Be Kind to Yourself

Be Kind to Yourself?!

We’re pretty good at beating ourselves up, aren’t we?

What if you were the one who was most in need of your own kindness and love?

What if that was the key to the mending of your body and soul at the present moment?

What if you held yourself in loving kindness instead of beating yourself up, as we are all prone to do?

What if we embraced our own “enemy” within, looked with compassion on it and held it gently, and found that it melted?

Could it perhaps help you to heal – physically, emotionally, spiritually?

Perhaps it’s more important than we realize and worth a try.

In her book “CHANGE ME PRAYERS,” Tosha Silver shares a story about her friend who is a long distance bicyclist who suffers from sever sciatica.  He once said to her, “Have you ever noticed how only humans blame ourselves for our own wounds?  If an animal gets hurt, it’ll go into a corner and lick itself till it’s better.  If it’s traumatized, it’ll tremble to release the tension.  But a person in our nutty culture will beat himself up for being hurt in the first place.  If I had a dog with a lame foot, would I hit it for not walking right?  Yet I do that to myself all the time.”  She says that we tend to curse our hurt spot.  But she asks, what if we could just embrace it?  Kiss it?  Love it and offer it to God?  Those wounded parts in us, whether physical, emotional or spiritual are desperate for acceptance.

As a parent, do you remember how you bent down to kiss a scraped knee or elbow of the child who came running to you in tears and it seemed to make it all better?  She says, “I think we’re all just waiting for that inner kiss.”  Perhaps inundating our body with a wealth or wave of love will help us to heal physically.  And even more, self acceptance of whatever wound we have, embracing the broken part of ourselves may help us to somehow become more whole.

“What if I should discover that the poorest of the beggars and the most impudent of offenders are all within me; and that I stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I, myself, am the enemy who must be loved — what then?”
CARL JUNG

LYRICS:  Be Kind to Yourself

You’ve got all that emotion that’s heaving like an ocean
And you’re drowning in a deep, dark well
I can hear it in your voice that if you only had a choice
You would rather be anyone else

I love you just the way that you are
I love the way He made your precious heart

Be kind to yourself
Be kind to yourself

I know it’s hard to hear it when that anger in your spirit
Is pointed like an arrow at your chest
When the voices in your mind are anything but kind
And you can’t believe your Father knows best

I love you just the way that you are
I love the way He’s shaping your heart

Be kind to yourself
Be kind to yourself

Well how does it end when the war that you’re in
Is just you against you against you
Gotta learn to love, learn to love
Learn to love your enemies too

You can’t expect to be perfect
It’s a fight you’ve gotta forfeit
You belong to me whatever you do
So lay down your weapon, darling
Take a deep breath and believe that I love you

Be kind to yourself
Be kind to yourself
Be kind to yourself

Gotta learn to love, learn to love
Learn to love your enemies
Gotta learn to love, learn to love
Learn to love your enemies too