Open Your Heart To Love
Dr. Tim Ong is a medical doctor who has a keen interest in self improvement and personal transformation. In his free time, he teaches meditation and gives public talks. He is also the webmaster of MindScienceInfo.com.
The love I'm referring to here is not romantic love.
Love here refers to unconditional, universal love and respect for life - yours and everyone else's. We are all capable of this type of love. In fact, if we can strip ourselves of all our negative emotions, imprints and ego, what remains is pure, unconditional love. That is who or what we are underneath all the layers of impurities that we have accumulated.
The problem is that we have forgotten how to love. We have to learn to open our heart to love again.
OPEN YOUR HEART TO LOVE
There are four steps involved in opening our heart to love:
1. Acceptance
2. Forgiveness
3. Expression
4. Actions
ACCEPTANCE
First, we have to accept that we are capable of love - pure, unconditional, selfless love! We have to accept the need to express this form of love in our life in order to live fully.
FORGIVENESS
Next, we have to learn to forgive - ourselves and everyone else, especially those whom have hurt us in the past. Learning to forgive is not a choice. It is a neccesity! We need to forgive in order to heal ourselves and make ourselves whole again. If we cannot forgive, we cannot move forward. We will continue to carry old wounds and burdens with us. When we forgive, we let go of all these wounds and burdens, and instantly feel lighter and stronger to move forward.
Forgiving does not mean forgetting.
It means we're willing to let go of the past and willing to give ourselves the freedom to start afresh without encumbering ourselves with the old wounds. We remember the lessons without bitterly holding on to the pain. We do not wish to blame anyone anymore.
There are three types of forgiveness:
1. Forgiving those who have hurt us
2. Forgiving ourselves for hurting others
3. Forgiving ourselves for hurting ourselves
To open our heart to love, we must learn to love ourselves first. To do that, we need to start by forgiving ourselves for all our shortcomings and mistakes. We need to stop blaming ourselves. We stop blaming others and circumstances. It does not mean that we do not accept responsibility for our actions. What it does mean is that we recognise our weaknesses and mistakes and wish to give ourselves another chance to make our life work for us.
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