you could quite figure out how it was all done, intellectually speaking.
The greatest scientists and physicists could not figure out how everyone shows up as they do, being born and all of that. There had to be an original plan. Human life had to have started from something. And, because human beings could not figure out how it all got started, you decided to give Spirit that territory. In order to keep it from getting out of hand––this kind of fantasy place where you have to rely upon something you can't see––you decided that organized religion, places of control, would best handle the spiritual aspect of yourselves.
You didn't have to spend your whole life paying attention to it; once it got started, it rolled along quite well. You could then take it from there.
To pay homage to the One who you decided created life, you designated time out of your schedules to pray and acknowledge the existence of this very, powerful being. The One could be thanked and asked for things. These activities were all done between you and someplace outside of yourselves, the place you designated to handle the spiritual aspect of the self. That wasn't entirely how it was planned.
The original plan was that every human being would have that spiritual aspect within themselves awakened. Your relationship to Spirit and the Creator would be a one-on-one experience. That spiritual aspect of every being carries with it all the truth and knowledge of the Creator. There was no need to allow someone else to do your praying. There's no need to let someone else tell you what Spirit says, primarily because each one of you is, indeed, Spirit yourselves. You already know this, and you have the ability to see that you do. You have to know it; you have no choice. There is nowhere else to go but home to Spirit within yourselves and wake up.
A part of this healing process is an awakening to who you are and the Love that you are. Love is what is going to heal racism. It does not mean that Love will suddenly allow the white culture to realize that the people of color are equal. It doesn't mean that Love will suddenly allow the people of color to forgive the white culture. for their injustice. It's not going to work that way. Because, if that were the case, we would still be missing a basic element.
It's about the white culture learning to love themselves. It's about the black culture, the brown culture, the red culture, and the yellow culture all learning to love themselves. This is what we mean when we say that you cannot get this from each other. This is something you're going to have to get for yourselves. This is something you're going to have to heal within you. No one can give you this; you came with it already. No one can give you your Love for yourself. You have to get it from yourself. The cultures have to get their Love for themselves from within themselves. This is the healing that has to occur.
The white culture has to sit with themselves, ask some very important questions, and face some very important truths. The basic question for them is, if they had really loved themselves, why would they have felt the need to make other people less than them? So that they would feel okay, strong, and powerful. The very fact that they could not bear different cultures to be equal to them because it made them feel less gives you an idea of how much they suffer from their own lack of self-love. The white culture needs to love itself.
It needs to see Spirit within itself. It needs to see its' good, its' value. It needs to see how afraid it was that it was not chosen. The very culture that claims to be the only one chosen was the culture that carried the most fear of not being chosen, of not being loved. Look what Love, or the fear of not having it, made them do. How distorted they behaved all in the name of not having Love.
The beings of color need to love themselves. Where was their Love for themselves when another culture made the decision––because of their own lack of self-love––that these beings were not loveable. If the cultures of color had their Love for themselves, do you think they would have bought that story? This is a very sensitive area so let us explain a little deeper.
A person of color might come back and say, "Excuse me! "Bought that story?" "What choice did we have to buy or not buy that story? They had everything. They came and destroyed our people. They stole our lands, stole our people, and enslaved them. They had all the material things that made it possible for them to do this. What choice did we have?"
And we say to you this, you cultures of color, had you had your Love for yourselves, this would not have been so. If you had your Love for yourselves, this would not have been possible. So then we get to how powerful is Love, that it could have stopped something like that from happening? Think about it. Love of the self was evidently missing with the cultures of color when the white culture got a foothold and destroyed your people and your lands. Since no one can destroy your Love for yourself, it's too powerful. No matter what your life is like, if you love yourself––you live and die loving yourself.
Loving yourself is not temporary. It is not occasional. Loving yourself is being awakened to who you really are. No one can take that away from you, no matter what they do to you. That is the one thing they cannot take from you. Your Love for yourself is woven into the very fabric of who you are as a spirit. It is unforgettable; unstealable. It is who you are. And when you see yourself, accept yourself, embrace yourself, and honor yourself in Love, no one can take it away from you, no matter what they do. So, you see, something was amiss because the cultures of color did not have that for themselves. They did not see Spirit alive in themselves. They did not know the power of Love alive within them.