Prioritizing Energies of Love: 2017 to 2018.

Being diagnosed with something that includes the word IDENTITY in the name of the "disorder" invited a new depth to my healing journey: Who was I, really?

As my health continued to worsen in 2017, I lost more and more. I could not hold a job. I struggled to take of myself. Cooking was impossible and eating was hard. The superficial friendships I had rapidly withered, and the one deep friendship I had was limited as my friend moved out of state. My living situation was dependent on acquaintances willing to house me. With each move, I gave away more and more belongings.

Life felt beyond hopeless. There was no separation between my identity and my experience, so it seemed that my experiences defined my worthiness.

From external particulars to internal feelings, everything I had considered to be a part of "who I was" was gone. I had pain, a diagnosis, and a feeling of hopelessness.

At the end of 2017, I continued my annual tradition of establishing New Year's Resolutions. (Click here for my article about the power of new year intentions. Click here for my 2015 resolutions. Click here for my 2015 review and 2016 goals. Click here for my re-evaluation of 2016's resolutions after experiencing a traumatic event.)

One of my top intentions for the new upcoming year of 2018 was to love myself unconditionally.

Love became the baseline of my entire healing journey. Instead of wondering where to turn or what to do, I would simply ask myself, What would Love do? And I would move in that direction.

Allowing an abstract energy of Love to guide my healing journey was powerful for many reasons.

1) What I needed moment by moment was always changing as my state of consciousness changed. I could not identify my needs, and the underlying specifics continually shifted with the shifting of my consciousness states.

2) Nobody else understood what I was going through or how to help. External resources were unavailable.

3) At the baseline of all of my battles was an energy of fear, and Love is the strongest way to dissolve and resolve fear.

My everyday life was difficult beyond words, and I was very alone in the battles, without people to understand or assist.

I continued to focus on LOVE as the foundation of my healing journey, and I continued sharing my personal journey along with general messages of emPOWERment, even while experiencing indescribable depths of darkness.

Huge progress was made over the unfolding months.

Towards the end of 2018, LOVE was still the focus of healing. The Love of my being had deepened, grown, and expanded tremendously.

Yet still, there remained aspects of conditional love that I desired to transform.

I grew more and more in my ability to separate experience and identity. Instead of "this is who I am," unfolding moments became "this is what I am experiencing."

Separating self from sensations offered more power in moving through the various experiences of consciousness.

From this space of emPOWERment, I created my own self-love meditations and continued to grow.